I had been binge drinking and getting high for hours

I used anything I could get my hands on and would do anything to get high. One year while playing rugby I was kicked off the team due to too many nose bleeds. I was required to take a drug test which, of course I failed and permanently lost my position on the team. This would have been the perfect time for me to get help but at the time I felt that my teammates were just trying to hurt me and not that my nose was deteriorating due to my abuse of cocaine. I lied to my family the whole season and never let them come see me play. I made excuses as to why they were not allowed to come as they always had in the past.

The first time I used heroin I accidently overdosed and had to be rushed to hospital. I stopped breathing and had I not been resuscitated, I would have died right there on the table. My family came to the hospital and took care of me. Upon my recovery I was told not to see my friends or co-workers that I had used with again, but that I could still drink. At that time I did not think I had a problem with alcohol, but my drinking began to replace my getting high. Soon, I was back using heroin and overdosed once again. I was twenty five at the time.

In all of my using I believe I never wanted to hurt anyone. I always felt as though it was only me who was getting hurt by my using and that it had no impact on others at all. Again I was wrong. I learned that lesson from the following incident. I had been binge drinking and getting high for hours. I came home that evening and was supposed to babysit my seven year old nephew. I went straight to bed and slept for around sixteen hours, during which time he tried to wake me but couldn't. When I finally woke up he was crying because he was hungry and could not find anything to eat. He told my sister that he did not like sleeping at my house because I had no food and I slept too much. My sister was furious and challenged me to go into treatment, I was now twenty seven.

After getting out of treatment I started studying the Bible in Seattle, Wa and on Nov 20th, 2001 was baptized into Christ. Just before making my decision to be bapitzed, someone challenged my heart with this scripture.

Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple. 1 Cor 3:16-17

I saw that I could no longer live the way I had been and that I would even have to stop drinking as this would only take me back there.

I graduated from CR on Nov 27th 2002. A little over a year from when I started. There is a small but growing CR ministry in the church, and the womens group started this past February. I was the first to go through it. I am learning to change things in my character to become the woman God wants me to be and I am also learning to be an assistant leader. I want to give back what God gave to me.I am very greatful to God that he loved me so much as to die for my sins when I really didn't care, but was more focussed on my own self-destruction. I have been clean and sober for 1 year and it is only through Christ Our Lord that this has been possible!

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