Drug Rehab

Recovery: When the thing happened to God!

Throughout my childhood, in Missouri, I was given the gift of having a God to believe! The first "tangeable" gift she received was given to me the day I was born. He was a King James Bible New Testament. In my cache of things that survived addiction is that the Bible. Furthermore, it is a bracelet survivor accounts and baby blue and white, of the Presbyterian Church, who attended. There is a blue block for each year ever I missed a day of Sunday school, and each is separated by a white cord. It has 9 blue balls. Somehow two things survived when I lost everything else, I mean everything, several times. 9 blue beads are very important, because when I was 9 years old we moved to California. My parents continued to attend the church every Sunday. I was given the option to go or not. I left, but I was not very often.
At 10 I began spending time away from our house with friends a bit older than me. A the eleven years I have experimented with alcohol for the first time, often coming home late for anyone to smell the alcohol. When I was 12 years old, I smoked marijuana with the new Girl Next Door. I started drifting of things I had been taught and the people who taught me, my parents! At that time the Church was not at all. Through my teen years I no longer think about God anymore. When I was a sophomore John Kennedy was assassinated (November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas) and the whole of America is to question everything he believed in. God only came back into my thoughts at the end of High School. In 1963, Civil Rights Act was passed and came to know Reverend Martin Luther King. Before I graduated from High School, Bobby Kennedy and his close relationship with Reverend King had awakened a new hope, despite the fiasco of Vietnam. On November 17, 1967 in Los Angeles, California, took the oath to enter the United States Navy. I had resorted to enlisting in the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army, and try to escape my increasing use of drugs. At this point, I had begun to think the concept of power whenever more, trying to make sense of the confusion associated with all of Vietnam.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. I was school in the Navy in San Diego. I was devastated. Shortly before the end of my second school in the Navy, June 5, 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. In that time, I lost faith in the whole human race! I definitely began to question my membership of the U.S. Armed Forces. The worst was yet to come, for me. I was growing faster than it would have had to. I was 19 and very, very confused. In 1969 there were over 500,000 troops in Vietnam and another half million for support forces. The war was dividing the U.S. half, with the opinion turning against our participation. I had become political, and as a member of the armed forces began to take a position supporting the Draft Resistance. This was very risky because it had a security clearance of Top Secret and worked for the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. I just could not help thinking that if there was a God, what was happening in that war, could not be happening. I was very troubled, and all that was happening more and more justified to use drugs. Drug use was actually accepted behavior in the civil sector, equality rights, against war, all that is, culture.
My remaining time in the Navy completely put me into a tailspin, philosophically! I came to see the atrocities from Vietnam, who came to America on the TV and for us in reality. I began to hate and what was a part of. I began to live inside my head and was a place very poor. By the time I was discharged, it was a complete anti-social, self-proclaimed atheist, addicted to drugs! I was completely without God, living in a world without God full of godless. At least that's what my life experiences had led me to believe.
Since I was 21 until I was 45 I lived life recklessly addictions to different drugs, several failed marriages, and, finally, many trips to jail, is all the time thinking it was justified in my way of life and everyone was basically a bunch of greedy people without principles or purpose beyond getting your piece of it. So what is the point! Of course, I spent 25 years in a drunken stupor of drugs! For my last imprisonment, literally, no longer wanted to live. Then something happened … occurred something I could not have predicted … something happened that had never even thought of!
The miracle happened … This is the first written account … Only one person has known for her …

On January 28, 1995, in court, took a plea bargain of one year in jail and a year in rehabilitation, instead of a sentence imprisonment for three years. I did though for the last week had been seriously questioning if I could do another day locked up. Coincidentally, my father was in the hospital under questionable conditions, and it was his birthday the next day. I did not see why he should be alive, and was in a dark depression. When We locked at 6:00 pm, I sat on my bunk, deep inside my head, feeling sorry for myself … and disgusted with myself … to shut off lights, at 10:00 PM. As the light disappeared, I began to mourn, and the tears came into tears … I went broke and crying in agony, tears rolling down my cheeks, dripping on my bare legs, and I could not stop. I was choking to go completely out of control, where others could be here with me, but I seizures was almost like my thoughts left me and I moved to a state of total emotional pain. I was thinking and no, I was not alone … entered a state of being in a place between the conscious and unconscious, incapable of controlling the mind! Suddenly a gasp, control of my lungs came to me. Tears ran down my face, and the words just came to my lips, conscious thought or effort. He was saying that the "Our Father." It must have been decades since I had thought about it. And I was not thinking right now, it was only from somewhere inside. As the prayer ended, I begin to ask God to help me. As I wept and prayed the corner of the room about 20 feet of me began to glow with white light as I made promises that I swore if I could just keep getting help. I had no connection to the area around me, was like the world was me and that corner and everything was black with darkness. As the intensity light increased dramatically, and I begged and cried for God to help me figure became discernible in the midst of light. However vague, the clothes and beard, I realized I was God as I had imagined all my life. He began to speak in a deep voice, soft and soothing, and I began to hear if I was crying uncontrollably. He answered my prayer giving me forgiveness I'd been asking for. His voice penetrated to the soul! Then he told me that if I believed in him the signs that come to my guide to change what had been happening in my life for so long. It was a conversation with him, however. I had prayed, now he was responding. As he assured me that my life would be better, the image began to fade, and I ceased to mourn. Soon he was sitting on my bunk, exhausted, breathing deeply, return to consciousness, I looked to my right, where was the clock, and it was 12:05 am, January 29, my dad birthday. His head lite, and I was tired, and then I spent more or less out. Words can not do justice to my experience of that night. It was completely life altering and overwhelming and occurred within a jail! When the lights came on at 4:30 am, I was just awakening. I felt so different that I could not, nor I can now pinpoint really feeling. Se … that was "changed." Something had changed me fundamentally. I've never been the same since! Because I was hungry, however, and dressed and ready for locks to unlock and to queue for breakfast. There was no one I realized what had happened and I was not sure of what exactly had happened, anyway. I did not mind, though, because I felt better than I remember feeling, and I was in prison. Early that morning, after returning from breakfast, a policeman came and took me and brought me the administrative building and the office of chaplain. There the chaplain said he had received word from my mother that my father had taken a turn for the better and be able to return home soon. Immediately I felt a corelation between this and my experience last night. I felt a compassion to the religious that I had not felt in a long time. A million thoughts through my head spinning for the rest of the morning. I asked and was granted permission to go to the library after lunch. There was no normal reason for requesting library; was only the most private place that occurred to me in that prison. I was trying to collect my thoughts, in a moment wondering if I was really asleep yet and it was only part of a dream. My life changed completely from that moment!
Basically, at that time, I was relieved of the craving drug. Only some time later, someone gave me a beer. It took a couple of swallows. It was March 24, 1995. I have not used since. I had to do a full year in jail. On April 8, 1995, I entered the Chemical Dependence Treatment Program at the Veterans Hospital, Fresno, California. I was there for six months and then returned to society, in the three years of felony probation. I completed probation without incident, and had become a friend of my agent probation. Years later, I found myself sitting at the desk from him, answering questions for approval of the treatment program I had become Director!
In my prayers soon after my radical spiritual experience, I told God that I really appreciate get to live for 10 years clean and sober. It's been a little over 13 years since the change took place. That's over 10, right?
It is not now and has not been all peaches and cream, however. I'm not doing an autobiography, so it should be enough to say, I take two medications to control my blood pressure. I have the disease lung COPD (emphysema). I recently learned that I have diabetes. And last but not least suffering from an addiction to food (overeating). While he was on disability with the onset of diabetes, the company was working for, let me go because of performance of contract requirements. Shortly thereafter, my insurance was canceled, of course. The poor economy has almost eliminated fellowship, that depends on my profession. Therefore, I have two weeks left and I have no disability a job. But you know what? Despite its status at the last moment, more than once, God always makes sure that something is broken for me. And again!

About the Author

I am a certified substance abuse counselor, and recovering addict, in California. I have 12 years clean time and have been a counselor most of that. I have served as a treatment program Director. I have worked going into prisons recruiting inmates for aftercare drug treatment programs. I am WebMaster of the site Addiction: Why Me? @ www.mydavecarroll.com

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