Drugs and Disaster, The Book
Drugs and Disaster
The Dangers Of Doing Drugs
DRUGS HAVE AN IMPACT
What you get from the use of drugs is more than an euphoric high, which is associated with having a good time.
Drugs have a direct impact on the type of person you become and the way you perceive how life should be.
People who start to do drugs for the first time are not aware of the destructive powers drugs can have; it’s this misunderstanding, which lures them in.
Most new users to drugs are young people and their understanding of the dangers of drugs is suppressed by their curiosity to try them. They have been told or taught in school that drugs are bad but in their mind they have the same misconception all people have who begin to take drugs for the first time, “I HAVE CONTROL.” Whether it’s just curiosity or peer pressure from friends that causes a young person to start using drugs, the misconception is always the same with every new user, “I can quit any time I want to”. You should know, that’s the hook that gets you.
What I want to discuss with you here is not only the adverse effects that drugs have on your mind and body but also what effects and influence it has on your perception of life and the people around you. Drugs will cause you to become an indifferent person, jaded toward life and people. I want to give you all the facts so you will know what to expect if you decide to use drugs. If you do decide to make the choice to become a user, you can be sure that you will experience all that drugs offer, the good and the bad.
You should also know before you get started what every one who has gone down that road before you knows - there is no good, only the bad in disguise. It may seem like a good thing going in, but coming out it will be your worst nightmare. Listen to what I have to tell you, it may save your life.
This is my own experience with 20 years of living in the drug world, so the information that I am going to share with you is from my own personal knowledge and from those around me that shared my affliction. For some of you who will read what I am going to tell you, it will not be enough to satisfy your curiosity, so you will have to find out the hard way the reasons not to use drugs. May God help you? Those of you who will read my experiences and understand this is no place for you, God has already blessed you in your decision.
If you are that person, who will have to see for yourself what drugs are like, keep reading, you will certainly want to know what to expect.
My brothers and I traveled all over the country and even out of the country to do drugs and what we learned is that drugs will destroy your life and no one is immune. My faith in Christ is what saved me and I want to share with you how you too can be saved from the downward spiral of drug abuse. These are the facts about using drugs and I should know because it was my life for 20 years. I hope you will learn and understand from my own experiences the importance of making the right decision concerning drug abuse.
Sometimes it’s hard to make the right choices when you are a young person and the whole world is at your feet with different paths to choose.
If you will watch and follow after those whose life’s are evident of the success you would like to achieve in your own life, you can accomplish all the things you want to aspire to in life and be happy.
Marijuana
Marijuana, also known as cannabis or hemp, is a perennial plant that grows in warm climates and reaches a height of
8 to 10 feet. It’s not an easy task to grow a plant 8 feet tall, not with all the mishaps that can occur during the 9 to 10 month’s it takes to bring a plant to full term.
Most commonly referred to as weed, pot, dope, smoke, buds or blunt depending on where you live, it is smoked for it's abilities to create a mental high. Weed when it is smoked gives an euphoric feeling with a perception of peace, tranquillity and relaxation along with the giggles for new comers just getting started. The hassles that go with trying to raise a crop to full term, is why only a small number of people are willing to forgo the risks and grow the market supply of dope found on the street every year.
The penalties for growing illegal marijuana are very stiff and if you are caught growing weed, you will do jail time.
Street dope is known as swag which means a lesser quality of weed, it’s the commercial grade that most people buy off the street. Some of the higher quality weed is “kind bud”, which is generally grown in California.
Then there is hydroponically grown weed, which is grown indoors year round using special lights. Different hybrids such as Sativa or Indica are the scientific names used to refer to marijuana and its different type of species.
Other references to good quality weed are “skunk” of different species such as “skunk” 1, “skunk” 2 and so on.
The buds and leaves are picked off the stem to smoke in a paper called a joint or pipe in order to get an euphoric high that last from 2-4 hours. Marijuana is also brewed as a tea or it can be baked in foods to induce the same high as being smoked. The high lasts longer when eaten on an average of 6-8 hours but the quantity is greater in the amount of weed needed to get the same high than when it is smoked.
Hemp fibers can also be use to make fabrics, rope, building material, and other manufactured products. Although, because of its abuse as a drug, it is illegal to cultivate marijuana and therefore not eligible to be useful as a manufacturing product.
The main chemical of the 420 chemicals in marijuana is THC (TETRAHYDROCANNABINOL) which produces the euphoric high sensation that people get from smoking the buds and leaves. CBD is the chemical that gives the sedative affect of marijuana that cause the person smoking it to relax and feel calm. There are no toxic chemicals in marijuana but the smoke that is inhaled to induce the high is damaging to the esophagus and lungs. The tar of marijuana is 10 times greater then that of cigarette tar but there is no toxic poison in marijuana as nicotine is in cigarettes. When smoked, the THC is introduced into the body through the lungs and is carried to the brain by oxygen through the blood stream giving an instantaneous effect of being high. The THC surrounds the brain cells with a milky substance causing a difficult link up for cells to communicate with one another therefore creating a high sensation.
The brain cells are not harmed during the use of weed, after the user suspends its use, the milky substance of THC fades away leaving the brain cell in tact.
Marijuana is smoked to get the high people crave. It gives a feeling of relaxation and stimulates the mind to think
creatively, opening the mind to outrageous possibilities.
It stirs the mind to accept the unbelievable and quest for answers to the unexplained. Beginners will feel a laughing sensation to anything in their surroundings and everything becomes funny with lots of giggles and laughing. After a period of time the giggles will give place to a more serious side, with an in depth look at life becoming more philosophical.
Marijuana in the beginning will seem to be a harmless recreational time with friends but as prolong use continues a dependency for mental stability develops. The user begins to rely on marijuana as a crutch in difficult life circumstances. When you start smoking weed alone, that is your first clue you are hooked.
The physical harm from marijuana is nominal compared to the mental tear that marijuana will have on your mind.
It's not easy to recognize when you have crossed over the line and become addicted to marijuana. When you do see it, it's too late to stop without repercussions. Though it is never too late, if you can decide to let go of the desire of smoking weed because like anything else, addiction is a choice and until you decide to quit, you won't. No one can make the decision for you or cause you to rehabilitate until you are ready to quit on your own. Unless you make that realization of how drugs are destroying your life and have the desire to stop on your own accord, you will continue to use weed and other drugs, suffering the consequences of it's use over again.
It is only when you become tired of falling on your face over and over again, tripping over the same drug day after day, will you realize it is time to quit. By this time, it’s not going to be easy. Though, sometimes that still isn’t enough and some people will just dwell in the life of misery that they have created for themselves with no hope or care to escape.
After smoking marijuana for a while it will cause you to lose your short-term memory, which will become apparent to the user. Losing keys, money and other items, forgetting appointments and important dates are just part of the times you will waste as a dope smoker, but then wasting time is part of a dope smokers life. I hid over two thousand dollars in a house I owned and never found it. The time I wasted searching for that money I could have made it back three times over. Everyone who smokes weed goes through the same experiences and every weed smoker’s story is always the same. Tales of jail and waking up in strange places are scenes that would create fear and panic in most people with terrifying effects to their lives but are common place among drugs users. Everyone who does drugs understands in time that's just part of the price you have to pay for doing the drugs you do.
When you eventually can't control your addiction any longer, you will find yourself in situations where other people will control your actions for you. Other people making decisions for you whether it's in court, jail, hospitals or even on the other side of the law among other drug users. People will use you and your addiction to get out of you the things they want from you, be it money, sex, or favors that couldn't be anything but illegal.
People have traded their own children to get the drugs they need just to get through the day. Being out of control and not in control of your own life is a depressing time and feeling, a time when people are prone to making wrong decisions and eventually everyone who does drugs comes to this cross road. Loss of life, loss of family whether in death or domestic disputes and criminal behavior, the losses are far greater than the benefits from using drugs. Once the snowball is out of control though, it's hard to stop no matter how hard you beg on your knees to want to stop. People will use you in your drug circles and you will learn to use people. You will learn how to score your drug and how to score when you don’t have money. This is where the life of drugs really gets scary.
All the years I did drugs with all the people that I did drugs with, there is no one that got out of the drug life without experiencing the pain and low life that abusing drugs are all about. Everyone travels down the same disgusting road that drugs take you, everyone.
Marijuana does have a medicinal use but for most people who smoke marijuana do so for recreational purposes which leads to abusing the use of marijuana from its medicinal advantages and in reverse destroys their health. Rotten and yellow teeth, acid reflux and stomach problems including ulcers and erosions of the esophagus are caused by the abuse of marijuana.
Heart trouble and difficulty in breathing are very common among dope smokers. Throwing up from smoking I use to think was when you got the best high.
It didn't bother me all that much in the beginning but now I have a pain in my chest and my esophagus is closing from erosion. When I throw up or try to gag a piece of food back up to keep from choking on it now, I don't think it's that much of a great high any more.
Marijuana travels in the same circles as all the other pleasure giving drugs and most users of marijuana try other drugs such as heroin, cocaine, acid (LSD) but most of all prescription pills such as xanax and valium are popular. Weed is not a physical addicting drug but it is a mind addiction, which can be just as painful to withdraw from its effects. It will distort your ability to make rational judgments concerning life decisions.
Most people who smoke marijuana day after day become mentally dependent on its effects to stabilize their mind, mood and reasoning. Being stoned becomes a constant thought and every day is another day to scope, score, smoke dope and get high. For the user there are no goals to achieve except to get high, no worries except when its time to score again. For the stoner, marijuana gives you a feeling that nothing else really matters just the feeling in your mind to be content to live in your own dream world. Even to live in filth and not mind if that's what it takes to stay high. Every day functions of life like getting out of bed, taking a shower or even going to a job become unimportant and even obstacles to achieve.
You keep telling yourself that you’re going to get your act together, tomorrow or maybe next month, as soon as you can make some money or get something going, but that day never comes, it's just a dope smokers dream.
For a dope smoker, today is for getting high and tomorrow is for responsibilities. Though tomorrow never comes, there's only today for getting high, everything else I’ll do tomorrow. Long term users of marijuana have trouble doing even the simplest of every day tasks becoming irresponsible to the world, their family and their surroundings. It's not the life you see in the beginning when you first start smoking or take your first hit off a joint but it is the reality of life that will eventually catch up to you. In the beginning it's all about thrills and fun and having that great time especially if you’re with friends. You don't realize that behind the door you just chose to open is a hungry tiger waiting to pounce and no one gets out except scarred for life even if they survive.
Not everyone, who smokes dope lives in the same life style, marijuana like any other drug is common in most occupations. It's the person that marijuana brings you to become in who you are and how you perceive right from wrong which are the same in most people who smoke weed. Whether it's a yuppie making a hundred thousand dollars a year or a stoner that lives from day to day just to get high, the feeling of acceptance and self reliance to withdraw to your own mind is the same. It's the first thing you think about in the morning and the last thing you want before you go to sleep. Some people who say they smoke dope just on occasions, that it doesn't have any control over their lives are only in the early stages of marijuana addiction.
The final determination to whether you control it or it controls you will come later. You’ll know when. When the day comes when you do recognize your addiction, find the strength to quit and tell someone who you think will care and help you.
Those who are stressed to smoke weed are those who suffer the most when they do not have it. They become restless, irritable and irritated at every one and anything that crosses them. Panic attacks are common among those who are withdrawing from marijuana which in weed circles is referred to as "jonsing." This withdrawal period can last from a couple of days to even several weeks depending on the user and how long they have been using. When I "jonsed" for weed I was the worst person to be around. Road rage was nothing compared to what I would experience with someone who crossed my path with ill tidings, especially bad customer service in a store. I couldn't deal with it if I was "jonsing" for weed, I would simply go off. Then there were the times with marital problems, weed would effect my better judgment to handle domestic situations and if I were "jonsing" at the time of conflict, my mind would explode with irrational behavior and wrong decisions. Then I would score that weed and take that first hit and everything would be all right again in my mind.
Although, only in my distorted mind would it be all right because the problems were still real and had not gone away, I just didn't care any more. When you get to the point that you don't care any more watch out, you’re about to lose everything you love and want in your life and everything that is truly important to you.
Every one who smokes marijuana has a decline in moral obligations. Some users will not go to the extremes of immoral behavior but the thought of exploring such behavior might not be without consideration. Petty little things like shop lifting to premarital sexual relations is as far as some will go in their immoral behavior but the dangers of exceeding the limits of criminal behavior are not without possibilities. To be using drugs in the first place is a criminal offense and so for some it is an excuse to push the envelope to their criminal behavior.
The thinking is, "I am already considered to be a criminal for smoking weed, why not shop lift or grab that case of beer and run." You might not get caught the first time you try something stupid like shop lifting but eventually you will get caught, it’s just a matter of time. Most weed smokers do shoplift at some time during their addiction. The attitude is anything can be accepted, as long as no one gets hurt but then if that happens, oh well it was meant to be. Partying is a companion to getting high and the immoral responses that are common with using marijuana, includes premarital sex and living with someone unmarried. Marijuana will eventually cause you to become lazy and not able to hold a steady job. All you want to do is party at night and sleep all day. There are people who work every day and they smoke weed but it is a day to day struggle to maintain their work discipline. If they don't have that first joint in the morning to get their day started, it's hard to get motivated and moving.
On the average, a quarter of an ounce costs forty dollars, depending on the quality of the weed, which is seven grams or eight grams with the baggy. A whole ounce is about a hundred dollars, again depending on the quality of the weed. For most people who smoke weed on a regular basis, a quarter bag can last from one to three days, depending on the addiction. Most users will spend on an average, one hundred dollars to two hundred and eighty dollars per week. Marijuana is illegal to use and if caught, can lead to an arrest, fines and even jail. The majorities of those who smoke weed usually spend some time in jail or have to appear in court for fines, probation and periodic drug testing.
If a person has children, they are subject to being taken by the state until the user can prove stability and abstinence. The negative aspects of drug abuse are enough to deter most people from using drugs but the pleasure and snares of using drugs are most times too tempting for a lot of young people not to resist. You have a lot to lose if you decide to use drugs and more to gain if you don't. Smoking dope is generally looked down on by the majority of society and those who do drugs have to try to hide their addiction or suffer employment and even social repercussions resulting in lower paying jobs. The thing about being addicted to marijuana is the mental crutch for stability in life, which can be incredibly intense from mood shift to mood swing.
Marijuana varies in potency from plant to plant; therefore, the dosage with each use is not always the same, which can mean different results and different reactions with each time of use. After a while this up and down roller coaster of emotional strain can lead to depression. Even severe cases of depression resulting in a nervous break down especially during times of life crisis, which comes from a result of using drugs. In my own experience with this roller coaster ride of emotions, I suffered a nervous break down for the loss of a son due to my erratic behavior and party life that his mother and I were constantly engaged in. The pain and results of my own domestic failures could be pointed directly at my abuse of smoking weed. My addiction was so strong and the hold it had on me was so overbearing, I let my little boy go without the ability to fight for my right to see him or be with him in his early years. The domestic life that we lived which is so common among drug users, was one of parties, drugs and friends which led to cheating and lying and staying out all night, not at all a healthy family life style. Both of us were engaging in multiple sexual partners, but after I found her with another guy for the third time, I had enough.
I began the long and exasperating break up process, which lasted almost a year, back and forth, ending up in court and me doing some time in jail. My son is 10 years old now and I haven't seen him since he was almost 4. I hope my work here to influence kids and teens to stay away from drugs will somehow in a small way make amends for the times I wasn't there when he needed me the most.
I have a little girl now who is 4 years old and she is the joy of my life. The innocence that is in her eyes and in her nature of doing things is something that is too precious not to struggle to preserve. If you choose to do a life of drugs and you are caught up in that snare, you cannot expect to have a normal domestic family life. There is one thing that is a certain about doing drugs and that is drugs and family life do not mix.
You cannot expect to have a good relationship trying to bring up a family and do drugs. The problems are too real, too familiar and too devastating. In the end you will have to choose between the two and if you have an addiction that is controlling your life, chances are you will choose your drug over your family. Addiction will distort your mind to what is important, those who are close to you.
CRACK COCAINE
Crack is probably the worst addicting drug that any one could possibly do. It is also the most demanding and most destructive drug as far as losing self-respect and self worth. It will drive a user to do even the unthinkable just to satisfy it's craving and get high. If the user wants to stop or even tries, the alluring effect and the power of craving is so great that it is next to impossible for a crack addict to quit without some type of intervention. Crack cocaine is made from pure cocaine using chemicals to convert the cocaine into a yellowish rock. Girls who fall victim to this high will sometimes become prostitutes just to satisfy their craving of the drug and the majority of those who are prostitutes on the streets are most commonly crack users. Guys and girls alike who are hooked on crack will steal, beg, scheme, sell everything they have just to get that little rock, to satisfy the craving that is so strong and demanding of them. Some have even traded their own children into prostitution to get that little tiny rock of satisfaction.
It is the lowest form of addiction, as it will rob a person of their self worth and their way of thinking towards another human being. It creates a feeling of self-destruction that is hard to shake off. A crack addict knows he can't stop and that the drug is destroying him or her but there is nothing he or she can do except surrender to its power of persuasion and give into it's control.
The user’s personality becomes warped and distorted and the attitude toward other people is that of paranoia, suspicion, distrust and guilt.
Someone using crack has no value of their own life or any one else around them.
I have watched my own brother almost beg on his knees to borrow just ten dollars to get a rock, but then 30 minutes later it's another rock and then another rock and another and another. The begging for your last dollar will make you almost hate him, that he is destroying not only his life by submitting to its control but that it’s affecting your life as well. To have to listen to the pleading for cash just to get its temporary satisfaction, will drive you insane.
Trading and pawning everything, they have just for a moments time of being high. The high from a ten-dollar rock only lasts about 15 to 30 minutes and then they have to have another and another and another; it never stops.
Even when their money is gone, that next rock is all they can think about, how to get it. Crack is smoked in a glass pipe called a shooter although a junkie will use anything that is available to smoke their dope. Every one who becomes addicted to crack will lose everything they own with
NO EXCEPTIONS, but most of all they will lose their own self-respect and self worth, if not their life. If you think you can overcome the addiction of crack cocaine without any repercussions on not only your own life as well as those around you, think again. Don't be a deliberate fool.
It only takes one hit of crack cocaine to become an addicted addict and every one who takes that first hit will take another and another and another until their life is completely destroyed or they are dead. If you are looking to destroy your life this is the way to go, “Crack Cocaine”.
The thing about crack cocaine, not only will it destroy your life and your feelings toward other people but it will also destroy the way people look at you and how they value your life. Crack cocaine is pure low-life true and simple.
When you get to this point of addiction, the filth of low-life is what you will feel, on inside as well as the outside.
COCAINE
Over the past years, cocaine in its pure form has lost its popularity among most common crowds not to say that there isn't a demand for the drug. It still has a following of users that keeps its street value intact. Most commonly used among richer circles, its effects and addiction is similar to that of crack. Cocaine comes from the South American plant coca, also the plant from which we get chocolate. Cocaine causes a quick and alert feeling that awakens the mind to be one step ahead of everything else that is going on around the user. It's a wiry and speedy feeling that makes the heart race as fast as the mind. It's a party drug among the rich crowd to keep the party going and the sex alive. People who do cocaine have a tendency to explore strange and unusual sexual desires, even those who are straight sexually are tempted to explore homosexuality as result of the effects of cocaine. Long periods of use will wear down the mind and exhaust the user’s thinking of rational thoughts, which can be dangerous in decision-making especially concerning life or death situations. People on cocaine can be easily manipulated. For those who snort cocaine, long-term use will cause constant nosebleeds and after a while will begin to eat away at the nose and nostrils. People who use cocaine lose their appetite and desire to eat, after prolong use, therefore losing excessive amounts of weight which can cause an over dose. Addicts who are completely out of control with this drug will eventually start shooting up with a hypodermic needle, which opens a whole New World of addiction. Cocaine in it’s pure form will cause an over dose if shot up with a needle although most street cocaine is rarely pure. Remember this, ONCE A SHOOTER, ALWAYS A SHOOTER. EVEN IF YOU FIND THE COURAGE TO QUIT, THE DESIRE TO SHOOT UP WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU.
Don't ever start shooting up, your life is just a hair away from being over if you do. Cocaine like all the other drugs including alcohol is a fun experience in the beginning but further down the road there is a heavy price to pay. The best way to keep your life from the abuse of drugs,
DON’T START.
PILLS (Prescription Drugs)
Pills come in all shapes and sizes and have different effects for different uses. Some pills lift you up and others take you down. There are pills to keep you active and there are pills to make you sleep. Pills are the easiest way to lose control of your life. The physical and mental addictions are too commonly related, meaning that withdrawal pains from using pills is both mental and physical. Pills are much more readily available and easy to get with a prescription, therefore pills are the most abusive drugs in the drug world. Most pills that have street value are pills such as benzodiazepine which are pills like Valium and Xanax, misused from their medical purposes will cause you trouble. Pain pills such as Morphine, Mepergans and Hydrocodone are popular for their sedative effects. These pills are abused by people who are in no physical pain but just want to experience the high that comes from a drug that kills pain. After a period of using pain pills, the attempt to stop results in a physical withdrawal that creates a sick painful feeling all over the body that is worst then any pain could ever be. Your body aches and hurts all over and the mental withdrawal is just as painful.
Pills such as Xanax and Valium, prescribed for anxiety and emotional stability, when abused the mental withdrawal can be equivalent to a nervous break down. Coming off pills as with all drugs, should be monitored by someone who cares. Someone who has the patience and understanding that is needed to stand the rough times that are associated with withdrawing from drugs. The only way to stop abusing pills is to go cold turkey, which means to stop all at once and ride the physical and mental pain out until the effects of the withdrawal period wears off. Pills like Xanax and Valiums are most popular among pill poppers. Other popular pills are Hydrocodone and Oxycontin. The stronger drugs like Mepergans and Morphine are the drugs of choice for users who shoot up with a needle; although if these drugs are not accessible a shooter will shoot anything, he can get. After a while people who shoot up become as addicted to the needle as they do to the drug they are injecting. I have watched my brother shoot water just to be shoving a needle into his arm. The capsule is broken open or the pill is crushed up to make a powder, then it’s mixed with a little bit of water in a spoon. It is then stirred and heated with a flame to allow the drug to become liquid form in order to draw up into the needle and then shot in the arms, hands, legs, feet, anywhere a vein can be found. It is very necessary to use a filter when drawing the dope into the needle to ensure the user doesn’t get the “dirties” a term used to describe the shakes from a dirty shot. The shooter will stick the needle into their vein and draw blood into the syringe, then draw the needle out to mix the dope in the spoon with the blood in the syringe.
After the mixture is made by drawing the dope in the spoon into the syringe, the mixture of blood and dope is then shot back into the vein achieving the high and "rush" the shooter wants to feel.
If the needle breaks on the second shot, I've watched my brother shoot blood and dope into his mouth as not to waste the dope in the needle. A dirty shot is dangerous and most often results in death. No beginner should shoot alone because the odds of dying is the same as playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun and all the bullets are loaded.
NO CHANCE! Let me tell you that again, you will have
NO CHANCE OF SURVIVAL! The layout I just described to you is not a step by step directions to shoot up, several steps were left out on purpose.
It is those steps, which will kill you if you don’t know what they are and I’m not going to tell them to you.
This is not a how to book. I only want to share with you the full aspects of doing drugs to give you a complete picture without giving you the full recipe to getting started. If you can get a mental picture of the pain that drug addicts goes through just because they are enslaved by a drug, maybe you will find a reason not to want to explore or experience their agony. My brother would almost give his right arm to be able to stop shooting dope. He almost did, from a staph infection that not only almost took his arm but also almost claimed his life. It took several days in the hospital being treated with the strongest antibiotic that’s available to get rid of the infection from the dirty needles. The strain was so terrible it was almost untreatable. He is making progress now towards cleaning up his life and is getting back in church, but it has been a difficult road to travel.
After a while and because of frequent shooting up with a needle, veins become harder to find on the body and some veins even collapse from excessive shooting.
Shooting up can also result in transmitted diseases as well as cause staph infections that may result in the loss of an arm, leg or even your life. Hepatitis and Aids are common among shooters who share needles and most shooters do eventually contract hepatitis A, B or C regardless of whether they have shared a needle or not. Pills are chemical drugs which eventually through excessive use, break down the natural chemical structure of the body’s immune system. Its adverse effects can be harmful or fatal with continued and abusive use.
Pill poppers, who just swallow the pill, usually get their pills from a friend or a known person who has obtained a prescription also called a script. If a user can not get their own script from a doctor, they will usually find someone who is disabled or who is on workman's comp. This is not always a sure thing and when a user can’t score the drugs he needs, he begins to “jones” (withdraw) until he can get the dope he needs.
Ecstasy is a pill that is popular with lots of young people for the body high that it gives. It has a similar effect as does acid or LSD in that it distorts the thinking and excites the mind and body. It is known as the sex drug because of its supposedly effects to make sexual experiences more exciting. This is not true but only a myth. The adverse effects are detrimental in that it slows down the mind and thinking leaving an eerie feeling after a while that can be associated with feelings of gloom and depression. Ecstasy also leaves the person with no thoughts but with a blank mind that even thinking becomes somewhat painful or uncomfortable.
Its effects can be overwhelming, causing distorted thoughts and even losing control over rational decisions and immoral behavior that are regretted later. Ecstasy will raise the body’s temperature to as high as 112 degrees, which will fry your brain and boil your vital organs causing major damage. Users will also sweat a lot.
Ecstasy has recently become the drug of choice among young people and more young people are finding out the hard way the destruction that pills can cause. Some teens, if they’re not scoring pills from friends, they get them from their parents or a relative that might have a prescription.
You can always tell if your young person is using pills by looking into their eyes. If their eyes are glassy or if they can’t seem to look you directly in the eye, then you have reasons to be suspicious. That goes for any drug.
Most addicting pills give the user a slow and sluggish feeling, which is easy to detect if you are a conscience parent or observer.
HUFFING OR SNIFFING
This is a high created by sniffing anything from aerosol paint to gasoline to strong glues. Anything that has a toxic fume can be inhaled to create a high. Most common among young people in the early years like elementary and junior high, sniffing can be dangerous and fatal.
Long term huffing destroys the brain turning it to jelly and the out come is always death if it goes that far.
Huffing can also cause suffocation and loss of your ability to catch your breath becoming officiated leading to cardiac arrest. Huffing is just a cheap way to get high, but the high that it brings on is not a pleasurable high because users generally experience headaches and nausea.
When my family operated a mission for the homeless, there was a guy that came through who would huff paint by breathing the aerosol paint sprayed inside a bread bag.
His mind was almost gone and he never was ever quiet there to hold an intelligent conversation. You would know he had been huffing because there would always be paint all over his mouth and face from breathing in the fumes from the paint. Later I heard he died in some woods he had been living in, still huffing paint. We could never get him to quit huffing, he was too addicted to the high it gave him.
There are some people who, when they have crossed that line, they will never get back and their whole life will fall to ruin and misery, then they die. You do not know if you are one of those people, do you really want to risk it?
I hope you never find out it’s a hard life to live, if you can call it a life. Life is too short to waste on something that doesn’t have any fruit. When you come to the end of your life, do you want to look back and see emptiness? There are many times that I have looked back at the wasted life I have lived and the feeling of emotional pain, has never been more real to me. It was that waste, that almost destroyed me.
We should always live for today so that we can make tomorrow better and yesterday worth remembering.
ACID OR LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide)
Acid or LSD other wise known as blotter, paper or dose is a drug that causes the user to experience a super high that supersedes all other highs. Mescaline, peyote and some mushrooms, which induce the same hallucinogenic highs are just as strong in their effects. People who get high on these drugs, which is known as tripping become lost in another world which can cause distortion in judgment and out of control behavior.
Tripping on acid causes hallucinations with visuals and bright colors giving in to uncontrollable laughter and a wild imagination. Users on LSD will also grind their teeth and feel a tightness in their jaw with a tingling sensation felt all over the body. The users perception and vision is always blurred with a lack of concentration which can make decision-making abilities dangerous.
A trip on acid (LSD) lasts for 12-14 hours and there is no antidote to bring a user down once he has dosed.
Once you start on this trip you are in for the whole ride and there is no getting off this ride until it is over 12 hours later. Coming down you may feel wired and exhausted at the same time. As your normal thinking patterns begin to return, you will feel an urgency to sleep, but sleeping may be difficult for hours, and when you do sleep you may sleep 16 hours or only 2 hours. Your mind will feel tired and worn out. LSD is a dangerous drug not only because of its uncontrollable high but also because of its reoccurrence later on in life that are called flash backs. Flashbacks are tremors like a cold chill that runs down your back out of no where or for no reason at all. LSD destroys the immune system and users may become more receptive to a cold while dosing on LSD.
The only way to detect if any one has been dropping acid is to do a spinal tap but because of the dangers involved in doing spinal taps, LSD is never tested for among users. There are new methods for testing for LSD, but these tests can be inconclusive. LSD stays with you for the rest of your life if you are a user.
Acid or LSD is a liquid form, which can be dropped on a piece of paper or a sugar cube then taken by mouth later.
LSD is a very dangerous drug, it is also the drug of choice for a group known as dead heads, who followed the band Grateful Dead. Over 100,000 people would follow the band on tour every year, for not only the hippie folk music the band played, but more so for the drug availability especially the drug LSD (acid). Since the death of the lead singer in the early 90’s the band has stopped performing and so, went out an era that had lasted for almost 30 years. There is a new band on the scene now that has taken over from where the Grateful Dead band left off and the drug world of acid will continue to flourish under the hypocritical eye of entertainment. That’s the way it is in the drug world, when one drug promoter fades away another is always there to take his place. Concerts are a druggy’s paradise.
Every rock concert promotes the use of drugs. Not so much on the front side of their billing, but the culture of the music invites it in. How does it go; sex, drugs and rock and roll?
It says it all about the combination of immoral behavior.
It has been the battle cry of that dead world since it all started in the beginning.
This is why we have so many young people whose lives are being compromised because we have compromised our faith and have become conformist to the world and it’s lures.
We have turned our heads and made excuses for what we want our entertainment to be, though we know it has a direct negative effect on our young people and society. Every year the domestic violence grows worse and especially among young people committing more crimes that become more serious with each passing year. The problem lies within the culture of our entertainment and politics, and anyone who is passive to ignore this fact is wrong, an instigator of evil and foolish to those of us who know the truth.
It is said, if you are not a part of the solution, then you are a part of the problem and it is the responsibility of all of us to care for and build a strong moral society.
NARCOTICS
Heroin, known on the street as smack, horse, H, junk, or scag, is the most commonly abused of narcotics among hard line users. Narcotic drugs (opioids) are derivatives of the opium poppy or there are chemically similar synthetics such as methadone and mesuline.
Heroin is a morphine derivative, and morphine is opium's most potent active ingredient. The plant source is the Poppy plant that grows in Asian countries. Pure heroin is a white powder that has a very bitter taste. Heroin varies in color from white to dark brown mostly because of impurities or how it is cut from additives that each person who handles it adds to make their profit margin larger. In dope circles this is known as "walking on it."
There is a dark brown or black form of the drug, which looks like roofing tar, known as "black tar." Black tar is more common then the white powder form of heroin.
Street heroin is rarely pure because of the number of people handling it or walking on it. Heroin is a strong narcotic that acts on the central nervous and digestive systems.
Morphine, another strong narcotic is used mostly to relieve severe pain and is most often abused by medical professionals because of it is easy to obtain. Most addicts who score street morphine do so from people who are suffering severe pain such as cancer patients and people who may be terminally ill.
Codeine, like morphine, is a natural ingredient of opium, although less potent and more commonly used for mild pain. It is found in prescription cough medicines and pain relievers and is favored by some abusers because it is much easier to score. Some teenagers will get high on certain cough medicines containing codeine in the ingredients.
A dangerous way to get high because of the potential for over dose. Other opium derivatives prescribed for moderate to severe pain include hydromorphone, meperidine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone. Methadone is a synthetic form of heroin used mainly in the treatment of heroin addiction and is most often abused and responsible for a number of overdosed deaths. My brother became a methadone patient to get off opiates but found out the addiction is the same, just clinically controlled.
Many methadone users become life time addicted to the methadone that is being used to treat their drug addiction and trying to quit or even taper off would be life threatening.
These are hard addicts, which become what is known as a "lifer" to the methadone program. In my opinion, the legal methadone program in this country is a sham and a fraud, and does nothing to deter drug users from abusing drugs but rather holds the door open to other drugs. Though my brother has been a methadone patient for several years, he still is involved with the use of other opiates and prescription drugs and many of his connections come from other methadone patients he has met at the clinic.
Methadone causes the user to sleep up to 18 hours a day. Methadone will completely rob you of your life.
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic used for severe pain, also used as a surgical anesthetic. If abused it can be very dangerous. Narcotics affect many organs through the nervous system, which control body functions such as circulation, respiration, and digestion.
They cause blood vessels to relax and the heartbeat to slow down, which will lower the blood pressure. Narcotics slow and weaken the contraction of muscles that control breathing and constrict intestinal muscles, which will slow digestion.
Sedation narcotics may produce drowsiness, grogginess, and mental confusion. Characteristic of heroin use is the half-conscious state called "nodding". I have watched my brother on heroin sitting in a chair holding a cigarette nodding in and out as if he was just about to fall asleep drooling all over himself. Only by a miracle is he still alive. Narcotics induce euphoria, the sense of contentment and physical relaxation, which generally last three to four hours. When heroin is injected or smoked the high is preceded by a short period of intense pleasure known as a "rush."
I remember my brother and I was in Chicago and he scored some pure heroin, which is uncommon, but because he didn’t have a needle to shoot it with, he was forced to smoke it and share it with me. The rush I experienced was an incredible feeling of floating and slow motion a real high sensation. It is only by the grace of God that I am here to warn you of what drugs can do.
The rush is what users are trying to induce with each hit, it’s that moment of floating and visions that gives way to reality. Tolerance and regular use causes the body to require higher doses to achieve the same results, which eventually can lead to overdose. This is especially dangerous for new shooters.
Someone who is new to shooting up and does so with a regular user for the first time, trying to match the dosage shot up by the regular user, the new shooter will indeed over dose and may even die. I know of several occasions that my brother, who has a fascination with needles, has had to revive friends who were shooting with him. It can totally cause you to lose your high and bring on a panic.
Fortunately none of his friends, who were stupid enough to shoot up with him in the first place, ever did die but the close calls were enough to almost make you think if it is worth it.
The trouble with dope smokers and those who do drugs, they don’t think and the lessons learned are just enough to help them survive the next trip and high.
Weight loss over time can cause an over dose resulting in death. Regular users easily become hooked physically and psychologically, craving the pleasure the drug brings, unable to discontinue its use without suffering symptoms of withdrawal, which includes chills, muscle cramps, severe shaking, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Withdrawal will cause your body to hurt all over.
Narcotics are most often taken by mouth, heroin however is inhaled, injected or smoked. Heroin can be laced with marijuana and smoked in a pipe or a joint, which is the only way that I have ever tried it, I’m not a shooter. My brother however has chased heroin all over the country even following the band Grateful Dead just to score heroin to shoot in his arm and float on it’s high.
Heroin can also be heated and burned on a needle or pin under a glass, releasing fumes that the users inhale, this is called ("chasing the dragon"). By injecting the drug, rather than smoking or inhaling it, the same high can be achieved but with less heroin. Users who choose this route generally inject directly into a major vein, which is called mainlining, although some may start by injecting under the skin called popping.
Speedballing is taking cocaine or heroin, with alcohol then using marijuana, or pills to enhance the high and lessen the effects of withdrawal. This is death right around the corner if you try this route and you will die. The negative consequences of heroin use range from distress to life threatening dangers and include dry itchy skin and skin infections. Constricted pupils and reduced night vision along with nausea and vomiting from early use of heroin or high doses which will also cause constipation and loss of appetite. Menstrual irregularity and reduced sex drive are common among heroin users. Scarring or needle tracks along veins with collapsed veins from repeated injections can be seen on a users arms or feet.
Other signs of use are irregular blood pressure with a slow and irregular heartbeat, fatigue, breathlessness, and labored noisy breathing is due to excessive fluid in the lungs which is called the rattles. Dependence and addiction are inevitable to any user of hard drugs. Hepatitis, AIDS, and other infections from unsanitary injections and sharing needles with drug buddies are most common among those who shoot up. A user will use vinegar or milk to sterilize his needle but even with these precautions, dirty infections can still occur.
A heart attack caused by blood clots resulting from insoluble additives (“the dirties”) while shooting up is a constant danger and is most always fatal. Respiratory paralysis, heart arrest, coma, and death can result from an overdose. Most habitual users are incapable of concentrating, learning, or having a clear and rational thought.
Narcotic addicts are unable to hold a job. They are indifferent to consequences, and unable to sustain personal meaningful relationships that are lasting. For most, the inability to earn enough money to meet their drug needs and cravings will lead to crime.
For the majority of users, behavior is self-destructive, antisocial, irresponsible, and indifferent to the injury, pain, or loss it causes others who must suffer the day to day agony of living with an addict.
Treatment includes detoxification, which is needed to manage the effects of withdrawal, but detox does not cure addiction. Focusing on treatment, helping others and a life with Jesus Christ will help recovering abusers become more self-aware of their abusive problem. It enables them to be more self-reliant to resolve their drug problem, becoming more responsible and able to manage stress without the "crutch" of drugs.
Rehabs are only good for detoxing drug abusers but offer no real solutions to the drug abusers problem with addiction.
The only true solution that offers results in a complete drug free life is that of Jesus Christ. All others are sinking ground.
My Own Personal Story With Drug Abuse.
I was twenty years old when I hit my first joint. I suppose I was a late bloomer as drug circles go but I sure made up for my adolescent late arrival into the drug scene with my over indulgence in to the highs and pleasures that it offered me. Most people who start using drugs do so between the ages of 10 and 16 years old, either from curiosity or peer pressures from friends. From the time I was born I was raised a Christian, strong in the Christian faith my parents reinforced in me moral and Christian values to know right from wrong and to choose what was good.
I had been taught the value and demand for self-denial in my faith but in the world of drug abuse, self-denial is a dirty word, the enemy of what being high is all about.
People who get high, do so for his or her own reasoning.
I do not mean "reason" as to say that it is a reasonable solution to life's ups, downs and thrills, it’s not.
The euphoric reality of what is and what can be in the search for what isn't in a druggy's mind can grip a hold on that person. It eventually makes them believe I have to have this just to get through the day.
In the beginning it’s all just fun and games with friends but as the hold of addiction begins to take hold and control, the fun is replaced by need. The game becomes a quest to stay sane or even alive. No one ever grabs the brass ring or comes close to reaching it in the drug circle that is the pain-killing merry-go-round of the mind. After a while you realize there are no fields of wild flowers to frolic.
The clouds are wonderful and beautiful at first glimpse when you’re flying high, but then the reality of crashing sets in and is far more devastating than what the trip was really worth. Everyone crashes eventually, some hard and others just as hard, some live, some die.
Those who live think they could die any minute and death chases them their whole life. Thinking about death even facing death is part of being high. To kill the pain some people claim, but then when the real pain of wanting and craving takes over, the desperation to kill the pain becomes less than the need to satisfy the craving. So, it goes around in circles like a dog chasing it's own tail and the only reality that's even a blind to the druggy is that the pain is the drug he inhales or sticks in his arm. After a while it's just an excuse to get high that it kills the pain, but then of course there are those who do not need an excuse to mask their reasons for getting high. Getting high is all that matters in life to them and nothing else will satisfy them.
Pain, there is no pain just a want to satisfy that self-desiring need to get high. To feel above everything else is what really matters the most and of course not to care. It's the lowest form of self-indulgence because eventually the time comes when even the thought of caring for someone else is foreign to the thinking of this strung out druggy. Eventually every druggy comes to this point of thinking, no matter what the drug of choice they are using. When the time comes for you and you find yourself at a point where you don’t care any more, watch out, pain, destruction and death are just right around the corner.
If you are a young person doing drugs, you may think that what I have described to you, as the essence of being addicted does not relate to you. You may still be at a point in your drug use where you still consider having some control over what you do, you’re still just having fun.
Give it time, if you stay on a druggy’s path you will get there eventually. The purpose of this book is to give you an insight in what to expect and look forward to if you do continue to use drugs.
I was twenty years old, a young Christian dedicated to my church and my belief. My devotion to my purpose and duty in my belief was my whole life and I found real joy and happiness in my protected Christian world. It was the seventies and Christianity was on the march to bring revival to a country that had just elected to abandon prayer and to abolish the Bible from public schools earlier in the sixties. Abortion was legalized and it seemed that Christians and their standard of morality were being pushed aside and put on the back burner of importance in a country that was modernizing and humanizing its philosophy and liberal way of thinking. Hollywood has always developed its own influence and magnitude of control over the way people think. Telling people what to wear, what to eat, what's good and what's bad, teaching tolerance even to the abominations such as homosexuality. Hippies were just beginning to realize their trendy height in the seventies and drug popularity was climbing at a steady rate.
Oliver B. Green from S. Carolina was the Christian radio personality we listen to in our Christian circles as well as Lester Roloph from Texas. Dedicated preachers and great men of God with their genuine love and duty to Christ, they were real in their faith. They preached hard gospel and straight from the word of God with no apologies to anyone for speaking the word of truth as God spoke to their hearts.
I had a strong admiration and respect for those men of God that stood for the purpose and cause of the cross, I wanted to be just like them. My parents were in the ministry operating a mission for the homeless and I was raised with a taught compassion for those who were less fortunate than I was.
The example of Christ to be a servant to others needs was my whole life. I attended church separate from my parents as a teenager because the church I attended had a youth group that was closer to my age. It was the church I had been raised in from the time I was born so it was home and the people were family. My father and I had attended a home coming at our old home church one Sunday and the people were extremely friendly. I made so many new friends and reacquainted old friends that were my own age I had to go back. I pleaded with my parents to let me go back to the church I loved. After all, I was 15 a young adult and a responsible young Christian. It didn't take much convincing my parents that I should attend separate church from them we had always kept close contact with our home church no matter where our family’s ministry had taken us.
They were pleased that my love for church was becoming stronger especially with making new Christian friends.
I became active in the youth group attending all the youth outings including Word of Life club on Thursday nights and youth visitation on Saturday. My whole life was church, as it seemed I spent more time at church then I did my own home. From first grade elementary to high school I had attended a Christian school and the love I had for Christ was genuine taught to me from a child not only at home and church but also at school. I wanted nothing more in my life except to do Gods will and serve Christ in the ministry that I knew he had called me to do. Somehow though, it was not meant to be. My path went another direction because of things that happened in the church with a new pastor coming in whom had more of self-interest at heart than a work for Christ to do. Not everyone who claims Christ is led by Christ and sometimes man’s own vision can distort what God is trying to say to his heart in which path he will lead him.
My youth pastor and his wife meant the whole world to me. They showed so much love and displayed Christ love as an example, I wanted to be just like them. When they were called to a new work in California I was heart broken.
I had so much love and respect for them they had tried to teach our youth group so much of the word of God and Christ love. We felt empty after they left. It was almost a year later and I was 19 when a new pastor came in.
The pastor of our church, who was another strong man of God and a man whom we all loved as pastor had been called to a new ministry in N. Carolina.
We were sad to watch him go because he had been more than a pastor to our church, he had been a real friend, even a brother. He was always there to help anyone who needed him. We searched for a long time to find a new pastor.
We did have a wonderful substitute pastor while we searched for a pastor and though our church begged him to stay and be our pastor he did not feel led by God to stay.
As time went by he began to put pressure on our pastor's committee that they should find a new pastor soon, as he would not be able to continue as a substitute pastor.
So, out of desperation and reluctance, we did call a new pastor but he was not the man for the job. Our church did not spend enough time in prayer concerning God’s will for this man to lead us because soon afterwards our church collapsed under his leadership.
I will not say his name because I have not seen him in over 20 years so my intentions are not to judge him for his lack of care, self righteousness and only purpose to establish his own vain glory. I only pray that God has changed his life and made him to find a new life with Christ doing as God wills in his ministry and not as it pleases him to make a name for himself. The ministries that he helped and instigated to destroy affected a lot of lives, hurt feelings and caused splits and diversions among people that had been a generation of close families. When a pastor's mind set is to proclaim his own self-glory and establish his own work and name rather than to lift the name of Christ and his praises, watch out. When you have established your own self-righteousness and given place to religious pride in your own life, you have fuel for a spiritual disaster that is ready to explode into demonic battles. It did for me.
The story of the conflict that took place in our church is not worth mentioning here but it did destroy my confidence and faith in church so I stop going. A year had gone by and the spirit of the church was low and because of jealousies and selfish goals it didn't take much to lose interest and abandon everything that had been taught to me and held sacred. Selfish pride had crept in and had contaminated the whole body of the church and before it was all over people who had loved one another for almost a life time were turning on one another. Self-righteousness is the most common enemy of any church and there is no church that is immune to its destructive nature.
I began hanging out with guys in my neighborhood, the kind that didn't know what a church looked like on the inside let alone hold it's principles. They were more into a life style that was pleasing to the nature of self-gratification and the flesh. It didn't take long for me to establish my own self worth as a vibrant self serving ego craving member of a new culture that had been forbidden to me as a Christian. Hanging in bars and eating from the forbidden fruit that had been told to me would cause me too surly die I completely indulged myself. Surly die I did to the person that I had been in my Christian faith that wanted to walk with Jesus and serve him as a faithful disciple and minister. I became a different person opposite of my Christian nature, self serving and indifferent to anything that was not pleasing to my flesh.
I was not a person that would do harm to another because I still held to my belief of the sanctity of life, I had not rejected Christ completely I was just running from him and his principles. Everything that was fun and held desire for pleasure caught my eye and kept my attention. I didn't let anything get past my love for pleasure and self-fulfillment.
I grew indifferent to everything that was my passion in my Christian faith, and I had a new passion now pleasing my own self-interest.
I remember well the first time I smoked a joint. I remember the feeling that I felt of betrayal to my Christian faith.
It didn't take long to suppress those feelings, the more I hit that joint the less I felt in my guilt of betrayal to my God and so I started a new path, one without Christ in my life.
I became a fixture in every club in town and soon my friends were those people who frequent the clubs I attended.
A life style, which was full of all the sins and pleasures that I knew, as a Christian was not pleasing in the sight of my Lord.
I hid my shame in the cover of darkness and my life style claimed the night as a friend. To do all the things that the heart fills your mind with, the things that makes a man an enemy of God. That's what I had become, an enemy of God and drugs became the cheering section that pushed me on to get further and further away from Christ. In the back of my mind, I knew his hand was always in control of the things in my life, the things that are his own. I was just out of control with my self serving needs to gratify my lust and desires and I had a grudge to grind because my life had been turned upside down.
It is hard for a teenager or young adult to fully understand results and consequences, the full magnitude of why it is important not to waste even a moment of time. The value of what you do now that results or holds consequences to who you are in the future and where your life leads or ends is the most important thing you can understand. Now that I am 39 and see how much time I have wasted and the consequences of my faults and reckless behavior, it's not hard for me to quote that old adage, “if I knew then what I know now”.
It's hard living a life opposite of Christ when you know you belong to him and believe me he doesn't let you forget it. The apostle John said God chastens whom he loves, those who are his own. I tell you that after living so many years out of his will, I feel like I am one of his most loved children because he almost beat me to death to bring me back.
The first time you take a drug whether it's weed, pills or alcohol, you don't feel the rush to be out of control. It seems as though you don't understand what all the fuss is about, its dangers and how it can take over your life. I didn't get high the first joint I ever smoked, no one does the first time and I thought to myself this is nothing, I can take it or leave it.
So, I decided to take it, not so much in huge quantities all at once but little by little it begin to creep more steadily into my life. When I finally realized that it had over taken me, it was too late, I was addicted.
We had a good time that night my friend and I. We partied in all the clubs in town and I remember after the night was over he had stolen my expensive camera, but it didn't matter because I had stolen it myself a couple of weeks earlier.
I begin to hang out with other people that were a little more involved with a more successful way of living. People who weren’t rouges on the street but people who had jobs and goals in life. People who liked to have a good time and party with friends without trouble although I didn't mind a little trouble every now and then. I had spent some time with my neighborhood friends in the early days of my Christian rebellion and the element of criminal behavior had rubbed off some. I was stealing gas, prowling in cars, little petty things that had little more of a thrill of excitement than the actual gain of property.
After a while it became boring and seemed like just a delinquent childish game and with my new friends I was beginning to grow up in my newfound happiness. One of the friends that I clubbed with who had also gone to Christian school with me helped me to get a steady job in sales with a big company that paid me great money. For a guy at 21 I was on top of the secular world living care free with no worries accept my own pleasures. I lived in my own apartment with my girlfriend a beautiful girl I met in a club where she worked as a waitress. Later I found out that the guys I thought were just jealous of my fortune didn't have so much envy for me as much as they had my girlfriend once or twice on the side. The price you pay for living with someone who has no Christian values. It's those Christian values that brings peace into a relationship that creates trust and love that last a life time, if you do it all in the name of Jesus.
I traveled for almost 2 years with this girl working with a photography studio all over the country living unmarried with a girl who had as about as much moral care as I did. Though we both came from strict Christian homes attending one of the finest Christian schools in the country, we had turned our backs on those things we knew were right.
We only wanted the good times that life offered with no respect for morality and we didn’t care what our lives were becoming. It ended as quick as it had began and I heard later she had gone back to Detroit, married and had a little boy but then divorced because her husband was a dope head. The sad times that had taken its toll on our own personal relationship jaded my thinking about what I wanted and expected from a woman and how life with a woman should be. I had gone through some difficult times that had not been in my plans of what I thought my future was supposed to be and I was still a young man yet getting worse in my immorality.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. I had done all the wrong things and had expected only good things to come from the seeds I had planted. I found out hard and even sometimes now I still have to learn the same lesson occasionally, “You reap what you sow”.
After spending time on the road meeting people all over the country and leaving my mark of adventure on every place I visited, I returned home to Chattanooga where I had grew up. I was determined to use what I had learned in my skills of communication with people to make my mark on the world and gain it's riches. I turned my focus on my abilities in sales and money became the object of my affection with everything it could buy me.
I began to smoke weed more heavily and before long, my craving for the sweet successes in life begin to slip away all I wanted to do was get high. All I desired was to lay around smoke my weed and profit from my greed and addictions.
I begin to live a life style that involved sharing circles with the worst kind of people. If I had known that first time a joint was offered to me what path it would eventually lead me down, I would have literally ran from it. Although, how are you supposed to know unless someone tells you?
Well, I am telling you now and I hope for your own life’s sake that you listen to my experiences and not just mine but all those drug addicts who know, drugs will destroy your life completely.
However, most people don't listen and most people have to find out for themselves the hard way what wrong choices will reap.
I hope if you are reading these pages that you will give close attention to what I tell you is the truth about what you will have to face if you decide to try it that first time.
It's that first time that gets you. Even if you think it's no big deal the first time, you will when you are trying to make it your last. I not going to tell you that drugs are the cause of immoral behavior because sin comes from within the heart of man, his own selfish desire to serve himself. Rather drugs will feed that hunger because drugs are a self-gratifying addiction, which only serves the person who feeds off the drug to satisfy his own selfish pleasures and desires.
Using drugs do not make you or inspire you to do good to others that are in need, that is for sure. I don’t know of anyone who was a drug addict, who got high and did charity work or maybe visit old folks in nursing homes. Most all the drug addicts I ever knew and I dare say that 100% of those who do drugs are more involved with the greed of their own lives than to be concerned with those who have need.
Drugs will feed off greed and greed will slowly creep into your life until it chokes you and you die. This is what drugs will do. The seed already lies within you to serve yourself and do wrong, drugs just brings it to the surface and makes it look appealing.
Not everyone will get hooked on his or her first try and some even are able to walk away even after trying to get high one time. However, only a few people actually are able to walk away after trying to get high one time. You have to ask yourself a question do you want to risk the consequences of what is going to be your nightmare if you are one of the ones who can't walk away? The majority of those who try dope the first time do it again and again until they're hooked.
If it's something that you would walk away from any way if you tried it just one time, why try it in the first place and risk losing your whole life, whether it's in misery or death?
In the early days my brother and I would travel to cities, all over the country looking for drugs trying to score what we thought was going to make our lives better. If we could just make that one big score we kept telling ourselves but that was all an illusion of misfortune with a tainted gratification that never gives you peace of what you know life is supposed to be. I sunk down into a drug addicts life depending more on more on weed as a stabilizer. As time went by my craving for weed became greater than my desire to work for my addiction. It didn’t take long before I was laying out of work and then eventually I stopped working all together.
I begin to make money with my wits and my time became my own to do as I pleased with no responsibilities. Television, drugs and the nightlife became my idols.
My life consisted of partying every night, sleeping all day and when I did crawl out of bed it was to fall in front of the TV and smoke my first joint of the day.
Most days I didn’t crawl out of bed until 1, 2 maybe 3 in the afternoon, which was usually followed by the same routine of lying around getting high and watching TV, a wasted life.
People would start coming over about the same time I would be getting up. The timing was always precise most everybody that fed off my addiction knew just about what time I would be firing up the first joint of the day. Most all the time I knew where to get a bag of weed and so friends would rely on my abilities to score to satisfy their own addiction. Most everybody who buys weed does so from a friend or an acquaintance so if you sell dope you have to worry about their discretion and ability to be secretive so as not to get you caught by the law. Fat chance.
Most everybody who buys dope is either stupid or high anyway, the chances of staying inconspicuous to the law, is not a possibility if you’re a dope dealer. They know who you are. I remember the first time my house was raided by the law, it was because a person I knew who would come and get dope from me, got in to a bit of trouble with the law.
So, in order that he could get out of the trouble he was in, he turned me in but that’s what you can expect when you deal dope. It is by far, the most paranoia a person can feel to be a dope dealer. Pacing the floor, watching out the windows every minute, taking every security measures you can think of because at any time the door can be broken down and in runs a swarm of cops. All of them dressed in black flight jackets, screaming and holding a gun to your head warning you not to move. If you think you can go to bed at night with those thoughts in your head, think again, you begin to realize how stupid it all is.
Although I lived with the possibilities of being raided from day to day that’s not what finally got my complete attention to do an about face and stop. I had experienced several times cops breaking down my door and coming in with their guns pointed at my family and me to do a drug search.
The incident that finally grabbed my attention, which got a hold of me and shook me up, was in New York. I had come face to face with another drug crazed dope addict like myself and the event that took place is something I will never forget. We were in New York for the 25th anniversary of Woodstock and there were hundreds of thousands of people every where. All of them there for one reason, to get high, party, have fun and listen to rock and roll. A dope addicts dream. It was no big deal to us because we had followed the band Grateful Dead for years all over the country scoring dope so it was just another show that we could make a profit from. We were holding our own drug for sell or trade and that was the only reason we were there. As we made our way bumper to bumper to get to the concert spot, we saw on the right hand side of the road in a huge field, a rainbow gathering charging only five dollars a night to camp.
We thought we would spend some time because it looked like a good place to make some money so we pulled over.
It seemed like a good place to be. The Rainbow Family in the sixties was the original hippies promoting hippie love and peace but today all that exist of the rainbow family is a bunch of “jonsing” hippies living in the woods. They will steal and take every thing you have even by force if they have to. There were four of us, my brother and I and a friend we had known most all of our lives and he was just as into drugs as we were. We also had a girl with us, a friend who spent most of her time hanging out at my house doing drugs. She was always good to have along on trips because she had a way of scoping out drugs anywhere we were no matter what part of the country. Earlier in the day she had heard there were some guys that might give us some trouble because we were dispensing a lot of the drug we were carrying and they were wanting in on what we were doing.
I always carried a gun and this time I had two with me so I made them ready for what ever might go down. When they eventually came over, they started talking a trade but when it became evident that they had nothing to trade they let their intentions be known that they were there to take what they wanted by force, our drugs.
We were dispensing nitrous oxide from tanks that was worth more than what we were going to let it go for which was nothing to them, so for a moment a stand off took place. They were determined to rob us of our drug but in our mind’s it wasn’t going to happen. This wasn’t the first time I had faced trouble with drug crazed idiots.
There was about 12 of them and only 4 of us but we were determined not to give in to their demands for our drugs. One guy did all the talking mostly in my face but I let him know quick my intentions were to keep what I was holding. I looked him in the eye and with a gun in my hand, I stuck it in his ribs to let him know I wasn’t kidding. He stared at me in the eye and with a voice out of hell and tripping on acid he said, “shoot me.” I cocked the trigger, but before I knew what happen next my brother pushed the gun aside and stepped between us knocking him backwards. I remember my brother saying, ”it stops right here”. I had almost taken this crazy guy’s life in a split second but by the grace of God, my brother stopped me. By that time, most all the other would be thieves had taken off at the sight of my gun.
The dope crazed idiot that had done all the talking was still mouthing but with less of threat because his friend’s had left him.
We packed up, left out, and made our way on down to the concert site where we had originally started. I had a full tank of nitrous in my trunk that was worth a lot of money where we were but I didn’t do anything with it. I just sat on the side of a hill over looking the crowed that had gathered on the original site of Woodstock 1969, just thinking about my wasted life. I sat there and thought about where my life had come to a point where I was almost willing to take another persons life over a drug. I did a lot of thinking that night and on the way home from New York and when I got home I was determined not to let drugs destroy my life but I had a long ways to go.
For a while I didn’t do anything except contemplate over my life and the mess it was in. A lot of time had passed since I had hit that first joint and I had come along ways to reach this point in my life.
When I had first started doing business with dope it was a gradual process that somehow over took me, it didn’t just happen over night. As my need for weed got stronger I was smoking more and more weed and even on the job and then after a while it just seemed to become my whole life. People would come to me to get weed because I always knew where to get it, so it all just fell into place and before long, it was my whole life.
After I had come home from traveling the road as a photographer I met another girl and together we began to live the druggy's life. I became more and more involved in doing drugs and the life that proceeded from the day to day traffic of people that came into my life because of drugs was one that begin to try my patience.
They were people just like me, self-serving and full of needs to gratify their flesh and their own desires. After a while I couldn’t stand to see them come although I knew I was making profit because they did come.
I was in a club one night and a girl walked by but before she could get away from me I introduced myself to her and the next thing I knew we were living together. We shared the same morals, which weren’t very high by most people’s standards, because we just liked to get high and party.
A building block for a healthy relationship it was not.
Like many people, it was all we had and so we made the best of it. Looking back now I don’t think we really did make the best of it, we were just both needing someone to feed on and have fun with. We were together for almost 6 years and though we never married, we did have a son together.
We were both self-serving to our own needs so we didn’t last in our relationship, more or less because of the life style we led. It was not a sound foundation to build a stable and lasting relationship on so it failed and it fell hard. We were both together just for the physical pleasures we shared with one another and when we did try to make something work between us, it was only for the sake of our son.
By that time, it was too late. She cheated on me and I cheated on her but we really didn’t share any real feelings of love for one another so in my mind it didn’t really seem like cheating. An easy way to suppress my guilt. It was a hard time that ended with hard feelings.
The situations that developed from the battle that ended our relationship, is the reason why I have not been able to see my son since he was 4 years old.
He is 10 now and I do keep a distant track on him although my rights to see him were taken away due to the life style I had chosen to live.
I am not concerned that he wants for anything, his grandparents who are her parents are wealthy people so he gets pretty much everything he wants, maybe a little too much. I just hope he gets all the love he needs.
I have heard through the grape vine that he acts just like me when I was a kid so that makes me feel some joy. It’s not what I expected my life would be but I do have a distant pride in my son. I’m sure one day I’ll know him again and be able to share with him my love.
If you ask me if drugs are ok, if all the claims that drugs will ruin your life are true, all I can say is, it cost me my son. More than that it has broken into pieces a good part of my life that I will never get back. Even now, it has a tremendous effect on my life and for those who I love.
I did spend some time in jail and while I was there, I made the decision to make my life count for more than just my own selfish needs. When I came out of jail I had a good woman waiting for me that I met in Kentucky while working with the drug awareness program in that area. We were married a few months later and we have a beautiful daughter that is the joy of my life. She is 4 now and I hope that I can inspire in her the same message I want to get across to you, that doing drugs will turn your life up side down. The result is a broken life and a broken heart.
You never fully recover from a life of using drugs, how could I ever get over the loss of my son.
After a while you learn to accept the reality of the hand that has been dealt to you from the mistakes you have made through wrong choices.
You have to pick up your bootstraps and try to go forward. Looking back is for only learning from the mistakes you have made, not to repeat them over again. It’s hard for a dope addict to grasp on to this idea and hold on to it because his addiction requires that he repeat his failures time after time. It is beyond his mortal control without help from someone who cares.
I want tell you all the aspects of my life with doing drugs because I don’t want to glorify that life style here or give you reason to think it was a great time in my life, it wasn’t. All it ever did for me was make me a slave to its control over the way I perceived things in my day to day choices.
Causing me to make the wrong decisions in my life that led me down a path of misery and mental pain.
It made me lazy to do the things that are necessary to have a full and caring life and because of its effects on my judgement, it cost me everything that was precious to me.
My relationship with people who were close to me suffered because of my addiction and people who use to be my friends quit coming around after a while. No one wants to hang out with someone whose life is in a total shamble. There was a time when I had it all and I never wanted for anything especially drugs but in the end, I didn’t have anything to my name that was worth anything. The day to day struggle just to support my own habit was more than I could keep up with.
People who were my friends were only friends for what they could feed off me and when hard times came, they were gone. That’s just the way it is with drug friends.
There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, Jesus.
Depression is the strongest pain you can feel mentally from doing drugs, it’s a feeling that comes over you to just sit down and do nothing, to give up. Pity is all you can feel for yourself when you reach the bottom and unless you can score that drug to keep you up you can’t be satisfied.
Although smoking weed would suppress the feeling of depression for a moment, when the high is over it comes back even stronger and you just pray to God that you don’t run out. There is no endless supply, which can keep you up every moment without exhausting everything that is in you mentally and physically. Scoring weed is not always a sure thing.
Years ago there was a dry season, which would hit about August lasting until October or November when most people who grew dope would harvest their crop.
I would travel hundreds of miles looking for weed in those dry times with desperation to find my happiness in a bag.
It would cause me tremendous anxiety for having to search for what I was craving. Someone would say it will be here later and we would sit I know many times for hours in one spot waiting for it to show up and sometimes we would score and other times we wouldn’t even come close.
The frustrations were enough to drive you crazy when you can’t find the drug that sustains your ability to function and think.
At first, smoking dope was all in fun and having a good time with friends but in the end it was all about just trying to score just to stay sane. When you’re high on dope you think the world is peaceful and serene but if you find yourself in need and can’t find it, your whole world comes crashing down. It will bring out the beast that lies deep within you that despises the world and people. When you’re a dope addict and you can’t find the drug that holds you together, you’ll do what ever it will take to get that satisfaction but until you can find it, it’s all you think about and live for.
People would come to my house looking for weed and other drugs and eventually I got tired of the same people day in and day out. Their only reason for coming by, to score their dope, with the same day to day drive to stay up on top of the world when all you are really doing is just hanging on.
It’s not only the type of people that you have to deal with when you live a druggy's life but the consequences of what you do is enough to keep you in a panic mode all the time.
People who are trapped in their addiction can’t function without their drug and so they don’t think or rationalize the way normal people do.
The first time I was raided by the police, I had just come from scoring a huge amount of weed. I had only been at the house 30 minutes earlier and stashed my dope and my cousin was with me, so I took him home after cutting out his share. When I pulled up in front of my house which was about 9 O'clock at night several cars pulled in behind me and in front of me blocking me in. Cops jumped out of the cars and came at me from all sides with their weapons
drawn and pointed at me. I got out of my van with my hands in the air and my keys in my hand, which a police officer took from me and proceeded to frisk me and cuff me. They were there with a search warrant to search my house for drugs and finally it was out, I was a known drug dealer. In full view of my neighbors and anyone who passed by, they begin to take charge of my house as a crime scene.
I watched them as they turned my house upside down looking for the weed they knew was there. It was there but they never found it, which I do not say to make you think that I am pleased with myself for doing such a good job of hiding my dope. If they had found it, my life would have been turned upside down even more than it was and the consequences would have been far more severe then what I experienced.
I just know that through all my experiences, Jesus was always there, watching out for me. They did however find a small amount of weed on me, which was enough to convict me of possession.
It wasn’t what they had come for and it didn’t really satisfy their desire to see me in jail on more serious charges with a greater amount to show for their efforts. So, I developed a certain reputation that kept an eye of scrutiny on me all the time, even if they were or were not watching me, it felt like they were and the paranoia grew.
Part of the happiness of life is to be able to go to bed at night with peace on your mind and no fear of having to give an answer for your actions at any given time.
Most people do not live lives where at any moment they can be drug out of their bed in the middle of the night and searched and all their belongings. It’s not your typical family life but it is when you deal dope. Certainly, I was in the wrong with my dealing of misguided pleasures.
The people that I helped lead down the same destructive path I was on was just as much a victim to the life style we had chosen as I was.
I don’t really think I can call myself a victim because my life was a product of my own wrong choices and my decisions.
I knew what was right and what was wrong and I chose to do wrong. No one had to point it out to me that the activity I was involved in was wrong, I knew it was. Drugs didn’t make me do all the things I knew was wrong but it was a part of all the wrong things I did. The evil I perceived to do was from my own heart. The drug was only the instigator that brought those suppressed feelings to the top.
The consequences were not real to me and without caring for what the result would be for my actions, I carried on because I relished in the pleasure and enjoyment that it fed my flesh.
I did stop my dealings for a while after the first time I was caught but after a while the fear of the moment left me.
I was back doing the same things I had done before, just in a different place. After I found out who it was that had turned me in, I was free again to start all over and I did even more so than the first time before I had been caught.
Being caught does not cure addiction. Going to jail and through the court process does not cure addiction.
Rehabs do not cure addiction. A person can serve time even in the lowest form of humanity, to even crawl in the dirt as result of their addiction, but even consequences as drastic as a ruined life will not cure addiction.
People who can’t understand addiction will ask, “if you see drugs are ruining your life, why can’t you just stop”.
An addict will tell you he wants to stop but the addiction is like a breath, it gasps and screams for more. If you can imagine yourself drowning in a pool of water, your body fighting for every breath, gasping for air that is what addiction is like. Your body gasps to have it. If you can’t get it, you feel you will die. Addiction is something we all live with, whether it is our own addiction or someone close to us. Everyone can have their own addiction, something that has a bit of control over their lives. For me television was the most addictive vice in my life that kept me more spell bound and from doing what I was suppose to do in my life for Christ. Of all the drugs I ever did, there were none that held such a power of control over my life as did TV. I have spent more time under the influence of TV then I have any drug.
I spent many years doing drugs and the consequences of those years still live with me today. I don’t dwell on those years to feel the depression of what effects they had on my life any more, but now only to find understanding for those still caught in it’s snare. Life in a druggy’s world is a life that no one can fully understand unless you have experienced the pain of addiction for yourself. I hope with that understanding I can be effective in my attempts to help others escape from it’s lure and destruction and give guidance to those who might get caught up in it’s demise.
It’s an easy world to be trapped in, the door is wide and always open but once you’re in, finding your way out again can be devastating.
ADDICTION
So, how do you cure addiction? If you ask that question to most secular people in society such as psychologist, social workers, treatment centers, anyone that generates a profit from people’s addiction, they will tell you that treatment and rehabs are the first step to recovery.
WRONG!
Rehabs are good for one thing and one thing only and that is detoxification. There is not a rehab that I have ever heard of that can cure drug addiction and believe me I know from my own brothers experiences with rehabs that it’s not the answer. Look at the actor, Robert Downey jr., who has been in and out of court and rehabs for years and still no change in his recovery to quitting his addiction. I know my own brother would check himself in to a rehab just to find new drug connections from other rehab patients. Rehabs are a great place to score drugs. I myself never thought it was necessary for my own use, my only hook was weed and rehabs are mostly for hard line users. Weed was always my drug of choice, the physical withdrawal is not as serious, but the mental withdrawal is just as worst as any drug can be.
Rehabs with their 12-step plan to recovery do not intend that you recover as an addict and the 12-step plan they offer does not work for long term abstinence. Oh, it’s a crutch that is offered to give addicts a glimmer of hope for recovery, but I tell you that there is no complete recovery unless Jesus Christ is the center focus of your recovery and healing.
You need more than just a recovery if you are an addict, you also need healing in your life and only Jesus can offer you that peace.
People, whose livelihood depends on patients, do not want to lose their patients so long as the insurance holds out.
However, if you don’t have insurance that will cover your rehab experience, well that’s too bad, you don’t get to participate in their so-called recovery program.
Their 12-step program doesn’t work anyway and most addicts can’t remember what the steps are let alone focus on what they mean but it does make for a good smoke screen. The Methadone program is another prime example of profit being made from peoples addiction.
Methadone has never helped anyone to get off drugs but rather gives them another drug to be hooked on, it’s just clinically controlled. Besides, those people who are on the methadone program use other drugs to, methadone doesn’t do anything to bring a user off his addiction.
The first step to quitting is the desire to want to and even then, it is a desperate and difficult process to recovery.
I don’t care much for the term recovery because the word infers a cure and there is no cure for addiction, only a day to day struggle not to give in to the desires for the drug you crave. Once you have become an addict, you will be an addict until the day you die. That doesn’t mean that you can’t stop taking drugs and win your life back. You must understand that as an addict recovery is always an on going battle that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
The whole point of recovery is to gain back control of your life in that your decisions in life are not influenced by your need for a drug. Recovering to a point where you can function day to day with out the crutch of despair.
After you have decided you want to quit, the next step is to detox. Detox can be a rough time. All your cravings are wrapped up in one little package and if you can make it through the psychological pain and physical withdrawal you might just have a chance to getting back some control over your life. Drug addicts can not recover alone, they need someone who cares and understands their problems and pain, someone who can give them support when they need it the most.
Secular rehabs try to offer such help programs and group therapy for support of addicts in their treatment but their focus is not complete. It does not give any spiritual guidance which is the key to full recovery. In our beings, we are made up of three parts, which are our mind, body and soul, and to cure addiction you must give full attention to the whole.
After you realized your own weakness and understand the effects drugs have on your life from making right decisions, you can start making an effort towards right decisions again. The first one is not to do drugs and to stay away from those who do.
The next step is to help others to recover, only of course in a controlled environment where you are part of a group.
The group can not only give you the support you need in your own addiction but can back you up in your help with others. Helping others is essential to recovering from drug addiction. If you can focus your mind on other people and the problems they have with drug addiction, it will help you to block that craving and strong desire that is always there in your mind. It also gives you a chance to be with people who are just like you, trying to get off drugs, who can relate to you and your problem and give you the encouragement you need. When you encourage someone else to push on and stay away from drugs, you also are giving yourself a big push.
Helping others to recover also gives you an outlet, which helps to relieve the stress of addiction. Talking to others about your addiction helps you to gain control over your fears of addiction. The more you talk about something as a negative to others your mind begins to believe it and accept it in a way that suppresses the craving. You’re able to get back some control and that’s important.
Helping others is a wonderful thing if you’re a recovering addict and it increases your odds of staying clean. There are deep emotional scars that as an addict you have to learn to deal with and helping others gives you focus.
Guilt, fear, feelings of despair and loneliness, with emotional stress can preoccupy your mind and talking about it lets it all out. To let go completely of what you feel inside about your own self worth as an addict is a hard thing to lose without feeling completely lost. You try to think about things that are positive in your life even if it’s just being alive, anything that can block the infiltration of that emotional despair that comes from craving a drug.
You start hurting inside and if you have been going through difficult times with your family, wife or someone close to you, the pain of that emotional experience can come crashing in. Don’t be alone when the depression comes, go talk to someone who understands and will help lift you up, someone you feel you can trust and will listen to what you have to say. Talk about it and keep talking about it and if you can’t find anyone who wants to listen, look up and talk to Jesus, he will always be standing by to hear what you have to say.
A drug addict needs healing to satisfy their craving. A drug addict needs to feel forgiven in order to restore his own self value. A drug addict needs to care, not for himself but for those around him and know they care in return. A drug addict needs to be loved most of all and feel it down inside where they hurt from the pain that comes from breaking free of addiction. The pain from physical withdraws is nothing in comparison to the mental exhaustion that feeds on the emotional strain of the mind.
Physical withdrawal pain only last for days or maybe even weeks but the mental withdrawal will last a lifetime.
All the emotions that a person feels inside becomes all out of whack when that person uses drugs and to regain an emotional balance is crucial to anyone who is trying to recover from drug abuse. A drug addict needs something positive, to focus his life on that will give him the joy he craves so much and help him stabilize his emotional distrust.
That focus for me was Jesus Christ because Jesus is the only one who can completely heal drug addiction. The focus I now have in my work and duty to Christ is all I need to get me through each day. That doesn’t mean that I am immune from repeating my addiction but Jesus gives me the courage and the strength I need to resist temptation each day and
live a clean fulfilling life.
More than anything you must replace your addiction with something more rewarding in your life, something worth while, if you truly want to be able to resist your add
iction. Jesus is the only answer.
It is only reasonable that Christ is the center of the universe and if drugs have caused you to lose your focus on Christ then, Christ is the only answer to regain your sight.
Only through Jesus Christ can a person be saved and find his life again. I found my life again through Jesus.
If you have ever been to the pits of hell from despair as the result of what effect drugs have had on your life, then you might understand what it means to find your life again.
Shame is the revealing factor that brings a man to repentance. Without shame, there is no guilt, and without a feeling of guilt from what is right, there is no repentance. When you live in the world of drug abuse, you have no shame. Your conscience will talk to you, but in the confusion that’s in your mind it is a faint voice that is beyond your comprehension.
I look back over my wasted life and I do feel shame for my slothfulness. The time I wasted in my foolish pleasure is time I will never have again. The souls that have been lost because I fell to the persuasive powers of influence, which caused me to rebel and forsake my Lord, for that reason I do know guilt. How many souls will know hell because I felled to be the man God wanted me to be?
The consequences and the price I had to pay for my foolish quest for self-consideration is more than I would have ever paid or even thought to consider to be worth the loss that I have suffered. I feel shame for my neglect to over see my own responsibilities. I know shame from not being the man strong and capable to resist temptation, which led me down the road to my destruction. There is the shame I feel for not being the father or husband that I know I should be.
All these things I have lost because of weakness to crave a drug and make it my life. When I kneel before Christ my Lord one day, what will I say is my reason to have forsaken his love and mercy? To know the truth and to have squandered it so foolishly, what will I say?
In my repentance I found mercy, it’s power still endures.
The fellowship within his love is the healing force that conquers the pain and guilt that constantly tries to overcome me. Inside of me is a roaring battle raging but in my love and duty for Jesus I surrender only to him. The battle for self-denial is one that screams the loudest in my ear but the whisper of peace from Jesus and his mercy is the only one I hear.
He feels my heart with singing and he makes me to know his peace. I hold his love and joy so dear his goodness will never cease. Only through Jesus, is there lasting peace.
SIGNS OF ADDICTION,
How To Tell If Someone Is Using Drugs.
The signs of drug abuse should be easy to detect if you will look for the tell-tell signs that are evident in someone using drugs. You may notice a difference and change in their behavior sometimes being up and carefree, happy and laughing and then the next moment down, sluggish and irritable. Mood changes will come and go, and with each change, the extreme intensity of the mood gets stronger and stronger, high or down. A user will not be able to control his mood swings, which may change from hour to hour. Parents, you may notice your young person beginning to avoid being around the rest of the family.
All of a sudden they may become very secretive and want to be alone all the time. They may start wearing different clothes, even gang or club garb from a club you know nothing about; this is a good sign. Piercings, tattoos and long hair are most commonly related to drug use and are another good sign. There are exceptions to the rule but most in general, it’s a good sign. When you start putting 2 and 2 together, 4 no doubt will always be your conclusion. If you suspect someone close to you of doing drugs, watch their behavior to see how aggressive or how passive they might become, it can go both ways. What you are looking for is the change.
The eyes are always a dead give away to know whether or not someone is high. If their eyes are glassy then you can believe they are high, stoned even. Some users will use Visine to get the red out so that their eyes can’t give them away but this is also a good sign to watch for if you notice them with a bottle of Visine all the time.
Dope smokers always have a smell of burnt rope in their clothing and in their hair, especially on their hands from holding a joint. They may get strange telephone calls at all hours of the night and sometimes they might not tell you where they are going. If it’s a teenager, they may have a change in friends who are people they don’t want you to know about or they may get telephone calls from people you do not know. If suddenly they receive a telephone call or they make a call and then rush out, you may have concern to be suspicious. Always know whom it is that is calling your house.
You should always know who all your teenager’s friends are. I know we want to be able to trust our young people, or those who are close to us, to always do the right thing and make good decisions, but sometimes it doesn’t always workout that way. Trust does not mean to turn a blind eye. With peer pressure from friends, it can be truly an obstacle sometimes for teenagers not to want to be a part of the group. It is a fantastic idea to also know the parents of your teenagers friends as well and even communicate with them from time to time. A lot of times there are parents who do drugs also, and if your young person is spending time at other peoples homes, you should know who those people are and how their lives will affect your teenager.
Always know where your young person is, they are your responsibility until they are out of your house and then even after they’re gone and on their own, be responsible enough to care.
The best way to know if your young person or someone close to you is using drug’s, is to know that person. Parents, talk to your young person even to the point of taking time to sit down with them just to talk, it will make a whole lot of a difference later. Communicate with one another.
People who can talk to one another can find ways to communicate with one another. People who yell at one another will only hit a brick wall, trying to communicate.
FAMILY LIFE AND DRUGS
Probably the worst part about doing drugs is the effect that it has on family life. When you allow drugs to come into your family circle, you are just inviting trouble.
Drugs, family life and the trouble it brings goes hand in hand and eventually you will have to decide between the two. If you choose to do drugs you can expect a dysfunctional family life; there are no exceptions. Anger is the most felt emotion as result of conflict that comes from a family member who is abusing drugs. Living in a hostile environment of emotional distress is more than most people can stand. No one wants to be around someone who is doing drugs just as someone who is doing drugs does not want to be around someone who isn’t. There within lies the conflict. Young people who are caught up in the drug abuse world will suddenly distance themselves from the rest of the family. They will become irritable and unresponsive to family ties. Trying to communicate becomes almost impossible and the frustration begins to wear on everyone’s mood and attitude towards one another. For parents who are going through the aggravation of a drug using teen, you have to remember to make yourself to be a part of their life, every part of their life. Spend time doing family projects, keeping your young person close to you. When the distance begins to grow between you and your young person, it’s hard to get it back. Discussions are far more valuable than yelling and accusing. If you have a problem that occurs between you and your young person, involving the use of drugs, sit down and talk to them, with a tone of love and care in your voice.
Parents, always let your young people know that they can come and talk to you when they need reassurance. Never be afraid to show your young person that you care and love them and most important, tell them you love them every single day. Those three words “I Love You” has more power than you know. Use it.
Pass on to your children your values, and reinforce your morals and standards in them every day. Sit down and talk to them from time to time about their morals and values this will help to bring them out and remind them what they stand for, what’s good. Reassure them of your love every chance you can. The more time you spend with your young person will insure that they will always give you their time. The most important time being when you are able to sit down and talk about anything that might be an open discussion concerning the ties that bind your families love. You can never give a young person too much love and you can never get too close to them. No one has ever died from an overdose of love.
Sometimes you will find yourself in need of a lot of patience.
Peer pressure holds a strong embrace to your young persons life. It’s important to them what their friends think of them concerning who they are. It’s also important that you know their friends. Friends are the number one reason why young people use drugs. No one starts using drugs unless someone introduces them to it. That someone is always a close friend. School plays a major part in the associations that are beyond most parents reach or control. It doesn’t matter what school you try to send your young person to in order to protect them, drugs will always find them.
The best chance you have with your young person is to constantly discuss with them the negative effects that drugs have. Reinforce in them the positive things that are in their lives.
Keep your young person active in public service and community projects. Most young people who are involved with community projects and service are usually best resolved not to use drugs. The more active your young person is in positive community service, the less likely they are to use drugs. Young people are prone to guidance and the day that you lose that edge on your young person is the day they begin to see the world in their own eye’s.
As a parent, you want your young person to develop their own independence, but an independence that is productive in a positive light. It is your responsibility to guide your young person into that light. The more you talk to your young person about their future, the more of a chance that they will have one.
Talk to them about their goals, what they want to do with their life. This is where you as a parent have the biggest influence on your young persons life. Use it.
Make their goals your goals too, it will bring you together.
What if you do find out that your young person is doing drugs, what do you do then? Confront them immediately but not in a hostile tone. Be firm with authority but with patience and understanding. If you keep your family close in love and communication, when you are faced with the reality of your young person doing drugs, it wont be so hard to reconfirm your influence. Love is a powerful influence but only if it is active. Let me say that again, “love is a powerful influence but only if it is active.”
If you have to rekindle the feelings of love before you can talk to your young person about their drug abuse, then you will have a long ways to go.
If you find your young person does have a drug problem, sit down with them, and discuss with them the solutions to resolving their drug problem. Then you can work as a family together to resolve it.
The conflict between family member’s who are caught up in the tug of war concerning drug abuse, comes from lack of communication and can put a strain on a family that will tear them a part. If you reaffirm to your young person to let them know that you will stand behind them when they need you, you will already have half the battle won if you find yourself facing the problems of drug abuse.
Standing behind your young person is a constructive way to repair the damage that can be done to a family who is dealing with drug abuse. Standing behind your young person gives them someone to lean on in times of trouble and it gives you a since of authority to help them resolve their abuse. Although you must make it clear, that you will only stand behind their right choices and not behind their drug abuse. Do not support drug abuse.
If your young person is using drugs, then you must be ready to enforce your authority as the parent to resolve their drug problem. If you need help and support to regain your young person and restore a healthy family life, contact us for the support you need. At the end of this book is a number and address that you can call or write to in order to get the help and support you will need. We’re here for you.
Families that are torn apart from a member using drugs lose trust and family closeness that will leave damaging emotional scars for a long time. I can not tell you the number of times that family disputes caused by my use of drug cost me so much peace of mind but most of all it cost me my family and those who loved me.
Hurt feelings and mental abuse is hard to recover from and will leave doubt and mistrust, which will destroy the way you feel towards someone. The things that I have said to my wife and the things I have done on the influence of weed, I can not imagine why she would want to love me.
We have engaged in heated battles because of my dependence on drugs and the effects that weed had on my ability to support my family. I could not function without it and when I was on it, I didn’t want to. You can easily come to despise someone who is close to you because of their drug abuse and the negative effects that it has on the relationship.
With life and its responsibilities, a relationship can not survive on the destructive nature of drug abuse.
This is the whole focus on the negative aspects of drug abuse - the families that drugs destroy and tear apart. If drugs didn’t destroy lives, there would be no conflict in its use.
It’s because drugs do destroy lives, break up homes and kill helpless victims, is the reason there is a battle that rages over people who are addicted to its power and control.
Fights would break out periodically between my brothers and me. Of course, we were high on dope because there were seldom times we weren’t high on some drug or another.
We would go at one another like storm troopers into battle. Feelings of rage and hatred would sweep over us, as we would go for each others throat usually over something stupid and most times over drugs itself. I remember times when my mother would have to step in between us to keep us in her words, “from killing one another.”
The feeling of hate and contempt for people who are your family, who love you unconditionally, is enough to make you feel like the low life you have sunk to, when you eventually come to your since of reasoning. Although, there is no since of reasoning for a dope addict. A person whose self-interest is above the consideration of others has no reasoning capabilities. You can’t reason with someone who can only think of his or her own self-interest. Reasoning is the first step to social peace. There is one thing you can say about a dope addict’s life, it is a life without peace.
There is the peace that druggys search for in their quest to reach the ultimate high but it is a temporary peace, which ends in violent notions. It is only induced by the drug they inhale, swallow or stick in their arm and when the high is over, the peace is gone.
Jesus is the only peace that can overcome the cravings for drug contentment. It is a real peace, which calls for self-denial in order to restore one’s hope for an inner peace in their life. Self-denial is the essence of true peace.
For example, take two people who are living together, one or both are on drugs. One or both are living for their own self-interest, as it is an attribute of every drug user to be self- aware and self-indulging. Therein lies the conflict and the reason why people split up, and can’t make a lasting relationship. Although, take two people whose lives are evident of self-denial in their consideration and giving to others and one another, it is the foundation to building a successful relationship because each one is always giving. Love is sacrifice and there is no love without sacrifice.
Jesus love for us in his sacrifice on the cross is the supreme example of why we are to love one another with giving hearts. If two people are always giving then two people are always receiving and therefore bathed in the glory of love. Although, if two people are always taking and neither is giving, therein is the death of their relationship.
Druggys are takers, all of them and that is the reason a druggy can never have a successful family life. If you are using drugs you must choose which is more important to you, your family or your drug. For a time, you may choose the drug over your family but eventually you will come to a point where the drug just can not replace the love of family. Though a dope addict has a strong need for the drug he craves, the need to be loved is greater.
A DRUGGY’S LIFE
Drugs are fun in the beginning; if they weren’t, no one would do them. Drugs are also dangerous and destroy lives; if they didn’t there wouldn’t be a conflict over their use.
If you are someone who will just have to find out for your self by living the disgust of a druggy’s life what drugs are all about, then you should pay close attention to what I have to say.
A druggy’s life is a cliche, no matter who you are the experiences will always be the same. From jail to dysfunctional family life, your experiment with drugs will be no different from anyone else. What you have to look forward to is a lot of trouble that comes in all kinds of packages. Here is just some of what you can expect. If you are doing drugs with friends, which, no one does drugs alone until later when you are completely addicted, there are several things you can expect from your friends.
Lying, cheating, stealing, backbiting, betrayal, and most of all they will use you for everything they can get out of you. Now you may say, “not my friends, we just like to get high and have good times” but that is where it all starts. No one starts on drugs in the beginning because it wasn’t fun.
No one says, “I’m not having a good time on this, so I think I will continue it”.
The lure of the lights of having a good time is what sucks you in. Once you get inside and have been in for a while you will begin to see what I am talking about with those around you using drugs. After awhile it gets somewhat, old and you get tired of getting high with the same people. They begin to get on your nerves; they don’t get the same high you do any more and you move on to find new experiences and new friends. People who do drugs are only interested in satisfying their own needs and cravings, which doesn’t make for the right attribute of a friend. Guys who do drugs want sex as well as to get high. Sex and drugs are companions of one another especially with the guys and the drugs are most often for the conquest of sexual activity. This is why young girls get in trouble. It is also what seeds infidelity and promiscuous behavior. People, who do drugs, will have more than one sex partner; they will have many sex partners within their lifetime. If a girl becomes involved with a guy that is using drugs, she will start using also. Soon after that, most girls will find themselves pregnant. Most girls who start using drugs do so from the influence of a boy friend, which I don’t mean to say girls don’t get high together, of course they do. Although most influence of drugs come from guys. People who do drugs will get married more than once and most will have children by different people. This is most often where child abuse and molestation come into little children’s lives, being abused by a boyfriend or maybe someone mommy is seeing. Broken homes are a direct result from people who use drugs. You have to ask yourself, is this really the life you want?
Drugs in the beginning are something you do with friends to excite the good times and make it more fun. Laughing and exploring new idea’s, makes you wonder why drugs are considered so bad but then later you find out why.
When you are on drugs, your will is not your own. You can be talked into anything, but why not. You are in such a hypnotic state when you are on drugs, even if you resist in the beginning you will submit eventually. It’s easy for someone to be talked into grabbing a case of beer if you are already high, partying and having a good time. Even if you’re not high on dope, the rush that is assimilated with criminal behavior as compared to being high on drugs is close to being the same.
This is one reason why parents are called in the middle of the night to let them know their child has just been picked up for robbery or some other criminal behavior. Drugs and criminal behavior are as closely related to each other as anything can be and if that’s what your friends are doing you will do it to. The first time I was picked up for stealing gas, I remember the shame I felt when my dad had to come down and get me out of jail. Over the years it almost became a ritual, as I would be picked up on some kind of charge. I never committed a felony, most of my criminal behavior consisted of less serious charges from driving on revoke drivers license to possession of marijuana.
Though every crime is serious no matter how small it might be, the small crimes will lead to charges that are more serious.
When I was in New York and had almost taken the life of the dope addict that tried to rob me. Later I had to stop and think about what had led me up to that point. I realized that it went all the way back to when my actions changed that my actions were the cause of my wrong behavior.
It’s the little things like cursing and foolish talking and acting like an idiot that spawns further outrageous behavior.
Acting like an idiot and doing things just to be outrageous can get you into a lot of trouble and sometimes things can get out of hand. The Apostle Paul said in I Timothy, vain babbling leads to more ungodliness, in other words, what you say is reflected in what you do. Actions speak louder than words.
It is said that we judge our selves by our intentions but that others around us judge us by our actions.
You can believe that people will look at your actions and judge you far worse than what you would judge yourself on the inside. You can believe, your actions say who you are.
In my own thoughts and even when I would be engaged in something I knew was wrong, I still thought of myself as a good person. I thought, just because I refuse to cross what I considered was the unthinkable line, such as murder, I was still an ok guy, even with my little petty sins. They didn’t mean anything I thought; but when I was faced with the moment of crossing that line and taking someone’s life, I later realized they meant everything. I realized that it was my wrong behavior that had brought me to this critical moment in my life, a place where the wrong decisions would determine the rest of my life. It had brought me to a place where I was faced with a choice of crossing that line and what would have ended two lives, his in the ground and mine in prison. Petty or not, your actions will either grow upward or downward, wrong or right. What you do either big or small has a direct effect on who you are and how you will react in a situation. Your actions says it all, about, who you are and who you will be and how you feel towards others.
If your actions are good, they will increase to greater glories. If your actions are evil, they will sow the seeds of destruction that will eventually spring up and choke you.
By the grace of God, I was pushed away from making that decision when my brother stepped in and stopped it before it got out of hand. I reflected later about what the Apostle Paul said about temptation, that God would not let you be tempted past what you could bare, that he would make a way out for you. He did for me that day and I trust him and love him for my life he saved.
When God saves your life, you have to think it is because he feels you are worth saving. You realize that God has a work for you to do that will bring glory to him and a life of joy, peace and salvation to you. Believe me, and I do know what I’m talking about, it’s better than drugs to live a life with Jesus as Lord.
People who do drugs are people who will steal. I don’t mean everyone who does drugs will go out and rob a bank but they will be dishonest people. Because of the deceptive nature of drug abuse, it is a behavior, which leads to more dishonesty in other areas of a drug users life. Deception is part of the life of a drug user and they accept that to be justified in what they do. When other things in life come up that might be questionable behavior, a drugs user will find a way to justify the behavior even if it means to be deceptive. I know there are some that will have a problem with that statement when they read it, if they do dope but consider themselves honest. I know people who do dope and I could leave my wallet in front of them, and know they wouldn’t steal from me.
My brothers are that way. Although being on the influence of dope and in the right situation, people who otherwise would be an honest person will yield to that moment of temptation. It can’t be helped, although the choice is always yours to make, being under the influence of a mind altering drug does just that, it alters your mind. You can believe that when you are high on a drug, your perception of reality is extremely warped and your better judgement is distorted.
You may not think so, but other people around you know.
When you get a group of people together who are doing drugs, you can believe there is at least two thieves in the group. One that will go as far as it takes to prove he will do anything to get attention, and others who are just looking for promiscuous sexual pleasure. A drug group is not a moral group and most of the people who are in the drug circle will do just about anything if it seems like a good time.
The downward morals that you see on TV and especially on channels like MTV and the E channel that are explicit in their viewing, are example of drug related behavior.
It’s amazing how we glorify people who are known drug users such as the Hollywood crowd but we condemn people who don’t share that spot light of fame but fall victim to the disastrous life of drug addiction.
A druggys life is one that is never certain. You are never sure where your relationship with another person is going to go, let alone your own life. Most relationships in drug circles can last from a couple of days to a couple of years.
Most people who do drugs go from one relationship to another and are never satisfied. People who do drugs suffer the highest divorce rate among married people.
Most druggys don’t get married they only live together.
Those, who do marry, will split up just as quick as those who don’t. Drugs are a major factor in most families who split apart.
If you do drugs, you can expect to be poor. You may aspire to great wealth at some time in your life but drugs and wealth do not go together and it is just a matter of time before you lose it all. I lost everything I built, and I don’t know anyone in all the years I did drugs that didn’t lose everything they had from using drugs. From their families to a job, to everything they own, they lost it all because drugs became the most important part of their life. It will happen to you as well, if you decide to use drugs, no one escapes the reality of what drugs are. You may think you can handle your drug use to keep it in perspective as just a recreational time but you won’t. The time will come and with no control of your own, you will make drugs the most important thing in your life.
You will put drugs above everything else, including your family, everything you own, your job and friends, and that’s when you fall. To be addicted is beyond your control.
You will want so much to have your life with your family back to the way it use to be, but the drug addiction will say, “NO” and you will bow to it and surrender. You can’t help yourself; you’re an addict and you’re addicted, you have no control.
People who do drugs live a life of paranoia. You live in a life that is secretive, and you never know who might turn you in. This is enough to drive you crazy sometimes and it does have an effect on the way you think and look at people.
People who do drugs are more likely to suffer illness and develop diseases because of a weaken immune system.
Heart trouble, liver and kidney damage, aches and pains in places all over your body that will seem to hurt for no reason at all. I try to brush it off sometimes as just getting old but I know that my health problems I suffer, is a direct connection to the drugs I have used. Drug abuse will destroy your body and your health. For that reason alone, you should consider not to start a life of drugs. Don’t be a deliberate fool.
People who do drugs, do not care about things that should be important to them, their only care is for the high and the short time of fun it gives them. While you still have the ability to care about yourself and for what’s important in your life, make that decision right now that your life is going to count for something and you’re not going to use drugs.
People who do drugs, their lives do not count for anything that is good but their lives are filled with turmoil and desperation.
People who do drugs feed off other people and become parasites to others around them, anything they can get from them, especially drugs. These things that I am telling you, about people who do drugs is the reality of drugs that I have lived. I have watched person after person, follow down the same path of destructive behavior and the results are always the same.
We use to sit around and get high and laugh at people we knew, who had fallen on their face over some problem in their life and most always, it was as the result of drugs.
To us it was funny to watch someone else in misery, as long as it wasn’t one of us. Drugs will make you insensitive to others, it will cause you to be indifferent to other peoples needs.
Now that I have come back to Christ and I have Jesus in my life, I have a heavy heart for people I see who have fallen to the destructive life of drugs. It is part of my salvation to care and most of all it is part of my own healing process to want to help them. When you begin to regain sensitivity toward other people after doing a life of drugs, this is a good sign that you are on the right path to recovery.
GETTING OFF DRUGS
Getting off drugs is not going to be easy but you can do it with a strong desire to regain control over your life and by allowing others to give you the support and encouragement, you will need to recover. The first step is to realize your need to change and be drug free. If your life has reached the point, where everything in your life is falling apart, this will not be a hard thing to recognize.
The trouble is, knowing how to stop something you have no control over, which is your addiction. When you come to this point of addiction where you have no control over your life, you will need the help of someone who cares and understands, to help you get back some control over your life. They can’t do it for you but it is a team effort between you and your mentor that can be successful if done together.
After you realize your need for intervention, there will be a need for changes in your life, which will have to take place to start you on the road to recovery. First thing is to get rid of all the leftover drugs. It’s important to flush that drug down the drain. It’s a starting point and symbol to make an impression that’s important to your mind.
The next step is to ask for help, this will give you a boost up to start that long journey back to reality. The next thing is to put a distance between you and all your drug friends. This is the most important thing you can do. You will not stop using drugs so long as you are still hanging out with people who still do drugs. They do not intend to stop and they don’t want you to stop either. One thing you can count on that if you are hanging out with people who are doing drugs, they are not your true friends anyway.
If they were your friends, they would care if your life were being ruined from the day to day use of drugs. However, how can they care for your ruined life when they show no care for their own. A friend is some one who will help you get out of a ditch not someone who tries to push or pull you into a ditch.
The next step is to replace your drug time with something more positive in life. It can be anything that gives a positive outlook on life but it must be something that will occupy that dead time, which use to be your drug time. This is an important time and you must stay active in everything that gives you a positive push. Staying active is an important tool to staying away from drugs. Sitting around will only make you crave that drug you are trying to lose. You can’t give yourself any time to sit and ponder. That is the worst thing you can do trying to get off drugs.
The time you use to spend doing drugs will now become dead time and it’s important that you fill that dead time with activity. Try not to be alone as much as you can. Keep those people around you that want to see you conquer your addiction who are a good and positive influence. Focus on things that give you happiness such as good drug free friends and a caring family. Church is the best place for you to be. In church you can surround yourself with people who have a positive look on life. It will rub off.
Meetings and support groups can help fill some of that dead time. Begin to realize the need for self-denial. This is very important because your life up until now has been one of self-serving and self-indulgent. To keep this focus of self-denial, it is important that you begin to realize other people’s needs. Become a servant to those around you, to give of your time and your devotion to helping others.
This is one thing in your life, which will give you more strength than anything else you can do to rid yourself of the drug habit you want to lose.
If you are not employed, get a job, and if you are employed you might want to think about taking on a second part time job or try to work more over time. Not only will this help you to fill your dead time; but it will also increase your wallet and with the money you are now saving from not buying drugs, you can soon see a change in your finances.
That will sure give you a positive out look. If you have children, get closer to them. When you are not working or attending a support meeting, spend some time doing activities with your kids. Don’t just sit around the house; go do something. Remember sitting around is dangerous for a recovering drugs abuser.
Begin to exercise. Running is perfect for getting some alone time to contemplate the good things that are starting to happen in your life. It also helps to build resistance to any cravings you might have to start using drugs again. At night you should go to bed early, get in the habit of going to bed at 9 PM. Running at night will help you to fall asleep. In the beginning of your withdrawal time, you may have difficulties in falling asleep at night. Do not take sleeping pills to overcome your sleeplessness. Find a good herbal tea that has relaxing and sedative properties or read a good book at night before you go to bed. The Bible is always a good place to find peace.
During the time of withdrawal, it is a good idea to cut down on eating meat or if you can, stop eating meat all together. Vegetables and fruits should become the main source of your diet but do not let food become your substitute drug.
Stay away from sugar and especially chocolate. Some good herbs that will help you to detox and make the withdrawal time a little easier are Golden Seal and Gotu Cola.
In addition, garlic is a good seasoning that has benefits for withdrawal. Do not use salt but if you must, use very little. Pepper is ok.
It is important that you do not gain weight during this withdrawal time. The idea is to make your body feel good and healthy in order to keep a strong and healthy immune system, which can help you ward off the cravings of addiction. Good health is essential to recovering from drug abuse. You want to be able to feel good about yourself inside and out. Every day when you look in the mirror and you see a difference being made in your look outward, it will affect the inner look too. Be good to yourself and keep up with your progress. Keeping track of how well you are doing in your progression is important to building a new self-esteem.
It helps to give you goals to shoot for and new good habits to replace old bad ones. Goals are important but if you are a person who has trouble achieving goals, then don’t set goals. Not reaching them could cause panic of failure and you might slip back into that old life style again. Maybe later down the road towards recovery, after some real progress has been made, you can start making your goals count, but for right now, it’s better to face one day at a time. Just make yourself get through each day with hope for tomorrow.
If you are just now starting to do drugs and you think you don’t have a problem yet, you may think that everything I have just said is a bit extreme. Although, drug addiction is an extreme situation when you find yourself addicted and you’re out of control. If you ever become an addict, you will realize the extreme measures it takes to rid yourself of addiction, whatever it might take to regain your life and control. I did take my drug addiction to the extremities and it took extreme circumstances to bring me back. If I can make it, so can you. The thing is, you have to want to quit.
For those of you who may just be getting started using drugs or you have been thinking about it, you may think I have painted a bleak picture of what drug use is all about.
That’s right, I have, because what you just read is not even a grain of sand compared to the agony you can expect from using drugs. Remember; it’s that first time that always gets you because then you have to have another and another and before you know it, you find yourself hooked. If you think you will have to find out for yourself what drugs are like, write to me when you are desperate to quit, I’ll be here.
If you can’t find me, seek out someone who shows a sincere concern and if there is no one, get on your knees and look up, Jesus is more than you will ever need.
Jesus said; Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light; Matthew 11:28-30. Replace your addiction with God’s word, it has all the answers to your questions and will give you the strength you need to conquer your addiction. Follow the advice of Psalms 1, it’ll save your life.
The purpose of this book is to give you an understanding of the importance to do the things in life that are productive in living a life of blessings.
To live a life that is full of adversity and despair is not a life worth living, a life that is full of pain and heartache. It is your own choice, which life and direction you will choose to live. If you choose a life of drug’s, you can only expect to live a drug addicts life, full of the misery that it is. The only life, which will give you the success, satisfaction and peace that is important for a happy and productive life, is that of Jesus Christ. Compare for yourself the two lives and those who walk both paths, a druggy’s life or that of a Christian.
You can decide for yourself who is happiest.
I tell you from my own experiences, there is no comparison, only Jesus can truly satisfy and give you happiness. If you want something positive in your life to focus on, to help rid you of the destructive nature and hold drugs have on you, please try Jesus. The truth is, only Jesus can understand your pain fully and give you the peace you need to quench that hunger from self-pity. If you’re an old drug addict whose life has been destroyed from using drugs, than you know what I mean. If you’re a new user or maybe you have been considering using drugs for the first time, you will find out soon enough what I’m talking about. Stop now before it is too late. Writing this book has helped give me strength in changing my own life from drug abuse, I hope it will help make a difference in yours. Write to me if you need a friend.
Michael, P.O. Box 71702 Chattanooga, TN 37404
Whatever your situation or problem is I want to help you if I can, and if I can’t, I can point you to someone who can.
He helped me and he can help you. His name is Jesus but I call him friend.
