I was born addicted to nicotine. My mother smoked two packs of Pall Mall non filtered cigarettes every day that she was pregnant with me. I was told that I cried for two weeks after I was brought home from the hospital where I was born.

I grew up smoking and chewing. When I joined the Marines at 18 I found drugs, mainly pot. I never could drink for some reason, drinking just made me sick, so I loved this substance that got me accepted in a peer group at long last. At the same time pot helped me get over homesickness and helped me to function in a place so foreign and dangerous.

When I got home I started to use other drugs like cocaine. Though pot was truly my drug of choice I found that I could not resist cocaine. Words cannot describe the despair that cocaine made me feel. I don't understand why couldn't realize that cocaine was only fun up to a point and once one crosses that point there is no turning back without God's help.

Cocaine gave me most of the symptoms that APA's DSM-IV-TR ascribes to paranoia schizophrenia. Eight hours after coming down the paranoia goes away but then the depression sets in! Why do people keep using cocaine after that? And it starts with the very first snort, puff or any other route of administration that occurs after the point noted in the preceeding paragraph is ever crossed. Once you cross over into cocaine induced insanity you will cross again every time you use. You can check out but you can never leave.

Cocaine made me so intent on continuing use that once I started using I would climb over police cars to get more. Once I tried to get cocaine from a dealer that was being raided by police. Police cars were everywhere but I didn't care! I had to have more!

This landed me in jail where I found God and the beginning of my road to recovery.

I got lung cancer from my tobacco addiction but God healed me of that as well. Stage 4 lung cancer-it had already spread! Today I am cancer free! An 18 year survivor.

The point of this much abbreviated but true story is this: God is real, God loves us His children, God wants us to be happy. However we must endure the consequences of our bad decisions. God offers forgiveness and the pardon from punishment that Jesus' blood sacrifice affords but we are free moral agents! We are free to do things that will lead to our own destruction. The worldly consequences of our actions are not reversible. The lost property, security and health cannot be retrieved but God will help us rebuild our lives if we turn them over to Him. In other words Amazing Grace. God's gift is absolutely free! One merely needs to open his/her heart to Him. Really open your heart! God knows which hearts are really open and which ones are not. You can fool yourself, you can fool me, you can fool other people but you CANNOT FOOL GOD! Please join us! Help us help others find God and the recovery from addiction God wants to give us.

God bless you and may you find God today!