AMAZING STORY
A Drug Addict's Redemption
By David DiCicco
The 700 Club
CBN.com
–“The desperation of wanting the drugs to be out of my life, and to straighten my life up – I remember sticking a gun so hard in my temple and crying. I wanted to end it.”
Drugs controlled Eddie’s life for more than two decades, a habit that started when he was only fifteen. “I was supposed to be at a skating rink, that’s where my mom dropped me off at. As soon as she got out of sight, me and another friend got in a car with another guy and that’s the night I got introduced to marijuana.”
“I thought I was supposed to do it because everybody else was doing it. It grew from there for I say three, four, five years, and I got introduced to cocaine. It got me the first time I tried it.”
He began dealing to pay for his growing addiction. Soon Eddie had a new obsession. “I was selling little stuff; twenty-five dollar, fifty-dollar stuff, a hundred dollar stuff. The more I sold the more money I could make – so the lust for money consumed me. And I went up to the next stage of selling ounces, and that led into pounds.”
Money and drugs became the center of his life. His girlfriend, Marsha, saw how it affected Eddie. “We had already been doing drugs. I had started doing cocaine – probably a year before I met Eddie. I kind of knew what was going on, but I wasn’t gonna dare say. I just let him do his thing as long as I could be with him.”
Eddie and Marsha married ten years later. They tried to break their habits, but the addictions only got worse. Marsha says the addictions grew. “As the years went on, our drug habit became much more intense.”
“Six or eight hundred dollars a day on cocaine – couple hundred dollars a day in meth amphetamines.” Eddie explains, “And to keep the habit up, I had to sell, which kept me on the road a good bit of my days. I didn’t see much of my wife a lot. That’s when the other women started coming into my life.”
Marsha knew there were consequences to asking about Eddie’s involvements. “I knew what he was doing. If I brought it up - we fought, physically fought.”
Eddie continues, “And it escalated from there.”
Marsha tried to ease the pain. “I ran to other men to mend the hurt, the broken heart, the brokenness of my heart.”
“My life was a void, was nothing. There was no hope in my life. My marriage was falling apart.” This was only the beginning. The drug running finally caught up to him. For the first time in his life Eddie was arrested. “That was traumatizing really to me. I went and done eight months on that, and I got out and said, ‘I’m done. I’m done with it.’ But I wasn’t.”
“You sell drugs, you do drugs that many years, it’s like going to your job. It’s something you’re used to doing and in a way it’s the only thing you know. I ended up being arrested 12 times – stayed on probation for 10 or 12 years.”
Marsha sought help at a Christian rehab clinic. She hoped it would encourage Eddie to clean up as well. “He was coming to see me at church, and we only had fifteen minutes before church, and fifteen minutes after church to spend time together.”
“She would tell me about the Lord, and I would listen. It would touch my heart, but that meth, and that money, and the lust for women still had me. And I knew it still had me. And I still liked it.”
Marsha refused to be discouraged. Instead she prayed for Eddie. “The Word says to call those things that do not exist as though they do. And I began to call him a mighty man of God, and no matter what was going on in his life I was still saying, ‘He’s a mighty man of God.’”
Eddie continued to use and deal. He was arrested again and was sentenced to fifteen years. “Being in prison for eighteen months, the drugs were out of my system. You know I could think straight. Things were coming together. I was reading my Bible every day, I was going to the services they had in prison, and I’d pray every night. This one night – it was flowing out of me so much that I was up all night. I felt the presence of the Lord. I cried. And I knew that night is when, I feel – honestly feel, the Lord said, ‘You are in My hands now. I’m giving you My Spirit. You are a changed man.’”
Eddie was determined to start fresh. Shortly after, he was released from prison. “They put me on house arrest for eighteen months. I knew it had to be God’s way of saying, ‘Hey, this is your time to get right with Me.’ I fed my spirit. I prayed. I learned to hear God’s voice.”
For the first time since he was fifteen Eddie was free of the addictions. “I had no desire from the day I left that jail to sell drugs again. After twenty-six years of drug addiction – didn’t have it anymore. I didn’t have a desire to go see other women. The Lord, it’s like He reached in and took out that rock that was inside of me and put a new heart in me.”
Marsha saw their lives change. “It was like God put a new love for each other in our hearts. All that other stuff in the past – that’s what it is, it’s the past.”
“This is the person I want to be.” says Eddie, “So if anybody’s out there struggling, just about to give up, then just give the Lord a chance. If you don’t have any hope, He’ll give you hope. If you don’t have any peace in your life, He’ll give you peace.”
“It worked for me. It worked for my wife. It can work for you.”
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