AMAZING STORY
Drugs, Suicide, and Rock 'n' Roll
By Shannon Woodland
The 700 Club
CBN.com-“There’s 15,000 people out there, and then they turn the lights off, and you hear the roar, and you walk out on that stage. That right there was just the be-all and the end-all, it was everything,” recalls David.
With a hit single and lucrative record deal, David Frazier and his band “Outspoken,” were on the verge of rock stardom, but crack cocaine would cost David everything, and bring him to the point of suicide.
A pastor’s kid, David had a relatively uneventful childhood. Then at 6 years old, he was sexually molested by an older boy. “Everything just shifted inside and it was a type of guilt that you can’t even put into words.”
At the same time, it awakened feelings he couldn’t understand. “It was like coming to the edge of an ocean, and it was all yours; pleasure, opportunities, outlets.”
Later he discovered pornography. As an addiction slowly took hold, he became bitter towards his family and God. “I didn't know ‘where is this? Why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel so angry? Why do I feel so afraid and why does it feel like I'm just being crushed under the weight of guilt?’”
In high school he used pot to mask his sense of shame. He also threw himself into activities – especially music, to make sure no one knew his secret or his pain. David says, “’If I’m going to do it, I’m going to be the best at it.’ And that way people will think I’ve got it all together on the outside and they won’t see the real.”
After high school, and a short stint in the Marines, David helped form the band, “Outspoken.” Before long the group was playing in front of thousands of admiring fans and David thrived on it. “That was the new drug. I was being worshipped. I knew that when they saw me they would be chasing me through the hallways. And I loved that.”
Being a rock star fueled David’s need for sex and drugs. But out of the spotlight, he felt the sting of being alone. “When I would come off the road; nobody there, no praise, I would fall into this deep despair. And so I'd sit there in the in the middle of my apartment just in pure depression and ‘hey, I've got a good idea, let's go get some drugs. That'll make me feel good.’”
Eventually, David tried crack cocaine. It gave him a high he had never experienced. And soon, getting his fix was the only thing that mattered. “All I was living for was just that chunk of money to put in that dealer’s hand to stay in this state.”
He started missing rehearsals and recording sessions. Eventually he was kicked out of the band. For the next five years he was in and out of crack houses. “It was absolute just hell on earth, and I wanted to stay there because to come back to reality was just too painful.”
Several times he tried to get clean and even tried going to church, but he couldn’t escape his addictions or the man he had become. “(I was) just an empty shell of a person; no hope, no purpose, no meaning, ‘what am I here for? What am I doing?’”
One day while trying to score some drugs, David was mugged. “(They) left me there on the street. They slashed my tires. So I'm stuck with no money, and I was so out of my mind I couldn't even function.”
David lost all hope. Scraping up some loose change, he bought a bottle of beer. After he drank it, he broke the bottle, intending to use the jagged edges to end his life. “While my hand was an inch over my wrist, I heard the Lord speak to me. He said, ‘get out of your car and call your mom, right now.’ It was just like something came over me where I just didn't have a choice; like I was being moved.”
David says at last he felt peace. “There was this hope for the first time in my life, and I knew what the hope was. It’s Jesus.”
Shortly after, his brother picked him up, and the next day, the family got him to a rehab facility. He says his desire for drugs went away immediately – but he still had to face the truth. “Eventually I just broke. Because it was difficult to face the problem was not the drugs, which was not the pornography. It was not even the music. It was me. I was the problem.”
David gave his life and devotion to God. “I understood that Jesus was God, and that He died for me. And I understood that He wasn’t just enough, He was more than enough. In all of that madness He pursued me. He didn’t let me go and I said, ‘I can worship a God like that.’ And I understood that the God I thought He was, was not the God He really is.”
David admits it was hard, but with God’s help and forgiveness he overcame his addiction to pornography and his guilt. He married Kim in 2009, and today, he leads an online Bible institute and counsels men struggling with sexual addiction.
“He was still there. He was always there. That’s what blew me away the most. He pursued me the whole way through.”
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