Testimonies – Addicts
The Addicted:
Breathing is but an early announcement of the death of the body and spirit when addiction continues unabated. Eventually, the user loses control unable to gauge the amount or determine the frequency of use. Self is compromised and the user becomes controlled by the drugs being used. Determination in the form of self will is lost. Discretion and morality are no longer deterrents because the obsession with drug acquisition and use paired with the compulsive need to use and seek the high become to great. Review the quotes below along with the brief notes about the lives of a few people whose lives were compromised by drug use.
” For the drunkard and glutton shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.” NScofield.Ref.ed KJV Prov. 23:21
“ He goeth after her straightway as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks.” NScofield Ref.ed KJV Prov. 7:22
“ Till an arrow strike through his liver, a bird hastenth to the snare and knoweth not that it is for his life.” NScofield.Ref.ed KJV Prov. 7:23
Downward Spiral
A Shift in the life and success of Marvin Gaye, he was one of Motown’s most successful singer-entertainers. By 1973, he was enormously successful but “restless and unhappy… his attention turned from the spirit to the flesh.” His marriage spiraled to ruins, he developed a romantic relationship with a girl 17 years his junior and “let his sexual passion orbit…” The use of cocaine, insatiable lust for sex and manic depression were as much responsible for his death as the bullet his father eventually fired into his body on April Fools’ Day in 1984.
Source: Portrait of An Artist, By David Ritz, 1990.
One of the Greatest Players never to play in the NBA
He was twenty-two years old, Leonard Kevin Bias, a 6’8” 210 lbs. forward, gifted in the game of basketball. He was an All American and played for the University of Maryland at College Park Maryland. His nick name was, “frosty.” On his Terrapins team jersey was the number 34.
In the 1986 NBA draft, he was selected second overall by the Boston Celtics. He died 2 days later of Cardiac arrhythmia that resulted from free-base cocaine. It was reported that his heart literally exploded. He had signed a contract worth millions. His NBA jersey had the infamous number 30. It was retired by the Boston Celtics and given to his mother. His use of Cocaine claimed a player that some say was a better collegiate basketball player than Michael Jordan at that time.
A mother’s heart cannot heal from such a devastating jolt!
A Fallen Angel thought Oprah Winfrey, hearing her sing was the closest to hearing the voice of God!
It was February 1990, and Sammy Davis Jr. was quietly dying-his throat ravaged by cancer. The elite of Hollywood gathered to honor him. Well known performers such as Bill Cosby, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, Liza Minnelli, Eddie Murphy and Whitney Houston made the night special and unusual. Whitney was 26 years old. “Her show stopping performance of, ‘One Moment In Time,’ touched souls and summoned angels.” “Whitney Houston was impossibly beautiful, regal in a pink-topped gown, her voice thrilling….like a bird in glorious flight.”
Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all times!
At 48, Whitney Houston is dead. She died on February 11, 2012. Her life spiraled down to spiritual and physical death. (Cause of death-drug induced)
Source: USA Today, December 28, 2012 Weekend ed.
Common to each situation, circumstance, or set of circumstances mentioned above is death, spiritual and physical. A sense of spiritual death may occur when there is a loosening followed by a disconnect within us of our connection with a spiritual power outside of ourselves greater than we. The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous commonly referred to as AA refer to this spiritual power as God. In Step Three of the Twelve Steps, principles of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous, we understand that it is God’s will for us to be dependent free of alcohol and other drugs.
A deeper sense of spiritual death is felt when desires, impulses, thoughts, and urges that are typically suppressed by sound judgment and learned Christian behavior are loosed within us and we lose self-control. Drug use is invariably a factor in this process where mood altering lowers our inhibition and changes our behavior. In a real sense we become intoxicated: faulty judgment, impaired social functioning, sexual impropriety and other forms of destructive behavior seem to be okay. We may suddenly find ourselves doing harm to ourselves and others without the usual precautionary discretion. Excerpted from a larger essay, Copyright February 10, 2013 All rights reserved.
Learn more about spiritual and physical death due to drug abuse in today’s drug climate America. How bad is it? Who is most harmed?
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