My name is Ryan. I am 29 years old. It started with skipping Sunday School to smoke cigarettes with some buddies. It progressed to alcohol, marijuana, crack cocaine, LSD, meth and heroin. One thing I always swore I would never do, snort up. However, I was using needles before my 22nd birthday, and in less than a year I was a daily junkie. Sin will always take you further than you intended to go. My addiction was so intense that I actually got fired from a traveling carnival because of my drug use.       I came within a hair’s breadth of murdering my father and his girlfriend on my 24th birthday. Had I pulled the trigger, I’m sure I probably would have turned the gun on myself.

Ryan, mother, sister and father on

graduation day in April 2002 

As it was, God spared us from any death that night. He even protected me when the S.W.A.T. team raided my apartment, and He kept the snipers from picking me up. Sound crazy? This was my life, folks. But God had a plan for me

Homelessness came next. Despair. I realized I needed God, and I began to seek Him. He is so faithful. He helped me quit everything but cigarettes (I hung on to them still). He gave me a good job. He brought me back to faithful church attendance. My sobriety lasted a little over three months? Then it started creeping back in. I couldn’t serve two masters, so my relationship with the Holy Spirit suffered compromise. Of course, this time around my life as an addict was seven times worse. Sometimes I would weep over the needle probing for a vein. I wanted to stop, but it owned me.

Sin will always keep you longer than you expected to stay. What about the cost? Incalculable. I lost touch with God. I wrecked countless relationships with friends, family and women. I lost my sanity, my self-control and my will to live. My addiction cost me jobs, got me in jail and robbed my soul of peace and happiness.

Perhaps the most significant price I paid to drugs was the life of my best friend.One week before his wedding he injected lethal overdose of cocaine and heroin. I miss him, but not as much as does his fiancé and two children. He will be dead for the rest of our lives. Sin will always cost you more than you are willing to pay. I thank God for bringing me to Teen Challenge. There I learned to take Jesus’ hand and follow Him. People seldom walk out of the trap I was in, but with Jesus Christ all things are possible.

I graduated from the Lebanon Men’s Center and am now serving as an intern at the Portland Men’s Center. The next step for me is Bible College to prepare for the ministry He has called me to China. Here am I, Lord. Here am I.