Multiple addictions
One day I came to the realization that the drugs and booze had just faded out of my life. It was like I just forgot about them.
Early in life, Mike Manser was labeled as having a bad attitude. This,
coupled with enormous emotional pain, propelled him into an almost Kamikaze
mission to confirm his reputation. He writes:
Later in life, Mike married a second time and things improved, but his
level of chemical abuse was still substantial. He writes:
Mike then attended a church service and surrendered his life to Jesus.
Instantly he entered a spiritual high that lasted about two weeks. When
his feet finally touched the ground he discovered to his amazement that
he had been effortlessly freed from drink and drugs. He writes:
That was three years ago. Mike has not touched drugs or alcohol since. The hole in his
life has been filled by Jesus.
I found a big bag of codeine pills one day when I was about 12. Within a
few days I was popping codeine by the handful. It fed that bad
attitude real good. Codeine is a pain killer, but not for the kind of
pain that I was in. But it made me numb so I didnt have face myself.
And they were easy to get.
One day I stole some pot off my brother. I loved it. I started smoking
pot regularly at age 13.
In Grade 9, a guy sold me some acid. He told me to
be sure not to do more than a half because people were freaking out on a
whole hit. I said, Yeah, right, and ate the whole thing. Guys with bad
attitudes always eat the whole thing.
An hour later I was in the hospital. It was a totally horrifying experience, but for
some weird reason I loved it. The cops questioned me and the next day,
the headline on the front page of the Oshawa Times newspaper read, 14
year old drug addict O.Ds
Mike Manser drug addict!
I liked the sound of it. And it fit in real nice with that bad
attitude. So thats what I became.
I left home at age 16 and began to hitch-hike all over the
country, living on the streets, and dealing drugs.
I soon became the Acid King. It seemed that I could always do more
acid than anyone else and not flip out. I loved the
hallucinations. It seemed like the real world would disappear, and
be replaced by a fantasy world I could hide in. I knew I was frying my
brains but I didnt care, because any way I looked at it, life was a
drag. There was no hope. The world was going crazy. I began to feel that
I was just a tiny little speck on a tiny little planet that revolved
around a tiny little star in a great big universe. Why would anyone
care about me?
After a while I grew tired of acid, and started looking for bigger
kicks. I made a vow to try every kind of drug in the world. It seemed
like that was the only way I could get any kind of respect. Every day I
got wasted on something Acid, Coke, Speed, Angel Dust, Peyote, MDA,
THC, Mescaline, Opium, STP, Mushrooms, and anything else that could be
labeled drug. And the voices and self-destructive thoughts got louder.
One of my friends shot up with Angel Dust. He was found
the next day curled up in the corner of his room. The walls and floor in
that corner were covered in blood, and his hands and fingernails
were torn to shreds from tearing at the walls. His throat and
neck were swollen and black. And he was dead. He was
only 16 years old. I heard that the cops figured that some kind of
embalming fluid mixed with the dust. They estimated it may
have taken him 2-3 hours to die. I dont know why, but after that
I became colder, tougher, and meaner.
I lost two more friends to suicide, and some are permanently in
mental hospitals. Several hit the bottom and still havent
bounced back. Some are hanging on with families and stuff, but
the damage is pretty extensive. Most of them are total alcoholics and
still on drugs.
After re-marrying I tried many times to quit drugs and alcohol completely,
but it just didnt work. Hard drugs were a definite challenge. I would try
to stay straight as long as I could but usually couldnt last more than
a week or so. Im sure my wife would have left me if she knew, so I would
disappear for an evening, and sometimes for a day or two, under the guise
of an alcohol bender.
I tried many times to quit pot because of the cost. I
couldnt let myself get into trafficking again. If I got caught, it would have
been my third offense and Id have been thrown me in jail for a long, long time.
Despite my efforts, I was a daily smoking 4-6 joints of marijuana, and was drunk
once or twice a week. I used hard drugs perhaps 2-3 times a
month. Worn down by constant temptation and failure, the pull of suicide was
strong. The feeling of worthlessness and suicide haunted me
almost daily, as well as a terrific urge to go back to my former level of
hard drug use and street life. I found the domestic life hard (boring).
Drugs and alcohol just seemed
to disappear over a period of about two weeks. I was just so infatuated with
Jesus and the Bible, and my new friends. I was speaking with God and he
with me almost constantly. There was not the slightest withdrawal or
tension. Jesus replaced it
all with his Life. During this period I was hardly aware of the change.
I was so in the Spirit that I could think of virtually nothing but how much
I was loved and accepted. Work was nearly impossible, and I ended up taking
a week off to be with Jesus!
His website is http://www.valleynet.on.ca/~aa592/webpage.html
Homosexuality
Within a few days, I knew that some profound changes had taken place in me. . . . . fell head over heels in love with my wife and I desired her physically. My homosexual fantasies . . . were gone.
Alan Medinger writes:
Alan Medinger
My attraction to men goes back almost as far as I can remember. I suppose I was about twelve when I started acting out my homosexual attractions.
Because in those days there was no visible gay subculture, I always assumed I would marry and do the best I could. In about my fifth year of marriage, I again became homosexually active and continued for the next ten years.
Like many addicted people, I hated my homosexuality more than anyone could imagine. But even worse was the thought of giving it up. It had been my way of coping with life for as long as I could remember.
The compulsion was increasing and my going out became more frequent and reckless. My marriage was coming apart at the seams. I finally was no longer able to function heterosexually. I believed I would eventually lose my family, my job, even possibly my life and there was nothing I could do about it.
At church I would hear the beautiful words of praise in our Episcopal liturgy and say to myself, I wonder if anyone ever really feels this stuff. Wouldnt it be great?
A friend asked me to attend a prayer meeting. I resisted for six or seven weeks, but finally agreed when he said, What the Lord has for you is far better than anything you could imagine.
No one prayed specifically for me as far as I knew, but at some point during that evening, as the two hundred or so people were praising God out loud, I said quietly, God, I give up. My life is a total mess. I cant handle it any more. You take over. And He did.
Within a few days, I knew that some profound changes had taken place in me. First of all, I fell head over heels in love with my wife and I desired her physically. My homosexual fantasies that had almost never left me were gone. And most important of all, I knew that Jesus was real, that He loved me, and I was starting to love Him. I knew for the first time what it was to love and be loved in return.
A few weeks later, I told my wife the whole truth about my life. With her years of denial exploded, she told our Episcopal priest about what had happened to me. He told her to find a lawyer; this could not possibly last. She would need to prepare to divorce me. He was wrong. That was 25 years ago.
At the time, I felt that what God had done was a total healing. The sexual pull toward other men was gone. But homosexuality is more than having sex with someone of the same gender. Closer to the root is a deep brokenness, almost a stillbirth in our manhood or womanhood. Somehow as a small boy, I had closed a door to my growth into manhood.
My conversion marked the resumption of my growth into manhood. God has worked wonderfully to remove my great sense of inadequacy around heterosexual men. He has enabled me to become an initiator and a leader; roles which I had previously dreaded. In a beautifully gentle way, God has been shifting the roles my wife and I take, so that I can assume my proper headship in our family.
I have not been homosexually tempted during the past twenty-five years. By that, I mean seriously desiring or considering a sexual act with another of the same sex. I did carry beyond my initial healing some desire for an older, stronger man to take care of me. That too is now gone, and I see men as brothers, not as father-protectors.
For quite a while I might still take a look at a good-looking man, but God showed me that this was based on envy and habits from the past. As I repent of the envy and continued to thank God for the way He made me, this, too, became less frequent. Today, if God were to bring me the best looking man in the world, and say, Here, you can do whatever you want with him. My response would be, No thank you, Im not interested.
My wife and I have had a wonderful and enjoyable sexual/ romantic relationship since my healing.
Regeneration Ministries
(Sadly, Alan died several years after I published the above.)
God is not a show off
Sadly, we are usually so blind to the supernatural that we need such
blatant miracles as those mentioned above before conceding that maybe God
is at work. The fact is, however, that character-building is such a priority
with God that he often uses less dramatic methods than instantaneous
deliverances.
Battles make us strong. Less dramatic deliverances are no less
a work of God, and yet our dull mind has more difficulty in grasping this
fact. For example, any act of God that he performs regularly, we often
refuse to call a miracle or even acknowledge that God is in it. We usually
simply dismiss it as nature.
God has no need to show off. If we refuse to respond to the subtle signs he
gives us, thats our loss. Although he loves us, the fact remains that we need
him, not vice versa. He is our God, yet half the time we foolishly
act as if we were his God. If we try ordering God around, arrogantly
refusing to acknowledge him unless he jumps when we want him to, weve got a problem.
If, however, we are willing to let God control our lives, we are headed for
an exciting adventure.
