I Was Addicted to Amphetamines, Then God Moved

I was raised in the Christian faith, but somewhere around high school, I fell away. Like many, I slipped even further away in college. When I wasn’t playing baseball, I was partying…and it got worse with time. I developed an addiction to prescription amphetamines and eventually found myself bound by other drugs. My self-care was nonexistent and I was falling into all sorts of sins: lying, cheating, stealing, coveting, and cursing, to name a few. All of these were committed at the expense of my relationships with my family and friends. I was a total and complete slave to sin. 

Then, on a sleepless night in the summer of 2019, God moved. Lying in bed, I was overwhelmed by His presence. It’s hard to put into words; it was just pure love and revelation that He was real. All at once, I knew that He was with me and that He would help me. Overwhelmed by the weight of my many sins, I went to the bathroom, fell to my knees, and called the name of Jesus Christ. As I asked Him to be my Savior, I felt the weight of my sin, anxiety, depression, loneliness, and guilt disappear from my shoulders. The shift was mind-blowing…I could not stop crying! I was free!

As I laid there crying, a robe hanging on the bathroom door suddenly struck me as a symbol of Jesus on the Cross. As the reality of His sacrifice hit me, everything changed — my mindset, my worldview, everything. Romans 12:2 tells us to ‘be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind’ and that’s exactly what happened. The darkness in my life was replaced by the Light and miraculously, I was no longer consumed or owned by sin. I became a new creation! Just as 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, ‘The old has died and the new has come.’ The old Zack is long gone.

I’ve stumbled a few times since then, but each time, God has stuck right by me. Despite my failings, He’s helped me continue to grow in knowledge and relationship with Him. And because of His faithfulness, I can rest in the promise that ‘he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 1:6). God is good!

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.” (Jude 25-24)