She Died, Escaped Hell & Got Delivered From Drug Addiction

It was in the back of a bar when I died.

I had been doing cocaine for three days and nights nonstop. I hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink for days. It was midmorning on a Sunday, and the bar hardly had any customers. I begged for more cocaine and convinced him to make it a bigger piece because I wasn’t “feeling” it. That should have been a signal. But junkies don’t think rationally.

My teeth were grinding together. My jaw was twitching as I sprinkled the precious white powder into the cap of the syringe. I pulled up just the right amount of water and added it to the powder in the cap. I pulled the liquid cocaine into the syringe and tapped the air to the top.

The sounds of the Sunday afternoon customers in the bar where I was secretly shooting dope were soon drowned out by the anticipated sound of the trains that came thundering through my head as my heart answered the call of the cocaine by pumping blood through my body at an outrageous pace.

Added to the strong dose of cocaine was the fact that I had been shooting nonstop since Friday night. Perhaps, that is why I slipped out of consciousness before I could even untie the belt from my left arm. It could be why my heart stopped beating, and my breath left my body.

As I died, it was different than the numbness I had felt in my first cocaine overdose. I was aware of my surroundings. Life and death had never seemed so real, so vivid. I was very afraid.

Darkness surrounded me. Suddenly, I stood in front of a skull. It was not a whole skeleton. It was a giant skull that was as tall as I was. Hands reached from the darkness, trying to pull me into death. At that moment, I was aware of the reality of death. I wasn’t ready to die, and I didn’t want to be pulled into the darkness.

I turned and ran with all of my might. I ran back to my body. When I reached my body, I kept running. The man performing CPR on me was shocked. One minute he was pumping my chest, desperately trying to bring me back to life. The next minute, he found himself fighting a frantic, panicked, half-crazed girl. I fought as if those hands were still reaching for me.

I ran from the back room of the bar and down the streets of the inner city before I slowed down. With blood dripping from my arm and a cold rain pelting my face, I realized that hell was a real place, and I didn’t want to go there.

Before this moment in my life, I didn’t care about dying. I felt as if I was living in hell on earth. I didn’t think that heaven was a possibility for me. I didn’t know that God would forgive me of my sins. When the man who came to the hospital had explained salvation to me in the chapel that night, it was the first time that I had heard the truth about God in a way that I could understand it.

When I had attended church with my grandparents, I never grasped the concept that everyone has sinned and needs the forgiveness that Jesus’ blood can provide. When I went to church with my friend, I didn’t hear the plan of salvation. I had fun and sang songs but never grasped the truth about God.

I went back to Anne’s house and told her what had happened. I don’t think she took me seriously. By now, they were kind of put out with me.

I went to the evening service at the church where Bo had gotten saved. I sat on the front row, waiting for the sermon to be over. When he opened for prayer, I jumped up to talk to him. He asked me why I needed prayer, and I answered, “I died today and went to hell. I need help.”

They prayed a prayer for me, and as quick as it started, it was over. I walked into the parking lot disappointed that I didn’t have any direction.

I decided that I needed to get off of drugs and found out about a government program through my friends. This program supplied methadone to help you get off of heroin or Dilaudid. The only catch to this program was that I had to travel to Chattanooga every day for two or three weeks to pick up the methadone.

My friends were carpooling down together. We had to meet early in the morning and drive to Chattanooga to be there when the clinic opened.

Methadone messed me up! I totaled three cars and don’t remember where I left them. I passed out naked in someone’s house and was draped across a chair when his parents and his three-year-old son came in. But I was trying to clean myself up! I bought a Bible. It cost me a quarter at the thrift store.

I tried to read it because I wanted God’s help. Usually, I nodded off after just a few minutes of reading. But I would wake up and try to read again. I sat there with that Bible, nodding for hours, and never successfully read the pages.

The wife of the man who had visited the hospital had dropped by Anne’s house to leave her phone number for me. She invited me to attend a revival taking place in another church.

I didn’t know what a “revival” was, but I agreed to go. I was high on the methadone treatment and nodded through the first service. Although I don’t remember what happened that night, I was told that I had a conversation with the preacher’s wife. Evidently, I cussed her out when she was trying to pray for me. I don’t remember that at all! I was so high with the heavy doses of methadone and slept through church.

The couple offered to let me stay with them for a while under certain conditions. I couldn’t tell anyone where I was, and I couldn’t bring anyone over to the house. I agreed to their conditions and slept on their couch. I discovered later that they stayed up throughout the night praying over me to be free from the addiction.

I went back to the revival with them the next night and, once again, fell asleep during the sermon. This time the preacher came to where I was seated and woke me up. He said, “Do you really want help, girl?”

For that one moment, it seemed as if I was in my right mind. I stood to my feet and answered him. “Yes, sir. I do.”

He reached out to pray for me, and I fell to the floor. I’m not sure how long I was there, but when I got to my feet, I whispered to the woman seated next to me, “I think that man knocked me down. Did you see him knock me down?”

Suddenly, I realized that I was sober and clear-headed, more than I had been in eight years. My mind was alert, and I could actually think clearly. Although I had prayed in the hospital chapel months before, I had not really surrendered my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I gave my life to God that night, August 10th, 1992.