Nov 10
7
Heroin Overdose and Died…But God!
Update: My testimony posted on streamingfaith.com has 7,163 pageviews and counting, as of 12/13/11. I am a living witness–> When breath is gone–STILL hope lives! Share it with someone trying to break free.
They asked me to post this testimony from my life, as it appears on StreamingFaith.com. So here it is:
Heroin Overdose & Died Three Times on Way To Hospital…But God!
On a Sunday, alone in my office suite on Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, I tied up my arm with pantyhose and shot the cooked heroin and water into a readied vein. I saw my red blood enter the syringe. I felt the warmed heroin as i pushed the plunger and watched the mixture disappear inside me. Everything faded to black. Then, voices, faint but audible. Someone pounded my chest. Streams of water rolled down my face and neck. My red spandex top clung tight to my body.
Bright lights spiked and shimmered colors overhead. Who were these people? Men. A woman’s voice invaded the room. I tried to focus. A white woman? Co-worker? It Faded again to black. It was cold. I moved. I heard them. They didn’t hear me. “Get off me,” I said or seemed to say. Doors slammed. Moving. A truck? No, an ambulance. I glimpsed silver apparatus. A loud noise. Shrilled. A siren? Something happened? A hospital? She looked familiar. I knew her. It was a hospital! Examination room. ER. They announced themselves. Doctor who? I’ll feel a what? Then I heard a scream. Someone stabbed me? I heard myself screaming. I rose up from the hard table in the frigid room. The SCREAM again. I dropped back toward the table. Again, everything faded to black.
What’s that sound? Machines, tubes, lines, all connected to me? Why? What happened? A petite pale lady with a big permed reddish hair? Who is she? I tred to focus. I am in a hospital. I wondered, “How long have I been here?” Oh my God, I must have overdosed. Why is she still there, patting her eyes with a tattered beige tissue? She’s crying! She calls me by name. Stanice. Oh, no! It’s my boss. She knows. If I OD’d, she knows. I’m an addict! She knows. They all will know.
In and out of consciousness for days and on a respirator, after left ICU and taken to a regular room, the medics including the driver who brought me visited and told me, “We had to come meet the woman who kept dying on us.” They continued, “You died three times on the way to hospital and each time you became harder to resuscitate. When they did get me to the hospital, I was breathing only 7 times per minute.
I wondered how they found me as I was alone in the suite of offices with my door locked. One told me that it was a miracle that I was found. It seemed a woman co-worker came through the office to pick up her attaché case before going to the airport to catch her flight. She noticed my keys in the door. She knew they were mine because the tag read, “The Boss.” Just a quiet joke amongst us; I was not the boss! Anyway, she came back to my office, heard music which was normal; but when she knocked hard I didn’t answer. The door was locked so she decided to call down to the guard. He assured her that I had gone up to the suite earlier. He sent a guard up to open the door. They found me slumped over my desk more dead than alive with the syringe still in my wrist. He called 911. When they got me the hospital, my cousin was on duty when they brought me in; she recognized me and notified my mother.
The medics continued the story. It seems the doctors needed to get a line into me immediately; but because of my drug abuse history, my veins were shot. So they tried to run a central line via the subclavian which is under my collarbone above my right breast. Something went wrong. Air got in or something which caused my left lung to collapse. The complications began coupled with the death experiences, my body tried to shut down—AGAIN. The enemy of my soul wanted me dead. But God, through it all brought me through.
After the medical problems were under control, on the suggestion of the medics I signed myself into the Psychiatric wing of the hospital for 30 days to get help with my drug addiction. I went into the hospital on a hot and humid Washington D.C. summer day and was discharged on a chilly, blazing orange swirling-leaves autumn day.
While that was not the end of my addiction YET; it was the beginning of the end and I was alive. It wasn’t long after that I was in my apartment, alone, shooting a heroin and cocaine mix, that God met me in the way of a handsome guy sharing his testimony on the 700 Club about how he was a hopeless addict. I listened. I watched. I asked God to do for me what He did for Buddy Baird. Clean me up, deliver me from drugs, forgive me for my sins and live your life in me. That night I was born again and within months, I called a family friend and assistant pastor of a church and asked for help. He got me into a drug treatment center.
Through people in 12-Step programs, churches, and a mentor, as of May 20, 2010, I’ve been clean and free from the bondage of addiction for 25 years—one day at a time! I sent a thank you note to Buddy Baird through The 700 Club and they sent a camera crew to Washington, DC to interview me and taped a dramatization of my story.
See the original 700 Club video of the first time I shared my testimony with the world. God even made it possible for Buddy Baird and I to meet and be on the show together a few months after my story aired.
During this process, the enemy has tried to kill me several times, but God wouldn’t let it be. Now, I share my testimony through books, on podiums, workshops, radio, and a one-woman show. I’m a witness to God’s amazing grace, resurrection power (life & dreams), deliverance, and restoration. I will shout my testimony from the rooftops, see clips from my one-woman show.
I’m a water-walking overcomer whose life is in the Lord Jesus Christ and hope is anchored in God’s Word; especially Revelations 12:11 and Jeremiah 29:11-13, God says, I alone know the plans He has for your life; plans for prosperity and not disaster, plans to give you a future and a hope. To invite me come share my story, contact mike@TryWalkingOnWater.com
