Steven Lewis, 26
I wanted to write this story, my story, as an encouragement and testimony to those who are going through difficult situations and looking for some hope.
First let me start off telling you a little bit about my childhood. I grew up in a small town in southern Louisiana. It was, generally, a happy childhood but you could say I was spoiled. Like every child, I seemed to be seeking something more. I probably should jump forward to the edge of 16. At the time, I was attending Walker High School and was involved in music. I met a few other musicians and we began to practice together after school, meanwhile experimenting with drugs. It started off pretty simple with just a little pot smoking and the occasional 12 pack of beer but I began to notice that I was feeling a hole somewhere. School became less interesting as my drug use became more frequent. I was in and out of school and began to have trouble with teachers and classmates. Late one evening, some friends and I were riding in my car and we were inhaling nitrous oxide (laughing gas) while heading down the interstate at approximately 90 MPH. I eventually got so high, I got lightheaded and passed out behind the wheel and wrecked. A few moments later I was awakened by a passing truck driver. I was disoriented and confused, I thought he was one of my friends. I proceeded to pull him over towards me and said "Let's go." Then I realized who he was after he turned to me and said, "You can't go anywhere. You wrecked your car and its hanging off the bridge." My friends and I got out the car and tried to gather ourselves. Surprisingly, we were all okay but we continued to inhale the laughing gas until the police arrived. As the officer pulled up we threw it off the bridge. He wrote me at ticket for carelessness and sent me on my way. I rode home with the tow truck driver and my two friends. When I got home and my dad saw the car, he became very angry. He was mad not only for wrecking the car, but because time and time again he had told me "only drive one person in the car", being that it was only capable of holding two passengers. Because I was still high, I felt the need to taunt him a little. It got pretty ugly and broke out into fist fight. As he was paying the tow truck driver, I entered the house looking for an object to hit him with. When I couldn't find what I was looking for, I grabbed an AK-47 and as he came through the door, still angry, I walked out into the hall and held him up at gunpoint. My sister was also in the hall frantically screaming which made matters worse, because it only made me more angry. About that time my mother came home, so I gathered them all up and put them in the hall, shouting and cussing at them with the gun pointed at them. I had full intentions of shooting them, then turning the gun on myself. They tried to calm me down for a while but I thought it would probably be easier on all of us if I just let them live and kill myself. So I took the gun and turned it towards myself and now I was staring down the barrel of it. I thought to myself, "If I'm to die and go to hell, it couldn't possibly be any worse than the hell I already feel." Deciding it was time to pull the trigger, I pulled it but the safety was on. Because I was high, I couldn't really figure out what the problem was but my family managed to wrestle it away from me before I was able to unlock it. I was sent to one psychiatrist after another, trying to get clean and stay clean but the truth was that I didn't want to be clean. In fact, I had no interest in it whatsoever because any problem that I was feeling, I would get a fix to forget about it, although it was only temporary.
My drug use continued on and off, at times heavier than others. I ended up getting into the underground club life where I was surrounded by 20 to 30 other people just like myself, at all times. We were a tight group, sorta like a gang in a sense. We were into heavy drugs like XTC (ecstasy) and crystal meth and were frequent party goers in downtown New Orleans. I became a regular at raves, going there to break-dance and exchange drugs with others.
Now I'm going to jump ahead a little bit more to the age of 24. My drug use at this point was heavier than ever, but now I found something new and interesting. Steroids. On June 28th 2002, I was living in a rent house with two roommates. One was selling GHB (the date rape drug) and all three of us were on steroids. Tempers were always high and flaring so we all ended up pretty much staying to ourselves to keep from things getting out of hand. Myself and another roommate were a little closer than the third. He had a girlfriend and I was seeing someone myself. We were all drinking GHB and as the night went on, the roommate and his girlfriend grew tired and went to bed. I became nauseous after drinking too much GHB, so I headed to the bathroom. I'm not really quite sure how long I was in there, but I ended up laying in a fetal position in a pool of my own vomit, dry heaving. I heard a voice in my head that said "Get up now". Feeling like something was wrong, I struggled to get to my feet and I walked back to my own room. Looking into my room, I saw the girl I was with laying on the bed with her legs and arms spread. Her head was turned away towards the wall. I noticed that she had lost control of her body and urinated and threw up on herself. When I saw this, my first reaction was anger. I walked up to her and shook her, yelling "What the hell are you doing?". Then I reached over and grabbed her head, jerking it towards me. Seeing the vomit all over her face, in her nose and on her mouth, I realized something was terribly wrong. I climbed up onto the bed and opened up her mouth. I stuck my fingers in her mouth to clean out the vomit and I began to do mouth to mouth and checked for her pulse. After a few minutes, she began to breath very shallow. As I sat back to gather myself, I noticed the TV was on channel 69, which was TBN. It was the end of the Jack Vanempy show, where he was giving people an opportunity to "get right". He leaned up towards the camera, pointing his finger, and said "Are you bound to a life of drugs and sexual immorality and no matter how many times you've tried to clean up, you just couldn't do it? Well I'm here to tell you today, that you can be delivered and set free and become a new creation right now." He said the sinners prayer and I found myself repeating it. Having said it before and never really being serious, I knew this time I was desperate and truly meant it. I looked up at my ceiling and said "God, I know I've said this before, but you get me out of this one last time, I'll never be back in this place again." After that, I felt a sense of relief and I undressed the girl, brought her into the bathroom and set her into the bathtub in hopes that would wake her. I cut on the shower to clean her own vomit out of her hair. She began to have seizures and her eyelids would open with her eyes rolled back into her head. Knowing that she was alive was comforting, but I still did not know what her condition was and that made me nervous. I feared that she might be brain-dead. This went on for approximately 5 hours. Then I saw the sun coming up so I walked back into my room, leaving her in the bathtub. I was completely exhausted and emotionally drained. I laid on my bed to try to rest for a little while, when I heard her call my name. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, never feeling so relieved in all my life. She left that morning when she was feeling better and that was one of the last times I ever saw her.
After this event, I decided to get plugged into a church to try to get my life straight. So on July 7th, 2002, I made a public statement in front of the church that I would live for Christ and I would dedicate my life to Him. Later that evening, after church, a friend of mine invited me to come to a BBQ along with her sister, mother, and her mother's boyfriend. They lived outside of Baton Rouge on a pretty quiet river called the Amite. I ended up spending most of the day over there. It was getting late into the afternoon and my friend and her sister needed to leave to go to work. Being a friend of the family, I decided to stay around for a little while longer. They were drinking and the boyfriend insisted that I join him on a boat ride, although I was reluctant. I eventually agreed to go for a short while; however, he was speeding and driving very recklessly so I asked him to take us back. After we got back, we were sitting at a little Tiki bar and my friends mother joined us. It was a still day and the water wasn't moving in the river so he said to us "I'm going to go take a swim." Knowing that he had been drinking, I suggested that it might be a good idea if he wore a life jacket but he insisted on swimming without it. He had swam almost all the way across when I noticed that his head was bobbing in the water. He went under but I wasn't worried, knowing he had the reputation of being a prankster. I figured that he had probably just swam up underneath the peer and was probably hiding and laughing. I sat there for a moment when I realized that by now, there must be a problem. I dove in and swam across hoping to find him, knowing that I only had 5 minutes to find him if he really was in danger. I was pretty confident that I could find him since I knew where he went under. I dove down so many times that I almost drowned myself, but I kept diving so my friends mother wouldn't loose hope. After a few minutes, a boat came by and they pulled me in. The police arrived on the scene moments later and threw out the dredging nets. They found his body in the place that I was previously searching.
This was all very hard on me because moments before I remember him saying to my friends mother that he loved her and he knew she loved him and that he didn't think he could live his life without her. He said to her "If I didn't have you in my life, I think I would just die." She laughed and said "Don't talk like that." Then he turned to me and said "I don't have a lot of friends and I think I'm a pretty good judge of character, but there's something about you. There's just something about you that I like and I just want you to know that you're welcome to come over again anytime you want." After the accident, I tried to comfort my friends mother as well as I possibly could. I had the job of calling my friend and her sister at their work to tell them to come home because there had been an accident. When they got there, it was a very emotional scene and I was attempting to comfort 3 very distraught women. I waited around for a while until their family members arrived and then I left. On my drive home I was thinking how often I took people in my life forgranted, never really realizing just how fragile life is and how quickly it can be lost.
The stress of all the recent events in my life began to pile up considering the previous week I received another ticket, was laid off from my job, and plans for building my own home fell through. Although I had joked in the past about it, I was having a nervous breakdown. I got involved in a church group where they helped me cope with all the things going on. Then I went on a retreat and was able to get everything out into the open. I was completely delivered that weekend from everything. Its been two years now and I'm doing great. Now, I'm working with a high school youth group and I'm feeling very confident that I'll be able to influence their lives in a positive way. It hasn't been the easiest road, but I know its a way of life and when the Devil reminds me of where I've been and tries to entice me back, I am able to realize that there is no hope there and that I may not have the material possessions now that I had then but I have spiritual freedom and eternal life. I'll take that over anything that he could ever offer me anyday.
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