I was addicted to heroin and cocaine for nearly 12 years and most of that time I was a prostitute on the streets or working in cars.
During the world war, my father and his family were interned in a Japanese concentration camp, the men apart from the women. At the end of the war the camp was bombed by mistake, and his family had to survive. They were not allowed to show feelings and never waste food.
When I was a child there was always unspoken tension in the house and my father had outbursts of anger and would beat us up.
On top of that, he started to sexually abuse me when I was 9 years old. He forced me to keep it a secret otherwise I was responsible for the breakup of their marriage. The secret abuse put me even more as an outsider and twisted my idea about sexuality. On the one hand, I liked the attention he gave me, but at the same time, I feared him and knew that it was a terrible sin. Until then I believed in God and the Bible and everything my mother taught us about God. At that point I turned my back on God and in my inner soul I resented Him for letting it happen. I resented my mother for not protecting me and I hated myself and my body.
When I was 17 years old I fled the house and started to live with a guy 7 years older than me. I passed my school exams but since my father didn’t want to pay for my further education, I had to start working.
I was no good in relationships. I got pregnant, left the father of my daughter, and lived on my own with my daughter. Denying the fact that I had a postnatal depression and couldn’t handle it when she cried. I beat her when she was a baby. I shut myself off from my family and tried to live a sober natural lifestyle, with no gas or electricity, chopping wood every morning. The people I related to were the semi-hippy type who sometimes smoked hashish, and took LSD but were not into hard drugs. So I wasn’t alarmed when I fell in love with a guy who sometimes smoked heroine from a silver paper. I couldn’t see the harm, and I was madly in love with him.
I got pregnant and I really wanted it. But he didn’t want the baby and said I had to choose between him and the baby. So I did the abortion. I was alone and afterward, he was nowhere. I went looking for him and finally found him in Amsterdam in the red light district. I hoped for comfort because I had aborted our child. He was agitated and nervous and said: I am now going to play the junkie. YOU HAVE to give me money. GIVE me your money! I am sick. You have to give me your money! Then and there I left my body and my wits. I gave him money, he scored some drugs and I walked behind him to some filthy room of some other drug users. He started shooting up. I hadn’t seen him like this before. The other guy really messed it up and in despair asked me to give him the shot. And in a haze, I put the needle in his vein. From there and then it was like a sled downhill.
Something stirred my spirit, I had to know if it was really true. I started reading the Bible but didn’t understand. So I start to copy it down on paper. The more I wrote down the more God’s spirit enlightened my spirit. And made it true in my heart that He is alive and have made reconciliation for me with the Father.
A short time after, I started using drugs myself. I lost my daughter. I lost my house.
I started with forging bank checks but when my boyfriend was in prison I found myself addicted and had to get money myself, so I started to sell my body on the streets. There were times I got raped molested, gunpoint raped, and chased by a mad car driver. I got nearly strangled. I had to jump from a driving car.
I lived in constant fear.
Fear of not having enough dope, fear of going to sleep, and having terrible nightmares.
When you are addicted you live in a constant hell. A hell I wish no one. You trust nobody. You use everybody. You always have to be alert. There are so many traumas piled up. In your head there’s such a battlefield going on, that you don’t even see the state you are in. This went on for years and years. I somehow managed to rent a little apartment and keep it. One night I had one of those terrible nightmares again; where demons enter through the window and crawl upon my bed screaming and getting at me with their claws. So I screamed out loud: I cover myself with the blood of Jesus! A total silence and peace came on. So much that it woke me up and I said to myself: What is this? I am not a believer, so how come it works? Is it true? That He has all power?! Something stirred my spirit, I had to know if it was really true. I started reading the Bible but didn’t understand. So I start to copy it down on paper. The more I wrote down the more God’s spirit enlightened my spirit. And made it true in my heart that He is alive and have made reconciliation for me with the Father.
I knew I had to move from the environment where I lived. I put myself on the waiting list for rehab and was accepted. I lived in an evangelical conference hotel. I saw there a landscape picture with the Bible verse: “Look I am making all things new.” Rev 21:5. I wanted that! I ended up living there for nearly 3 years. The first 9 months I hardly slept, but what heaven it was to be in the presence of the Lord, to read the Bible, to be with other believers and to sing praise songs.
The hotel was only 300 meters from the beach so even with my body aching all over it was so nice to see the beach, hear the waves, and feel the sun. My life was changed completely.
God truly gave me a new life!
