Jamie’s story

2006

I am 31 years old and lived in Coatbridge near Glasgow. I am an ex-resident of The Haven, having finished the programme in the summer of 2006.

I came to The Haven as a broken young man with 15 years of alcoholism and drug abuse behind me. I grew up in a loving and supportive family but as I reached the age of about 14, I started to experiment with alcohol and drugs. All of the decisions I made were made by me alone – my experimenting was by my own choice.

When I reached 16 I started to lose the plot and didn’t really believe that I would be able to make much of my life. I believed that life was hopeless and that there wasn’t much point to anything. Also losing a close family member to drugs and alcohol, when I was 17, started me down a very dark road in which I became a withdrawn person. I didn’t feel I belonged anywhere.

When my mum died of cancer, I was 21 years old. I was close to my mother. My family went through a kind of breakdown at that point. I couldn’t really cope with all of this. I started drinking more and used a lot of speed in order to escape. I was very depressed.

I decided that my home town was the problem and so I left and headed to Peterhead in the north east of Scotland, thinking that this would solve my problems; it didn’t. I took my problems with me and then from there to Ireland, Australia, England and then finally back to my home town of Coatbridge; all the time searching for an escape from a burden that I didn’t even understand. My drinking was now so bad that I would go months without washing or shaving and would sleep in closes or behind billboards or sheds. I was at the end of myself and thought about suicide quite often but was too scared to go through with killing myself. I had a belief in God and maybe this is where my fear came from.

I came across the Teen Challenge ‘coffee-bar’ bus in Coatbridge so decided to go on it to see if they could help. The workers took me to a Teen Challenge meeting one Sunday evening in Port Glasgow. It was there that I heard a man from Ballymena share his story of how Jesus had saved him and turned his life around from being a drug dealer and addict to a life filled with hope and a future. I thought that if Jesus had healed this man from addiction and mental health problems then He could do the same for me. I knew Jesus had really worked in this man’s life because what he was sharing was real to me. You couldn’t make this up. I was faced with a decision; I couldn’t say “no”. At the end of the meeting some people helped me to pray – I asked Jesus to help me, to forgive me and to heal me and turn my life around and He did in a dramatic way. He opened my eyes to the truth of the gospel and gave me a faith in my saviour Jesus. He has told me that he loves me and values me. He has healed the hurt that was inside me and given my life back to me.

Once I thought life was meaningless but now I know that Jesus is life. When I asked Jesus into my life and my heart, He gave me a life worth living.