Dear Friend in Christ,
I pray that this testimony of God’s amazing grace in my life will be an encouragement to you if you are suffering with an addiction or have been praying for a loved one in addiction. From the time I was a toddler, addiction has devastated my family. In the first three and a half years of my life, we lost three family members. My uncle, who was in bondage to drugs and saw no way out, took his own life at just 22 years old. Four months later, my father, who battled alcoholism, fell asleep at the wheel and was killed. Eighteen months later, my seventeen-year-old sister was walking down the street when a drunk driver ran off the road and killed her.
I also watched the ongoing destruction that other close family members caused through their addictions. I could not understand how people who had been so affected by other people’s addictions could make the decision to use drugs and alcohol themselves. I remember feeling so irritated when they would say things like “I wish I could stop.” I would reply, “No you don’t, or you would stop.” To say I lacked compassion would be a serious understatement.
I made a personal commitment that I would never touch drugs, and I threw myself into sports as the alternative. When I was fifteen years old, one of my baseball teammates asked me if I was going to heaven. I assured him that I was, since I thought I was a “good person.” He shared with me that we are saved by grace, through faith, and not by works, so I prayed to receive Christ as my Savior. Unfortunately, my “prayer of faith” was not preceded by a godly sorrow for my sin which would have brought about repentance leading to true salvation. I’m afraid to say that had I died during the next nine years of my life, I believe I would have been one of the many to whom Jesus will say, “I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.”
I kept my commitment to not touch drugs throughout high school and college and went on to play baseball at the University of Tampa. Due to a career-ending injury, I transferred to Penn State where I started working in financial services at the end of my senior year. Within one year, I was promoted to vice president, opened a new office for the company in Philadelphia, and married my college sweetheart, Jessica. I thought life just couldn’t get any better, but little did I know it was about to all fall apart.
While on our honeymoon, I aggravated an old back injury from my baseball days for which my doctor prescribed Percocet, an addictive narcotic. The next month, I went to a pain management specialist who prescribed 180 Lorcet per month. It was not long before the person who swore he would never take drugs was totally dependent upon narcotics and scared to death to admit it.
I began to have panic attacks, so my doctor decided to add Xanax to the mix (another very addictive substance). I would go to work so high that I lost the respect of all my associates and clients. What used to be a very successful business was falling apart, and the panic attacks just got worse. The next month my doctor recommended I see a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder and prescribed more medication on top of the two addictive substances I was already on. The more medicine I took, the more my life fell apart, but I had become so dependent that I couldn’t imagine living without it.
Every month it seemed that I was diagnosed with another mental illness and prescribed more drugs. I was admitted to three different psychiatric hospitals for at least one week each. By the time it was over, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizo-affective Disorder, and Fibromyalgia, and I was on nineteen different prescriptions every day. I had lost our business, our apartment, our cars, and all of our money. My pastor at the time advised my wife to divorce me and move on with her life, but by God’s grace, she decided to just move in with a family from our church and pray that God would somehow restore the life we once had.
Like my uncle twenty-five years ago, I saw no way out, and I prayed for death everyday. One day, my prayer was almost realized, and my family received the phone call they feared would come eventually: “You better come down to the hospital; we don’t think he’s going to make it tonight.” The nineteen different medications that I was on had a negative interaction in my brain and I went into seizures, experienced temporary blindness, and felt a deeper sense of fear than I ever knew existed. After six hours of uncontrollable seizures, I finally fell asleep.
The most terrifying part of that whole experience was I felt a deep fear that had I really died that night, I would have gone to hell. That really shook me up, because for the previous nine years I had not only believed that I was saved, but was also sharing my faith with others and even had a part time job in college as a youth pastor.
The next day, I finally repented and completely surrendered my life to God in total brokenness. I almost dared Him to take the life I destroyed and turn it into something that could bring Him glory. At the time, I looked at it as rededicating my life to Christ. However, looking back on it, I believe that was the time that I truly became born again. My eyes were opened spiritually in a way they never were before. I no longer took sin lightly, but my sin became exceedingly sinful to me, and I realized just how much I needed a Savior. I turned to Jesus to not only save me from the consequences of my sin, but also to save me from the power of sin in my life.
It took time to cleanse my mind and body of all of those mind-altering substances, but that day God began a work in my heart and life that still continues today. My wife saw that my repentance was sincere, and though she knew I still had a long way to go, she became willing to go through it with me. We moved in with her parents in Wesley Chapel, Florida to start a new life with no money, no jobs, and no idea what God had in store for us.
I began working full-time as a case manager for youth in a community based diversion program offered by the Department of Juvenile Justice. I was able to start a weekly outreach to these kids on my own time where we would get together and plays sports and then do a Bible study. God blessed that outreach, and we had the joy of seeing many kids give their life to Jesus Christ as a result of it.
In May of 2005, the month of my three year anniversary of being in recovery, God opened up a door for me to help others struggling with addiction by working part time as an addiction counselor at the Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center. Besides the individual counseling I performed there, I was also able to start a program teaching the entire Gospel of John verse by verse to every resident of the center; this program continues to this day and has led many men into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. God’s word never returns void.
In May of 2006, the month of my four year anniversary of being in recovery, God gave me two incredible blessings. The first was the birth of Josiah Sean Hughes, born 5/4/2006, our first born son. The second blessing was that God opened the door for me to come on staff part time at Calvary Chapel of Tampa as the Assistant Pastor. The Senior Pastor of that church and the entire fellowship there has been a huge part of my healing and recovery.
In 2007, once again, May was a monumental month. First, we found out that my wife would be giving birth to a little girl. Secondly, God shut the door on my full time job working as a case manager with youth. My executive director stated that I had to stop allowing kids on my caseload to attend the weekly outreaches we did and stop allowing them to come to our church as well. I was terminated for being unwilling to do so.
I believe that one of the reasons God allowed me to lose that job was so I could focus more of my time and energy on a ministry called Freedom Through Christ Ministries. For now, the ministry will be a community-based outreach to those struggling with addiction. Eventually, it will be a twelve month residential Christ-centered addiction facility which will teach the entire Word of God, verse by verse, to every resident. I believe running Freedom Through Christ Ministries, along with my assistant pastor work at Calvary Chapel of Tampa, is God’s ultimate calling on my life.
As I look back at the absolute mess I made of my life, and all that God has done in just the last five years, I am amazed by His Grace. God shows no partiality towards people, and what He has done in my life, He is willing to do in anyone’s life. It is just a matter of us becoming broken enough to lay down our own life and let Jesus live His divine life through us, or what we call living the exchanged life. “For I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20a). If you would like more information about this ministry or just need someone to talk to or pray with, please feel free to call me at (813) 235-3183. May Jesus be glorified in your life.
In His Love,
Sean Hughes