How often have you heard your mother or father complain when you were young about who you hung around with? If the folks you hung out with smoked, they were sure you were going to smoke. The same with drugs, or stealing. Surely there was no way you could do anything different. If not, you were going to get caught and take the fall because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Parents should feel like this because after all their job is to protect their children who cannot see that these associations can lead to trouble that even the parent can’t get them out of.

What if your first bad influences—at least you have now learned—were your parents? Suppose you had a father who allowed you, a four year old to sit down with him and drink to get drunk? Or saw how after an evening of what started out as social drinking, it turned deadly, with mom and dad trying to kill each other, or dad beating your mother?

We are face in life with many influences. Children are impressionable: they see their parents as good no matter what the parents do. They don’t see bad parents. Others may think they are bad, but not the child. This has been researched and no one understands why an abused child would protect that parent, still love that parent no matter what.

Parents are a child’s first influence, right or wrong in their parenting style. This is what the father or mother who is an alcoholic never thinks about: that they, by their behavior, may have doomed their son or daughter to 20 years of drug addiction, alcohol addiction, or worse, to a life of crime and maybe even a life sentence in jail.

Some would argue if they knew better they would have done better. That could be possible. But it doesn’t fix the damage.     

I started my life keeping company with a father who forced my mother to leave because their drinking habits were out of control. She got tired of him beating on her.  That left a hole in my heart. My father proceeded to fill that hole with alcohol and exposing me to a riotous lifestyle.  I drank with my father at four years old to get drunk. I thought it was cool. After all, it was with dad. A son never sees any fault in his DAD.

A twist of fate took me out of that house with him and into the house of my loving aunt. Perhaps she thought that a “good home” environment would set me straight, and it did as long as I was under age but then after high school I wanted to be FREE to live the party life, do what I wanted.

In a short span of time, I went from alcohol to any drug that would get me high, until CRACK took me down. I lost my way. I was a reject, a social misfit. No one knew me any more and neither did I.  I felt ashamed. I felt hopeless, trapped in a world where I was out of control.

I remember tears falling from my eyes as I looked up in the sky each night from abandoned cars, or underneath house, park benches-- trying to connect to this GOD I had heard so much about in my youth but it appeared that no help was on the way for Greg.

Would I die in my mess, or would I get a miracle? I didn’t know.  After all, why would I deserve a miracle? I had made a mess of my life while it was in my hands. 

What I learned in my 20 years of addiction, being homeless, sick, driven by a negative self-destructive force, that it wasn’t about what I thought I deserved, it was about mercy, undeserved favor.  It wasn’t even about faith because if I had any, I could have believed myself out of my circumstances. There is no credit I can take for this changed life today.

All I know is the results: no more craving for drugs and I have been gifted with a beautiful wife, a son and favor even in employment. I have been stable and drug free for over 12 years. My staying free now depends on me, what I occupy my mind with, my associations and where I want to end up, and my decision to live drug free.

PEACE OUT!

Greg Hammonds