From Drug Addict Seeker to Confirmed Catholic Believer

by Jim Thomas

I’m 49. Life has become very different since my conversion and confirmation into the Catholic Church. I seem to walk in different air and talk another language. My awareness is different. The change is inside and the changer is Love himself, Jesus. This journey is just beginning; there is much to look forward to.

Let’s go back to 2007 (?):

I got on my bike and decided to disappear into the coast range (of Oregon?) My goal was to pedal my bike until my heart exploded. I had a few cigarettes, some Copenhagen, no money, some water and a 6’ marijuana plant. I had a sleeping bag and some clothes.

I didn’t say good-bye. It’s embarrassing to say these things!

Before I got to the incline of the coast range a bee stung me right between the eyes. My heart didn’t explode going up the hill. I unrolled my bag in a spot away from traffic. I ate that pot and slept in the woods.

I had found the spot where I would starve myself to death. It would be a slow death but I was ready. That night I was woken by an elk or something very loud, near me. As I looked out from my sleeping bag I saw the moon through the fir trees. It looked like a giant castle structure; I am talking huge, like the size of many city blocks. In my heart, I was advised that this is my Father’s house of which there are many rooms. That’s about it for the wood’s experience. I stuck it out till 4:00 PM the next day and then pedaled back down to town. My wife picked me up at a gas station and I puked before going to bed from all the pot I had eaten.

How does a man of 47 decide to end his life this way? There was no forethought. It was completely selfish and immature. I didn’t have the patience to kill myself much less the guts to get through the suffering of starving. I look at this story and feel so little, so ignorant, and that’s exactly what I am. It’s a good thing I am such a mess because that is how our good God found me.

Let’s go back even further:

My mom was a TV news reporter. We lived in Quincy, Illinois. She was busy. I learned what the world was from TV and the pain that social and educational failure felt like at school. I never knew my father. I was a straight D and F student. My mind never stopped looking for anything other than where I was. In my world, men seemed to be drunks and sex maniacs. I didn’t trust men, women I trusted except for women in my age group. I was under the impression that young women were not trained in life yet, so they allowed the devil to guide them in Project Smash Jim’s Self Esteem.

When I was ready for 7th grade, Mom put me in a Lutheran school. For some weird reason I blossomed into the class clown. I was the new guy and made friends with the cool guys. That school was my first experience with Jesus. I got confirmed so I must have known some answers to some questions but it didn’t take, at least it wasn’t apparent. I will say this, I remember sitting on the right hand side of the church with a sun beam landing on me and I remember that being just the right place for me. I also remember lighting the candles during the service.

In high school I fell apart. I found drugs and alcohol. My grades became D’s and F’s again. I started missing school and this progressed into not going to school at all. I got a job as a bus boy. I found a girlfriend who didn’t really know she was my girlfriend and I dove into mental confusion trying to manage a relationship that she didn’t know existed. That didn’t stop me; I pursued her; was devoted to her. She was my everything and she gave nothing back. She was busy with other boys and drugs. She told me to get her a pack of cigarettes, one evening, and I stole a pack of smokes and then went to jail. My family gave me a one-way bus ticket to Oregon to live with my brother. I stumbled around in Oregon for awhile and then joined the Navy.

In the Navy, life got very strange. I bumped around the world, a lost soul. One day a kind man came forward and tried to tell me of Jesus Christ. His words illumined a place in my soul that was very dark. I asked Jesus to come into my heart with that guy’s help. The words in the Bible started leaping out at me. I had become aware of true love. This was a conversion experience. It happened and it was supernatural. The Holy Spirit was moving in me. He was working in me but I wasn’t done walking in darkness.

My experience in the eighties was difficult. There were a lot of hard drugs. This was the era of cocaine and methamphetamine. My world involved these substances. When doing these drugs the Holy Spirit is called upon only when necessary and God in his infinite wisdom allows it to a certain extent.

When I got out of the Navy, I realized that I was now in the real world. I could not get this loaded and still stay alive. I kept the actions of the Holy Spirit, from previous conversion experiences, close to my heart, but God had not given me the grace to fall into His arms yet.

I started the nice guy spiral into total darkness. I moved in with my brother and he was clean and sober so I became that way also. He had kids and we had a great time together, I’ve always got on well with children. I got a job landscaping and through hard work and exercise, I learned to make money for those who employed me and maintain a certain lifestyle.

Then the friends with drugs problem came up and darkness set in during a period of out-of- town work. That experience scared me so I got sober and managed to get through it all although it was terribly empty. As I get closer to the present in my story, things get more painful because the wounds are still open. This was a time of little perceived growth, a time where interactions with people was life draining. This was a confusing and misdirected period in my life. This is how it seems to me but, of course, Jesus was guiding me through this darkness for a greater purpose.

A friend of mine from the landscape company that we both worked at introduced me to my wife, Shirley. We got married. WHAT WERE YOU WORKING AT DURING THIS MARRIAGE? I’m not sure what the outcome of this marriage is going to be even now but it has been going on for 20 years. We are in love and I can’t imagine my life without her. Shirley is Catholic. I assume she has been praying for me this whole time but she isn’t the type to tell me that. I had gone to church with her a few times but didn’t get much out of it. Shirley got pregnant before we were married but we lost our child in a miscarriage. Shirley had a child already. I was a step father and that was unbelievably difficult for me. I got through this somehow… it could have been worse. My stepson is well adjusted but there has to be residual damage due to my uninspired attempts at fatherhood.

After my stepson moved out when he turned eighteen, I started to explore my prospects in life. There were failed businesses and lost jobs and lost opportunities. I had a lot of energy but my ability to find my place in the world was unsuccessful. My wife worked in a local factory and basically supported us inbetween my limited sucesses?

My brother had some success with anti-depressant medication. So I tried medication legal and not legal. At first medication didn’t work but then a doctor decided I had ADD. Now I was given Prosac like medication SSRI’s and amphetamine. Something was working! I was definitely acting and feeling differently. I went back to school, I started painting, and I learned how to navigate on the computer. I built furniture; I made and distilled my own alcohol. I started thinking that everything was relative.

I started developing resentment toward Christians. If you have read Philosophies of the Humanist Manifestos, I was taking on that outlook on my life and the world. I resented Christians because I believed they had stopped progress in the past and would successfully stop any forward progress concerning the human condition.

I considered myself a sort of renaissance man. In retrospect I realize my reasoning was flawed, I believe the medication choked off the Holy Spirit’s work in my soul. This time in my life was very angry. I stopped laughing, that was very weird because I have always been a laugher.

My behavior became less varied and I started focusing intensely on less healthy things than art, writing, and exercise. I started studying chemistry and taking an interest in making my own medication. I never really succeeded in doing that but I did learn enough about chemistry to see the hand of God in everything. The study of chemistry and physics was drawing me back to our Lord. He wasn’t going to let me learn this stuff without understanding His part in it. That was a beautiful thing because it taught me that to really understand something was to know truth and truth can do nothing but set you free.

Still not converted, I realized that I could abuse my legal medication. I applied for social security because I knew I was mentally screwed and I really believed that I was nearing an end. I started drinking a lot. I grew my own marijuana. Friends were disappearing; even the friends of like mind couldn’t take my disposition. My family became distant. I was more alone than at any time in my life. My mother had died a few years ago. My wife was waiting it out but she was about done, too. There were 2 little grand children that looked at me with love, no matter how much I screwed up.

Jim Thomas as I knew him was coming to an end.

Now you are up to where I tried to starve to death on the coast. After I got home I just lay in bed. I was done; my energy was gone. I was in the darkest place yet. I was cold turkey from my legal medication, I had a limited supply of marijuana and the booze was about gone. I had headaches, terrible headaches that required ice and too many migraine pills. If I was able to sleep the headaches might go away, sometimes. I disliked any light.

Sometimes I would be awoken by myself talking in a voice that I didn’t recognize. Even though I was physically and mentally exhausted, pornographic images dwelled in my thoughts. This period was so dark; I think I was on the verge of being possessed by something. I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. I spent weeks in my room. I had reached the point where those who have a will to, eventually really commit suicide. I reflect back and realize that I would have committed suicide if it was assured. I thought an injection of heroin would be best. Our good God didn’t leave any heroin lying around.

I started looking for relief. There was limited time between headaches and I watched TV during these hours. An interesting thing happened. Most secular TV would actually make me physically ill. I saw sadness and desperation in almost everything. The news became twisted; the comedy shows glamorized everything that had gotten me to this point. I started seeing the pain of sin, unleashed on the world. What would have entertained me was now reminding me how I got where I was right now.

The religious programming that I saw was not resonating in my heart. Sometimes the religious programming made me more depressed than the secular. Then one day I found Mother Angelica and the sisters praying the Rosary. I knew this was Catholic, I had known some Catholics in my past but they had been party people. My wife was Catholic but not practicing her faith. It was a comfort to have her there, she was witnessing God’s work in me. She supported any positive energy in our life and is still a witness to that. So I just watched and listened to that Rosary and shortly thereafter fell asleep. That rosary was exorcizing evil and still is. I know this is true! I could only sleep soundly and find relief when the rosary was being said. I started watching EWTN just waiting for the rosary. That rosary was really the only thing I listened to at first. Nothing else sunk in even though I was watching. I was waiting for that rosary.

One day, Mary seemed to be asking me in my heart, “Do you want to be a member of this family?” Oh, I felt this great motherly presence. I was so moved. I can’t really describe this adequately except to say this was another truly supernatural experience. My heavenly Mother had deemed the time right to approach her lost little boy.

I started leaving room for her to sit on the edge of my bed, I didn’t see her, but I needed to leave that room for her.

I now was going through my conversion. EWTN was the conduit God was using. I joined my local church’s RCIA class. In RCIA, I started the first class with multiple bong hits. As I look back on it, I am not sure why I needed that but I did it and I was into the instruction. I was well adjusted to being stoned so I didn’t really feel stoned, just normal. I would say that after about 3 classes, I no longer wished to be high. I started attending completely sober. I guess there was a wait and see attitude in the beginning and it was adding up to something that I really needed to so I stuck with it. I got more and more zealous. In the end there was only me and another guy in RCIA.

I started attending mass, no communion just mass. That was very amazing. Attending mass gave me those old feelings I used to have in church but Mass was different because there was this other thing I had to look forward to which was taking Jesus into me. I longed for that so much, I knew what it was and there was much more to learn about it, it was mystical, a miracle that happened and I was right there. I could feel it happening.

When I made me first confession to Father Jim, I didn’t feel completely lifted of the burden of my sins but I did understand I was forgiven. I had done the procedure our Lord had prescribed for us to be forgiven of those sins that had done damage. Like it or not I was going to have to deal with the damage sin does in our lives. By His grace, I now had a chance to move through this darkness and function in truth.

Oh what joy there is in the transition that occurred in such a short period of time. Father Jim warned me that this was the honeymoon and to expect this overwhelming experience to level off. I knew what he meant… and it has… but as with anything else our Father does it was not harsh or unmanageable. There was never any feeling like I was left to thrash about, at least not yet.

My fellow RCIA class mate and I got confirmed on Easter. Usually events like that usually make me very nervous. I was to be presented to the whole congregation and it was a huge deal! I was eager. My wife, too, was eager. It was an anxious time, I wouldn’t say comfortable. It was the most solid indicator of my life being changed for the better that I had ever experienced. I kept feeling as if my biological mother was celebrating in heaven for me. I could feel her smile beaming down on me and encouraging me. Our blessed Mother seemed to be supervising the whole affair and it was extraordinary.

I’ve taken criticism from my newfound conversion experience. It’s been hinted to me that those who follow Jesus are weak and unable to deal with life in its stark reality. My brother called me a religious nut and smirked at my crucifix. The world, in general is turning away from Christ more and more each day or it seems that way sometimes. How does one deal with all the doubts that arise and the influences that those you care about put upon you as a Christian? I think about scripture and what Jesus says to his disciples, “oh ye of little faith.”

Faith is hard work, you don’t get faith without grace but that doesn’t make it easy because, in a way, you don’t get grace without faith. I have to want Jesus; my free will comes into play. To those that claimed I am weak and unable to handle life in the reality as they see it, I say simply, “I’ve done that. I walked with my back to Jesus for many years yet I saw Christ in everything even when I wasn’t looking.” I had given up and wished to die before my conversion. Not just towards the end but for many years I walked in the grey dusk of life without hope. In this dusk I found the strength to continue working and maintaining things. I was in the act of living without our Lord’s grace but living. It was empty and I saw nothing redeeming in it except that it was the journey to Jesus, so I would say it was my God’s classroom and I got through it. Thank you Jesus for letting it be, past me!

To those who called me a nut, I had no reply. The grace put in me from God made me a fool for Christ, drove me to be a committed Christian. I am not perfect but striving. I may be nuts but I had that feeling that one gets when there is no doubt what he is doing is for the good God’s pleasure.

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Published on May 31st 2009 on the feast of Pentecost, with written permission from the author.
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