The Testimony of Eddie Callahan
This month we will share with our readers the testimony of one who has tried all of his life to find peace. However, it was in the trying by human effort that caused him to fail. It was not until he learned to trust in God, not in men or in substances, that peace was realized. It is He that enables us to believe and to have faith. It is not by our own efforts that we attain peace. Peace is a gift from God as a result of faith. The following is a message of hope by the testimony of Eddie Callahan.
Dysfunctional with a Capital D
I was born into a family that was the textbook definition of dysfunctional. I had the unconditional love of Mom along with the terror that comes from having an addicted, abusive father. Mom, to this day, has never touched alcohol or drugs. She has herself had to endure the tragedy of being married to an addict and raising an addicted son. My life was a story of never-ending chaos.
Mom worked 12 to15 hours per day, six to seven days a week, to support the family. My mother did the best she could to make a home for us. And according to Mom, so did my father for the first three years of my life. My father, being a very accomplished pianist, played the piano for two of the largest churches in the city of Atlanta and worked a fulltime job. Mom and my father met in church in 1959 and were married five months later.
I was born on Dec. 18, 1960, and lived a normal life until my father broke his shoulder in 1963. Through prescription drugs my father became a feared abusive addict that ruled over our lives for the rest of his life.
His work ethic soon began to go south. He was in and out of a job until around 1966 when he became totally disabled with cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes, and Parkinson’s Disease. From as far back as I can remember until his death in 1985, he had to be in and out of an institution for psychiatric disorders and or drug addiction.
The Beginning of Hell
When the drugs started , so did the abuse . He was at home all the time, and my mother had to work to keep us going. By the time she got home every night, I was asleep. It was then that he began to force pills and beer down my throat to keep me quiet.
By the time I was six, I began to steal his pills to escape the pain. I was always threatened that if I ever told he’d kill both of us. Many days, I had to call to get help from him falling in the floor passed out. Later, my mother got to see this when we’d take him to the hospital every night to get a shot and pills to combat withdrawals. Back then, prescriptions were given freely and without the control that is in effect today.
I had long since started on my own to use drugs both for pleasure and to escape. By the time I was eleven, I was taking pills heavily, drinking, and smoking pot. The abuse finally stopped one day when I was asked by my father " Why do you use drugs"? My answer was "like father, like son". He then tried to choke me, but I hit him with a baseball bat. He never touched me again, but the effects would haunt me for many more years.
I had become a full blown drug addict and I hadn’t yet turned thirteen.
For my fifteenth birthday, I was given my first gram of cocaine. I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. Nothing had ever been so good, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I now know the reason why cocaine is called "The Big Lie". More about that later.
At age 17, three days out of high school, I got married. I failed in all attempts to support us. Her father was a Chief Line Mechanic for Eastern Airlines making an excellent salary as a result of his training in the Navy. Expecting the same, I volunteered for the Navy.
While in Basic Training, my wife left me for someone else. This, needless to say, was a big blow. I was offered the opportunity by my company commanders to get out, but they also encouraged me to stay in. I decided to stay. For once, I had made a good choice. Being color blind, I couldn’t be in the Nuclear Power Field for which I had qualified for but I was offered the chance to be a Hospital Corpsman. I was also given the opportunity to receive a good education and took full advantage of this. I never could have afforded an education if it had not been for Uncle Sam. Unfortunately, I used my knowledge of chemistry and medical technology to further manipulate my addiction.
During my time in the Navy, I had gotten married for the second time and divorced due to my committing adultery. During my last year in the military, I was caught for and disciplined three times for positive cocaine screens. I soon learned how to beat these tests by my knowledge of masking reagents and test methodologies.
When I got out of the military, I was introduced to the needle and another one of Satan’s delicacies called Heroin. The combination of the two drugs together was just what the doctor ordered, or so I thought. All the while, I was working for one of the largest hospitals in the southeast in the Blood Bank doing compatibility studies for trauma patients and surgical patients to receive blood and special processing of washed packed cells for immuno - suppressed patients. It wasn’t long before I was committed for the first time for detoxifcation from cocaine and opiates.
For years, I continued the vicious cycle of working to support my habit in a clinical or reference laboratory. Now I realize that it was only by the Grace of God that I did not pass out an erroneous result to a physician which could have killed someone if the result had been wrong. For many conditions, medication is given solely on the basis of the laboratory findings. Had I given out the wrong result at any time to a doctor the patient could have been administered the wrong meds and suffered for it.
On April 14, 1985, I was told that my father had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge onto the expressway and being hit by an oncoming truck. During his funeral, I was talking to my father in his casket like he was still alive and cursing him. When he was buried, I was given a joint and a bottle of liquor and told "Here, you are going to need this". I needed to hear this like I needed a hole in the head.
For awhile I was a functioning addict. I went to work during the day and did dope at night. Then the consequences began: Overdoses, my heart having to be re-started , stomach pumping , comas, more detoxing, then finally legal trouble.
Finally last June, I was busted for possession of cocaine. While I was in jail, ,I met a man named Shane who told me about Promise Land Ministries Church of the Narrow Way.
On Nov. 12, 1999, I was given the opportunity to come to Promise Land. I could not have known the freedom that was to come. Yet, when I found out that this was not a typical, secular 12-step program, that its purpose was to establish a relationship with God, I froze up. I hated God. I always wanted to know, "If God is all knowing and all powerful and so loving, how could He let a three-year-old child get high and get abused by the one he calls father?"
I blamed God for everything that had happened to me.
For the first six months that I was at Promise Land all I ever did was put on an act. Little did I realize that the only person I was fooling was myself. Pastor Al kept telling me to "seek" God. One night, on the sofa in the church, I was finally and literally brought to my knees. I knew He was there, and that He had been there all along through all the years of my hate.
I knew instantly that it was because of Him, and not in spite of Him, that I have been made alive in Him to give this testimony . Through all the years that I hated Him, He loved me enough to make me a survivor.
I have been on the receiving end of knowledge that books and man cannot give. I understand now that it is God and God alone that makes the changes in us. Of ourselves, through our own effort, we will always fall.
God has blessed me in so many ways, but most of all He has given me Life. I realize more each day that I have been called on to be His servant. Thank God this wretch finally has a purpose that helps and not harms !
TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY ! AMEN.
Eddie Callahan