By Antonio Pellot –
Realizing he had overdosed on meth and fentanyl, Jake reached for the Narcan spray in his pocket that would save him from dying by reversing the effects of the drugs. But when he tried to spray it up his nose, he missed.
“I’m going to go to hell,” he thought. “I need to pray.”
Everything shifted for Jake in the fourth grade. His mom got jailed for drugs. His stepdad was already in prison for domestic violence. He was taken in by his step grandparents, who didn’t show him love.
“My grandma didn’t like me or my sister. She only wanted her grandson,” he says on a Door Church LA video on YouTube.
Jake secretly smoked weed and consumed mushrooms.
When his stepdad got out of prison, he moved it. Eventually he snapped; he only had antipathy toward Jake.
“He told me to kill myself,” Jake remembers. “I was struggling with suicide. I would cut myself. I tried killing myself a few times with pills. I was really depressed.”
He reached out to the school police looking for help, but that backfired. He was told that if he continued to use drugs, he and his siblings would be broken up. So, he backpedaled and said the story was a lie to get attention.
Not long afterward, he ran away to an aunt’s house. She was a Christian. “That was my first encounter with God,” he says. “Being in that house, it felt like I was actually loved. It felt good. I was going to church, but I didn’t understand church. I didn’t care about church; I just cared that I was loved.”
But he went to a church retreat and was touched by God.
Unfortunately, “it didn’t stick,” he says. He forgot about God and just lived his life. He moved to Mexico by himself. “That’s when I got introduced to cocaine,” he acknowledges.
First, the coke abuse was on weekends only. Then it became daily. Then all day.
Searching for cocaine one day, he found a dealer who offered him a gram for $20. When he sniffed the first line, he realized it wasn’t cocaine. It was meth mixed with fentanyl. He overdosed. He sprayed the Narcan up his nose but missed the nasal passage.
“God, I don’t want to go to Hell,” he prayed. “I don’t want to die. If you somehow make me live, I promise I’ll go back to church. I’ll live right.”
Jake surrendered his life to Jesus Christ.
That was a year and half ago.
He began to attend church and got baptized. He still has “rocky moments” and is not perfect. But God doesn’t require perfection, he says.
“If you’re struggling with drug addiction, it’s only going to feel good for that moment,” he says. “It’s not going to be a forever high. Drugs are a counterfeit peace. You’re always going to pay more money to feel good for that moment. You’re broken.”
Jake discovered the only answer to his brokenness was to surrender to Jesus and begin to follow him as Savior and Lord.
If you want to know more about a personal relationship with God, go here
About the writer of this article: Antonio Pellot lives in North Hollywood (Los Angeles) and studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy.
