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Addiction Compounds Desperation of Man’s Self-Centered Existence

“I pulled off the road and I had just taken a drink, and I'm like, ‘I need a DUI. I need – whatever it is, I'm willing to accept the consequences because I can't stop. God, I can't stop. I'm going to wreck my marriage, I'm going to wreck my family,’" Jason Biddle says. 

Jason struggled with an alcohol and drug addiction for over a decade. “I had this just lust, and this-now this physical dependency to use these drugs, and if I didn’t have them, I would be sick.”

When Jason was a boy growing up in Minnesota, he idolized baseball. When an injury thwarted his sports career, he got into construction work. “The money became my new love. I mean, I was making tens of thousands a week in some cases. I could spend it on whatever I wanted, you know, frivolously.”

Much of that frivolous spending went for alcohol. Body building also became a big part of Jason’s life. To deal with the muscular pain, he began taking the painkiller Nubain. “It took away the pain, it was fine,” Jason says. “And then I remember one time I actually hit a vein with it and it was the best high I'd ever had. And then it went from working out to just shooting up Nubain.”

Later, Jason met and married Britney. She had no clue about his substance abuse until she caught him shooting up in their bathroom. 

She says, “It became real clear to me that it was serious and I was – I just couldn't be with him the rest of my life, so I-I decided to leave, finally after many threats that day, I left.”

Jason talked Britney into reconciling, and they started a family.  Later, a friend invited them to a spirit-filled church, where they heard the Gospel, and both responded. 

“I wanted to learn more about Jesus, I wanted to learn more about faith,” Britney says. “I know that this was a true spiritual heart connection versus what I had had before.”
 
Jason adds, “I just remember him doing the altar call and ‘Hey, if you're not sure that you're going to go to heaven, you know, this is how it happens. You know? You’ve got to confess with your mouth and say that you're a sinner and you've got to believe that Christ died for your sins.’ And man, when he said that, just I remember just something came over me and I raised my hand and I just, I knew that I wanted that.”

Jason stayed sober for a while, but the years of drug and alcohol abuse had taken a toll on his liver, and he had to have a tumor removed. When his surgery was over, he was prescribed more painkillers.  
“The doctor told me, he said, ‘You can never – you can't ever drink again because you're borderline cirrhotic.’  Within the first week I remember going to the liquor store and getting a bottle when my wife was gone. I like took the car and with a wide-open wound, wide-open liver and I went down, because the pills just weren't enough, I needed to have alcohol with it.”

One weekend, Britney went away with some friends when she got an early morning phone call from one of their kids.

“He was calling saying he couldn’t wake up his dad,” she recalls. “I got on the next flight home to Minnesota and met my parents at the hospital and that is where they said –the doctors were saying, he was just critically ill and they weren’t sure which way it would go yet. They had never seen anybody recover from the vitals being so low.”

When Jason recovered from his overdose, Britney left him again. This was a turning point for him.  

“She's like, ‘You know, Jason, this has been going on for too long. I’ve got to protect the kids and I don't know if this is going to work.’ and I'm like, ‘God, if she doesn't want to be with me, I deserve it. I surrender it all to you, Lord. I give it all. I give it all up to you. You do with it as You will because I can’t do it anymore.’ I think that-that was the moment of absolute, true brokenness, and surrender.”

Upon his release from the hospital, Jason entered a rehab program at redemption house in Minnesota.  

“Addiction is – always comes back to a heart issue.” Jason says. “It always comes back to our sick hearts because we want something, we want to fill something that we just can’t. And then drugs and alcohol are an easy, just – they're just kind of an easy thing to fill a void with. I had these idols. I didn't know what idols were, but an idol is anything that we put in front of God. We were able to harness in what my idols were, things that I just really put in front of God that I held really close to my heart, and that was pride, control, and money. I loved those things.”

While at Redemption House, Jason also began writing songs with another resident, and God has opened up doors for a music ministry. 

“I'm not ashamed of what happened because God gave me a story that He wants me to share,” he says. “It's becoming a ministry through the music and through my story that I can share the Gospel.”

Jason is now clean and sober for good, and God has restored his marriage. With the old idols gone from his life, he now has a new focus. “I'm just super blessed to have been able to find and be where I'm at right now spiritually with my wife and family through Him using that absolute brokenness, and I'm super excited and honored to be used by God,” Jason says. 

“There's only one way. There's only one hope, and that's Christ,” he adds. “It really is. And you have to let everything down. You have to hit your rock bottom. We want to try to do it on our own, especially addicts and alcoholics. We want to try to do it on our own. Nobody wants to wave the white flag, but man, when you wave the white flag, that's when God comes running. That’s when He comes running toward you.”

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