I Am A Believer
“I was addicted to drugs and living on lower East Hastings, Vancouver. Four years ago, I was in a treatment facility and one night I tried to escape. My room was on the third floor and I thought I could tie my bed sheets together, hang them out of the window and climb down. It was raining out and I couldn’t hang on. I fell 27 feet down to the ground. I broke my back in two places and every bone in my left leg under my knee. The paramedics came and I passed out on the way to the hospital. Ten months after, I overdosed on heroin and the paramedic Narcanned me. When I regained consciousness, he was smiling at me and said, ‘You don’t recognize me do you?’ I said, ‘No, sorry I don’t.’ He told me that he was the same paramedic who took me to the hospital 10 months earlier when I fell. I said, ‘I’ve been looking for you — you’ve saved my life twice now. Thank you.’ It was the next day that I got sober. I had always said, ‘The day I get Narcanned is the day I quit heroin.’ I decided to give my addiction to God. It was God’s strength that gave me the ability to quit drugs and alcohol for good. I went into detox for 10 days and then a treatment facility for six months. I moved back to Calgary and I got my certification as an Emergency Medical Dispatcher. I wanted to work in the field and give back to those who had saved me. I was fully certified and got job offers from Edmonton, Red Deer and Calgary but, once they found out that I had a criminal record, they said they couldn’t hire me. I’ve now decided to go back to school and pursue my other passion, which is music. I want to write songs that help others the way music has helped me through the hard times in my life.”