My name is Jackie de Boer and I am a believer who struggles with a drug addiction.
As a child I thought I had a relatively normal life, when I was 10 that all changed. My parents got a divorce and my dad took a job in Saudi Arabia and left my sister & I with our real mom here in joburg. My real mom has a mental illness and refuses to take medication allowing it to become progressively and continuously worse. This illness lead her to be very abusive and hateful at times and then to be very caring and loving at other times.
In the beginning she would leave me alone and her wrath would always be aimed at my older sister. I would watch her beat my sister until she was on the ground in a fetal position screaming at my mom to stop and shouting sorry for something she was not guilty of. I would listen to our real mom call her fat, ugly, stupid, worthless, unlovable and many more hateful things. My sister wanted to protect me from her and would tell me to stay in my room until she told me to come out. Even safe in my room I could hear everything that happened and I remember being terrified. I watched this chaos destroy my sister and I watched her turn to drugs to escape the pain. When our dad came back from Saudi Arabia my sister went to go and live with him and I still stayed with our real mom.
The years of watching our mom abuse my sister had hardened my heart towards her. At the age of 12 I saw our mom as a monster and the source of pure evil.
What was to follow was her abuse towards me and mine towards her.
I was 13 by the time my real mom had directed her wrath towards me. She would beat me and shout hateful words to me every day, I had now become the fat, ugly, stupid, worthless and unlovable one to her. I had no friends because I was too ashamed to let anyone see what I went through. My addiction also began at this time. I had already started drinking and smoking weed, the smoking weed was at least once a day every day. The substance numbed the pain my mother created, it made me feel confident and invincible. I used this new found confidence to fight my mom back. Whenever she started a fight with me I would scream back at her and call her useless, stupid, worthless and unlovable. For every time she hit me I would hit her harder and more times and when she started crying I would shout at her and tell her she had made me like this. I would use her illness as a tool to manipulate her into getting what I wanted out of her. I also began to mimic her suicidal behaviour when I didn’t get what I wanted from her or even life itself. By the time I was 15 I had no conscience, only a heart filled with hate and a very convincing mask that said it was all ok. I had been raped and all my relationships had been filled with lies and cheating.
My mom left me when I was in grade 10 and I went to go and stay with my dad. I moved to a new school where I was the outcast for coming from a government school and having a mom that had left me. I pretended not to care but I really did. I started using KAT to hide the pain that I felt every day. I just felt more and more alone and I was using every day by the age of 17. In matric I swapped my drug addiction for alcoholism, this being the more socially acceptable substance I wasn’t as shunned by my peers anymore but my addiction had become much stronger than me so it wasn’t long before everyone in my school noticed that I was permanently drunk or hung over and shunned me again. I managed to somehow barely pass matric.
I lived in a world in which I didn’t trust anyone and I lived by a rule which was you will never hurt me because I will always hurt you first. I was very aggressive and I was always involved in fights at every party. At one party I beat up a random girl, her mother wanted to press charges against me but luckily she never knew my name so I managed to dodge that bullet.
When I was 19 I became involved in a drug syndicate. I would transport large amounts of drugs to and from clubs, carry the drugs into the clubs and distribute them to the runners. I would use the money to buy my drug of choice. By this time I was eating once a week, barely sleeping or bathing and I would drive out tanks of petrol to get away from a car that I thought was always following me(that car was a product from my sleep deprivation and paranoia, it wasn’t real).
I believed God had done this to me, I told myself that he had cursed me and didn’t love me. I saw him as the source of my pain because he had created my mom and made my dad leave her. I thought that the world hated me and wanted to destroy me. I eventually deleted all of my friends from all social media and wouldn’t leave my house due to being paranoid that they were all out to get me.
At the beginning of October 2012 I was home alone. I was so broken and I couldn’t go on any longer. I bought 3 boxes of disprin and I drank them all. I remember the pain that I felt in my soul and the desperation. Before I passed out I remember praying, I don’t know why but I did. I told God that I couldn’t do it anymore and that I needed his help, I told him I didn’t want to die but I didn’t see any other way. I must’ve been passed out for a few hours and something somehow woke me up. I felt an intense pain surge through my back, the memory is very foggy but I do remember your liver starting to fail is extremely unpleasant and painful. I managed to get hold of a friend who came to my house and called an ambulance to take me to hospital.
My one friend who came to visit me in the hospital, who was an intense crystal meth addict himself decided that my time as a druggie had to come to an end. while I was still in the hospital he told me that when I get out he is going to come with me to tell my dad and that I was going to rehab whether I like it or not. That is exactly what happened, when I got out of hospital he came with me to my dad and I told my dad about my addiction and that I needed rehab. On the 28th October 2012 I was a resident at the Drug Educational Council in Noupoort.
God had heard my prayer that night and He was there with me. So not knowing anything about God I kept praying every day. I learnt that I didn’t have to hate or hurt everyone and I learnt that the pain that I endured from a young age was because we live in a fallen world & it was a product of my mother’s own wrong choices not because I deserved it or because God hated me.
The first scripture that I read was Romans 15:1,”we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.”
It showed me that God calls us to help each other not to hurt each other and when I read that I started to trust him. I became joyful and content the more time I spent in the Word.
During my stay at DEC I met my ex-boyfriend. Against Andre and Nicolas will we began a relationship when we left DEC. he relapsed a week later and I relapsed a month later. We entered full blown addiction immediately. He taught me how to spike and I fell in love with it. In an attempt to hide it from our parents we moved to east London where everything became a million times worse overnight. In the 3months of us being together I had also become a heroin addict (he didn’t tell me that he was giving me heroine but he was mixing heroine in with the KAT).
He used to hit me and call me stupid. I could only use if he thought I had earned it and if he didn’t think that I had earned it I would have to withdraw all night without knowing why I was in so much pain and if I complained he would hit me. Eventually after my fifth overdose( I only realised that I had overdosed on heroine when I got back to DEC and Nicola told me that it was an overdose) I phoned my step mom and told her what was happening and I went back to DEC. when I re-entered recovery I felt more shame than ever before.
I cried to God every night and He reminded me of everything that he had taught me in his Word. Mathew 4:4,” Jesus answered, The Scriptures say; No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken.”
I have learnt to listen to wise council, Proverbs 15:22,”Without counsel purposes are disappointed; but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.” and that it’s not about the mistakes we make but what we learn from them and how we grow from those lessons. Romans 8:28,” And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
Over the past 2years I have faced many struggles and accomplished many triumphs. James 1:12,” God will bless you, if you don’t give up when your faith is being tested. He will reward you with a glorious life, just as He rewards everyone who loves Him.”
My parents have started to trust me and I have started to see the world through more joyful eyes. 1Chronicles 16:27,” Honour and majesty are found in his presence; strength and joy are found in his sanctuary.”
Even though it’s still hard I’ve begun to see challenges as an opportunity to grow and not a reason to fall. James 1:2-4,” My friends, be glad, even if you have a lot of trouble. You know that you learn to endure by having your faith tested. But you must learn to endure everything, so that you will be completely mature and not lacking in anything.”
I’ve learnt to accept situations and people for who and what they are and not to manipulate everyone so that I can be in control and have my own way. Romans 15:7,” Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ accepted us to the glory of God.”
I’ve learnt to be honest with the people in my life and myself.
I’ve learnt to forgive.2Corinthians 2:7-8,”when people sin you should forgive and comfort them, so they won’t give up in despair. You should make them sure of your love for them.”
Most importantly to forgive myself for who I was and what I did so that I can move forward from the past and let it go.
I’m glad to say that God is my best friend and through him I am renewed and restored each and every day.
I share my heart with Him and all though some days I stray I always turn back to him because I remember the night I cried out and He came to rescue me. Jonah2:2,”when I was in trouble, Lord, I prayed to you, and you listened to me. From deep in the world of the dead, I begged for your help, and you answered my prayer.”
Mighty Wings has taught me to accountable and to see & stop a problem before it becomes a problem.
I find great comfort in having a support group that I can relate to and share my struggles without being judged.
I still have difficulties and I make mistakes everyday but I don’t let that discourage me but instead encourage me to lean in closer to God.
I stand here today 1year and 7days clean and sober and I have never felt more alive and free than ever before. This is all thanks to God and his wonderful mercy and grace.
I want to leave you all with something that Andre taught me. Recovery is not about the things of this world, it is about the change that transpires in our hearts because we choose to give our lives to our saviour, The Lord Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel 36:26,” I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
As a child I thought I had a relatively normal life, when I was 10 that all changed. My parents got a divorce and my dad took a job in Saudi Arabia and left my sister & I with our real mom here in joburg. My real mom has a mental illness and refuses to take medication allowing it to become progressively and continuously worse. This illness lead her to be very abusive and hateful at times and then to be very caring and loving at other times.
In the beginning she would leave me alone and her wrath would always be aimed at my older sister. I would watch her beat my sister until she was on the ground in a fetal position screaming at my mom to stop and shouting sorry for something she was not guilty of. I would listen to our real mom call her fat, ugly, stupid, worthless, unlovable and many more hateful things. My sister wanted to protect me from her and would tell me to stay in my room until she told me to come out. Even safe in my room I could hear everything that happened and I remember being terrified. I watched this chaos destroy my sister and I watched her turn to drugs to escape the pain. When our dad came back from Saudi Arabia my sister went to go and live with him and I still stayed with our real mom.
The years of watching our mom abuse my sister had hardened my heart towards her. At the age of 12 I saw our mom as a monster and the source of pure evil.
What was to follow was her abuse towards me and mine towards her.
I was 13 by the time my real mom had directed her wrath towards me. She would beat me and shout hateful words to me every day, I had now become the fat, ugly, stupid, worthless and unlovable one to her. I had no friends because I was too ashamed to let anyone see what I went through. My addiction also began at this time. I had already started drinking and smoking weed, the smoking weed was at least once a day every day. The substance numbed the pain my mother created, it made me feel confident and invincible. I used this new found confidence to fight my mom back. Whenever she started a fight with me I would scream back at her and call her useless, stupid, worthless and unlovable. For every time she hit me I would hit her harder and more times and when she started crying I would shout at her and tell her she had made me like this. I would use her illness as a tool to manipulate her into getting what I wanted out of her. I also began to mimic her suicidal behaviour when I didn’t get what I wanted from her or even life itself. By the time I was 15 I had no conscience, only a heart filled with hate and a very convincing mask that said it was all ok. I had been raped and all my relationships had been filled with lies and cheating.
My mom left me when I was in grade 10 and I went to go and stay with my dad. I moved to a new school where I was the outcast for coming from a government school and having a mom that had left me. I pretended not to care but I really did. I started using KAT to hide the pain that I felt every day. I just felt more and more alone and I was using every day by the age of 17. In matric I swapped my drug addiction for alcoholism, this being the more socially acceptable substance I wasn’t as shunned by my peers anymore but my addiction had become much stronger than me so it wasn’t long before everyone in my school noticed that I was permanently drunk or hung over and shunned me again. I managed to somehow barely pass matric.
I lived in a world in which I didn’t trust anyone and I lived by a rule which was you will never hurt me because I will always hurt you first. I was very aggressive and I was always involved in fights at every party. At one party I beat up a random girl, her mother wanted to press charges against me but luckily she never knew my name so I managed to dodge that bullet.
When I was 19 I became involved in a drug syndicate. I would transport large amounts of drugs to and from clubs, carry the drugs into the clubs and distribute them to the runners. I would use the money to buy my drug of choice. By this time I was eating once a week, barely sleeping or bathing and I would drive out tanks of petrol to get away from a car that I thought was always following me(that car was a product from my sleep deprivation and paranoia, it wasn’t real).
I believed God had done this to me, I told myself that he had cursed me and didn’t love me. I saw him as the source of my pain because he had created my mom and made my dad leave her. I thought that the world hated me and wanted to destroy me. I eventually deleted all of my friends from all social media and wouldn’t leave my house due to being paranoid that they were all out to get me.
At the beginning of October 2012 I was home alone. I was so broken and I couldn’t go on any longer. I bought 3 boxes of disprin and I drank them all. I remember the pain that I felt in my soul and the desperation. Before I passed out I remember praying, I don’t know why but I did. I told God that I couldn’t do it anymore and that I needed his help, I told him I didn’t want to die but I didn’t see any other way. I must’ve been passed out for a few hours and something somehow woke me up. I felt an intense pain surge through my back, the memory is very foggy but I do remember your liver starting to fail is extremely unpleasant and painful. I managed to get hold of a friend who came to my house and called an ambulance to take me to hospital.
My one friend who came to visit me in the hospital, who was an intense crystal meth addict himself decided that my time as a druggie had to come to an end. while I was still in the hospital he told me that when I get out he is going to come with me to tell my dad and that I was going to rehab whether I like it or not. That is exactly what happened, when I got out of hospital he came with me to my dad and I told my dad about my addiction and that I needed rehab. On the 28th October 2012 I was a resident at the Drug Educational Council in Noupoort.
God had heard my prayer that night and He was there with me. So not knowing anything about God I kept praying every day. I learnt that I didn’t have to hate or hurt everyone and I learnt that the pain that I endured from a young age was because we live in a fallen world & it was a product of my mother’s own wrong choices not because I deserved it or because God hated me.
The first scripture that I read was Romans 15:1,”we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.”
It showed me that God calls us to help each other not to hurt each other and when I read that I started to trust him. I became joyful and content the more time I spent in the Word.
During my stay at DEC I met my ex-boyfriend. Against Andre and Nicolas will we began a relationship when we left DEC. he relapsed a week later and I relapsed a month later. We entered full blown addiction immediately. He taught me how to spike and I fell in love with it. In an attempt to hide it from our parents we moved to east London where everything became a million times worse overnight. In the 3months of us being together I had also become a heroin addict (he didn’t tell me that he was giving me heroine but he was mixing heroine in with the KAT).
He used to hit me and call me stupid. I could only use if he thought I had earned it and if he didn’t think that I had earned it I would have to withdraw all night without knowing why I was in so much pain and if I complained he would hit me. Eventually after my fifth overdose( I only realised that I had overdosed on heroine when I got back to DEC and Nicola told me that it was an overdose) I phoned my step mom and told her what was happening and I went back to DEC. when I re-entered recovery I felt more shame than ever before.
I cried to God every night and He reminded me of everything that he had taught me in his Word. Mathew 4:4,” Jesus answered, The Scriptures say; No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken.”
I have learnt to listen to wise council, Proverbs 15:22,”Without counsel purposes are disappointed; but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.” and that it’s not about the mistakes we make but what we learn from them and how we grow from those lessons. Romans 8:28,” And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
Over the past 2years I have faced many struggles and accomplished many triumphs. James 1:12,” God will bless you, if you don’t give up when your faith is being tested. He will reward you with a glorious life, just as He rewards everyone who loves Him.”
My parents have started to trust me and I have started to see the world through more joyful eyes. 1Chronicles 16:27,” Honour and majesty are found in his presence; strength and joy are found in his sanctuary.”
Even though it’s still hard I’ve begun to see challenges as an opportunity to grow and not a reason to fall. James 1:2-4,” My friends, be glad, even if you have a lot of trouble. You know that you learn to endure by having your faith tested. But you must learn to endure everything, so that you will be completely mature and not lacking in anything.”
I’ve learnt to accept situations and people for who and what they are and not to manipulate everyone so that I can be in control and have my own way. Romans 15:7,” Therefore, accept one another, just as Christ accepted us to the glory of God.”
I’ve learnt to be honest with the people in my life and myself.
I’ve learnt to forgive.2Corinthians 2:7-8,”when people sin you should forgive and comfort them, so they won’t give up in despair. You should make them sure of your love for them.”
Most importantly to forgive myself for who I was and what I did so that I can move forward from the past and let it go.
I’m glad to say that God is my best friend and through him I am renewed and restored each and every day.
I share my heart with Him and all though some days I stray I always turn back to him because I remember the night I cried out and He came to rescue me. Jonah2:2,”when I was in trouble, Lord, I prayed to you, and you listened to me. From deep in the world of the dead, I begged for your help, and you answered my prayer.”
Mighty Wings has taught me to accountable and to see & stop a problem before it becomes a problem.
I find great comfort in having a support group that I can relate to and share my struggles without being judged.
I still have difficulties and I make mistakes everyday but I don’t let that discourage me but instead encourage me to lean in closer to God.
I stand here today 1year and 7days clean and sober and I have never felt more alive and free than ever before. This is all thanks to God and his wonderful mercy and grace.
I want to leave you all with something that Andre taught me. Recovery is not about the things of this world, it is about the change that transpires in our hearts because we choose to give our lives to our saviour, The Lord Jesus Christ.
Ezekiel 36:26,” I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”