Cold Turkey by Nick Cadena Nick Cadena is literally a miracle of this century. Today, I am so proud of him, for he is one of the reasons why I gladly give my life as a living sacrifice to preach the Gospel. Nick, thirty-six years old, works in a machine shop in Los Angeles. He is married and the father of three girls. He was first arrested at the age of nine and spent the majority of the next fifteen years in jail By the time he was eighteen, he was addicted to heroin, a habit which continued for fifteen years and cost him up to a hundred dollars a day before he kicked it cold turkey (without the use of drugs or medication during withdrawal). There is nothing pretty about a junkie. Dope addiction ravages the mind and body and turns a person into an animal — a sick, shaking, vomiting, stealing animal. The gang I ran around with as a nine-year-old kid was made up of older boys. My parents knew little about my associates until it was too late to do anything about it. Most of the kids in my crowd were taking pills, drinking, smoking pot, and sniffing glue. Just a few days before my tenth birthday, I was picked up by the cops along with some of the others. From then on, I was in jail more than I was out. As I graduated from one crime category to another, so I climbed the ladder of stimulants and narcotics. Pep pills and their multi-colored depressant cousins led me to marijuana, which became a springboard to heroin. My friends told me I would get more of a kick out heroin than the dissatisfying milder drugs. The pep pills and depressants always left you with a let down feeling. Marijuana was the same way. I had developed a tremendous craving for something more powerful. Heroin, I was told, was the ultimate. I had been sentenced to three years in Juvenile Hall, Lancaster Prison, for possession of a .45 caliber pistol that had been used in a holdup. When I was paroled at the age of eighteen, I sought out a pusher and took my first shot of heroin. I was addicted. If only I could have seen the future that stretched out before me like an endless horror movie. Little did I know that I would spend lonely, torturous hours in jail while my guts climbed the bars of my rib cage, screaming for a release that could be found only by doing dope. Little did I know I would be begging, stealing, robbing, even stealing from my own children to get enough money to buy my next shot. If there is such a thing as hell on earth, then it is found in the world of the junkie. My last four years as an addict cost me up to a hundred dollars a day to keep me supplied. I had to steal almost five times that amount to support my habit since a “fence” will only give twenty percent on the dollar for stolen goods. This means that, conservatively speaking, during the last four years of my addiction, I stole close to half a million dollars to keep my habit supplied. I got it any place I could. I stole from apartments, sometimes cleaning out all the furniture and clothing. I shoplifted, broke into stores and into delivery trucks, almost anywhere, so I could just get my hands on enough money for the next shot. I could not count the times Pauline and my three little girls waited through the long, endless hours, sometimes days, for me to come home. There is little room or need for a wife in the tortured existence of the dope addict. Normal desires for success, achievement, physical pleasures, even sex and food, are deadened by the drug. When the addict emerges from his brief periods of artificial bliss to face the agonizing truth, his only escape is to deaden the shame with another shot. And so the endless circle continues, getting worse all the time. One night I found myself aboard a city bus. I do not know how I got there. I came to on the back seat and was aware that I was sitting on something uncomfortable. I felt under my hip and discovered a small black book. When I staggered off the bus and to my apartment I took it with me. I later discovered that the black book was the Holy Bible. I had no intention of reading it, but something made me drop it into the dresser drawer. Little did I know that six months later I would turn to that little black book to find a release from my bond-age. I was becoming desperate. From the moment I awakened until my anxiety-ridden body fell into a stupor, perhaps two or three days later, I was totally occupied with ways and means of satisfying my insatiable craving for the drug. I moved with a frightening singleness of purpose toward that one moment when the prick of the needle signaled release from all the problems I couldn’t handle. For an hour or so I would nod in my pleasant euphoria, then the symptoms would begin to return and I would have to think about getting more money to buy another bag of the white powder. The cycle was continual, relentless. There seemed to be no hope, ever, of escape. On a bright Sunday morning in March 1965, I left the house to find Campbell, my pusher, a fellow junkie about my age. Normally, the relationship between a junkie and his pusher is the brief, secretive encounter of buyer and seller in a transaction involving the little cellophane bag. But I had known Campbell for a long time and we had developed a friendship. I was staggering down the street, sick, vomiting, and crying in my heart for help. I had to stop several times and lean against the side of the building, retching until the spasms passed and I could stagger on. All the people seemed happy — all except me. I met Campbell at his house. “Hey, Nick,” he said, “you know what? There’s gonna be a lady at Angelus Temple who is going to tell about God. I’ve been to her services before. I believe she can set us free. Man, it’ll cost me because you’re my best customer. But Nick, you’re gonna die if you stay like this. Let’s go. Okay? Maybe she’ll pray for us both and we can kick the habit, huh?” I was in no mood for his crazy talk. I slapped my money on the table and fell on top of it, reaching out to grab hold of his shirt and shake the heroin out of him. Campbell sensed my desperateness and quickly produced the powder and the “works,” the stuff needed to fix the shot. With frantic fingers, I tore the top off the bag and shook the contents into a spoon. With a medicine dropper, which was part of the works Campbell supplied, I mixed a few drops of water with the powder. Campbell held a match under the spoon until the powder dissolved. I fashioned a quick tourniquet around my upper arm with my belt. The big vein in my elbow was clearly visible and, along with it, hundreds of little black dots from the countless number of fixes before. As I had done many times in the past, I pushed the head of the hypodermic needle into the vein and then took the medicine dropper and filled it from the solution in the spoon. Slowly, very slowly, I dropped the clear liquid into the open end of the metal needle and squeezed the vein to get it into the blood system. Immediately, I felt a wave of calm and peacefulness sweep over me. My shaking stopped and I leaned back and lighted a cigarette. For a long time, I sat nodding in the characteristic fashion of the addict who has found temporary relief. “Hey, man,” I finally said. “What was this you said about a lady preacher?” “Yeah,” Campbell said, “I’ve been to some of her meetings. She’s great! I mean, guys get healed of all sorts of things. You gotta see it to believe it. I bet if she laid her hands on you, you’d kick the habit. You wanna go?” I had tried everything else and nothing worked. And the desperateness was about to kill me. I was willing to try anything—even this. And so that night Campbell and I found ourselves high in the balcony of the huge Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, California. I had never been to a church meeting in all my life. I had never even heard the Gospel. The room was jammed with people. I have never seen such a mob. Everyone was praising God. But the sermon, well, it was difficult for me to understand. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even listen. The effect of the shot was beginning to wear off and I was starting to get that tense, anxious feeling that hits a junkie before he needs another fix. Suddenly, Campbell was punching me with his elbow. “Hey, Nick, she’s giving an altar call. Come on. Let’s go down. She’ll pray for you and put her hands on you and you’ll be set free. Let’s go.” I shook my head, but he persisted and we finally made our way to the exit, down the stairs to the lobby, and started down the long aisle to the front of the auditorium. About halfway down, I started back. Campbell grabbed my arm, “Hey, what’s up, man? You can’t go back now. Everyone’s looking at you. You gotta go down.” I reluctantly agreed, but was able to hide on the back edge of the huge crowd that had gathered around the front during the altar call. Suddenly the crowd seemed to open up and I saw Miss Kuhlman staring down that alley of people—right at me. “You,” she said, pointing her finger at me. “You, young man. You need Jesus. If you will just come here, I will be so glad to pray for you.” I glanced to both sides. She couldn’t be talking about me. I didn’t even know who she was or what I was doing there. But she kept pointing that long finger right at me. She was starting to walk toward me, beckoning me with that finger to step forward. I tried to turn and run, but more people had gathered behind me and there was no way out. “I mean you, young man,” she said again with an authoritative voice. “Come up here and I will pray for you.” I found myself walking down that canyon of people. She met me at the front edge of the crowd and laid her hands on my head and began to pray. Before I knew it, I was on the floor. I scrambled to my feet and gave her a frightened stare before bolting back through the crowd to where Campbell was still standing. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here. I can’t take this. That woman bugs me. Man, I gotta have a fix.” I was still staggering under the tremendous surge of power that had flowed through my body. But there was something else. I was afraid, more afraid than I had been in all my life. We went to Campbell’s house where I got a fix. It did not do the trick and I made him give me another one. “Nicky, you’re liable to get an overdose,” he said. “You’ll die.” “I can’t help it,” I said, “something has happened to me and I have to get a fix so I can calm down.” That night, I had nightmares. Over and over, I woke up screaming. I remembered the Bible and staggered to my dresser and scrambled through the clothes until I found it. Pauline turned on the light and I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the book and began reading in the Book of Revelation. I understood nothing I read, but I read that entire book. Then Pauline and I spent the rest of the night talking. She sensed that something big had happened in my life, something frightening and awesome, but she was unable to cope with what it was. “If anything happens to me, I am not ready,” I said. “Ready for what, Nick?” she said. “I’m not ready to die,” I gasped out, “and I think I’m about to die.” “How do you get ready to die?” she asked, her eyes brimming with tears. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I screamed and fell across the bed, pounding the mattress with my fist. “All I know is that I’m not ready.” This went on for three months, until I thought I’d go crazy. I was spending a hundred dollars a day on heroin and eating only when Pauline forced something in me. I didn’t know it then, but from the moment Miss Kuhlman laid her hands on me, the Holy Spirit had gone to work in my life. I realize now that He had been at work around me for a long time. He had placed the Bible. He had driven me to Campbell’s house. He had influenced Campbell to take me to the service. But that night the Holy Spirit had entered my life and I was under what I now know was conviction of the sin in my life. I was running, battling, fighting as hard as I could. Yet, like Saul on the road to Damascus, you can only struggle so long and then you have to knuckle under to God. And so one evening, the first of the summer, I staggered up the steps of Teen Challenge in Los Angeles. I knew that these people were dedicated to helping dope addicts kick the habit. I didn’t know their procedures. I didn’t know anything about them. All I knew was I needed to kick the habit and people had said they would help me. The moment I walked in the door, I felt the power of the Holy Spirit over me again, much like that night in Angelus Temple. And what had started that night in the Kathryn Kuhlman service, three months before, was completed at Teen Challenge as I kicked the habit — cold turkey. I stayed at Teen Challenge two months, getting my feet on the ground, spiritually as well as physically. When I returned home, Pauline greeted a new man. Since then, Pauline and all three of the girls have given their hearts to the Lord. A Christian businessman gave me a job in his machine shop. I had never had a job before because I didn’t have time to work, I was so busy stealing. But my new boss realized it would take time for me to learn how to work and has been patient with me. He gives me time off to preach and witness to others about the wonderful grace of God. Recently, I have enrolled in Bible school to further my knowledge of God’s Word. The big thrill of my life is once a month when I attend the miracle services at the Shrine. At a recent meeting, I was on the stage when more than a hundred hippies responded to a special invitation. They poured from the balcony and trooped to the platform, committing their lives to Jesus. It was a stirring moment as the Holy Spirit swept through the great mass of people and touched lives and hearts. Boys with long, shaggy beards and hair falling past their shoulders, and girls, dressed in Indian costumes with floor-length dresses and hair past their waists, came and stood in a huge semicircle on the stage. Miss Kuhlman moved briskly through the crowd laying on hands and praying. Many of the boys and girls collapsed under the power of God and then regained their feet, hugging each other in joy. I noticed one girl in particular, certainly no older than thirteen, hugging a tiny, newborn baby to her breast. She was like all the others—barefooted, with long hair, and Indian garb. But her eyes were full of indescribable sadness as she clutched that tiny baby. Then Miss Kuhlman called on me to lead them from the stage to a side room where we could talk and pray. As we marched off the platform, many of them were holding their fingers in the traditional “V” sign, which is popular among the flower children. Today, that sign has a new meaning, I thought to myself. After the service a skeptical friend of mine just shook his head. “It will not last, Nick,” he said. “Those kids do not have the slightest idea what they are doing. They just came because the rest of the crowd came. Sure they fell under the power, but it will wear off. Just you wait and see.” I did not argue with him. But I thought back to a little over three years before when the same thing happened to me. I had no idea why I came forward, either. I came only because someone forced me to. I fell under the power and had no knowledge of what had happened. I had no one to train me. I had no Sunday school to attend — no pastor to guide me. All I had was that copy of the Bible I had found on the bus and the Holy Spirit. But it never wore off. No, and it never will. I often think of Campbell. He vanished from his old haunts, and I have not seen him since that night at Angelus Temple. As far as I know, he is still living in that awful hell of addiction. With all my heart, I would like to make a personal appeal to Campbell—wherever you are: Campbell, there is hope for you. I don’t know where you are or what you are doing, but I love you. And God loves you. I know He does because He showed His love for me. And if He can love and save me, then I know He wants to do the same thing for you. Campbell, I cannot express the joy, satisfaction, peace, and abundance of life that is mine in Christ. Dope—it is nothing compared to the power and adventure of the Holy Spirit. God loves you, Campbell, and He wants you to turn your life over to Jesus Christ and be born again. You don’t need to attend a Kathryn Kuhlman meeting. You don’t need to have her lay hands on you. All you need is Jesus—and He is right beside you right now. Wherever you are, Campbell, if you will just reach up and receive Him, He will come into your heart and change you. Oh, Campbell, come to Him ... now.” Medically Incurable: Chapter 17 |