Addicted - The God Drug That Set Me Free — Elizabeth (CRU Legacy)
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I pretty well destroyed my life with drugs. It was a very dark time. I was a young woman in Madison, Wisconsin in the 60s, when the campus was exploding with protests and radical politics. That world swept me in, and with it came people who were using and selling drugs. It was simply in the air we breathed.
I started with a little marijuana—always hidden from my family. I liked how it made me feel. For the first time, I wasn’t painfully self‑conscious. I could laugh. I could talk. I could feel like I belonged. Those people became my “family,” and in that family someone suggested LSD. Then mescaline. Then heroin. Then speed. I was afraid of needles, so I never injected anything, but I took almost everything else.
Underneath all of it was despair. People used to tell me, “You’re just like your mother,” meaning it as praise—she was a poet and a physicist. But they didn’t understand the other side of her: the instability, the hospitalizations, the unpredictability. What I heard was, You will be just like her. That fear settled into me like a weight.
The drugs became a shortcut into intimacy and a way to numb the depression. I didn’t care what happened to me. My recklessness was almost suicidal. But eventually I realized I was losing control. I couldn’t stop. The drugs were a counterfeit—empty, hollow, and consuming.
In the middle of that darkness, my dad asked if I would go to a Christian meeting with them. I surprised everyone, including myself, by saying yes. I was desperate—truly hopeless about my life. The meeting itself was awful for me. A man talked about his donut business, and I sat there with my arms crossed thinking, What am I doing here?
But at the end, a young man from Haight‑Ashbury stood up. He had been addicted to drugs, and God had set him free. He sang a song and shared his testimony. And right there, the Lord spoke to me. When he gave the invitation, I ran to the front and fell on my knees. That young man led me to Christ.
My life changed instantly. God set me free from the drugs I had been trying—and failing—to escape. My cigarettes, my filthy language, the darkness that clung to me… it all fell away. It felt almost physical, like I had been wearing a heavy black velvet cloak that kept me from hope or joy. When the Holy Spirit flooded me, that cloak simply dropped off. I was free—free in a way I had never known.
God began rebuilding me. When I was a hippie, I only accepted people who were “cool,” who used drugs like I did. But once I met Christ, He opened my eyes. I realized I could have fellowship with anyone. We didn’t need the same background or education. All we needed was Christ. And when Christ is the common ground, the fellowship is deep, real, and unmatched by anything the world offers.
Jesus changed my life. I am so grateful.
