LifeChange Graduate profile: Brian Whitacre

The moment is frozen in Brian’s mind: he is standing over a friend’s sink preparing to use a needle to inject heroin. Injecting the drug is something Brian promised himself he would never do, and he had broken so many promises and shattered many of his dreams already.

Brian was homeless except that a friend let him stay at his apartment. It was that night over the sink, that Brian stopped himself from injecting the drug and started asking God for a way out.

One of Brian’s earliest memories was the fear and confusion of his parent’s divorce when he was in second grade. The sense of abandonment troubled him, and he didn’t know how or if he could express his feelings.

When he was in fifth grade Brian found an outlet in playing the drums, “You can get a lot of aggression out playing those drums,” Brian recalls. Playing the drums became Brian’s outlet and path to social acceptance. Brian was at the beach with his youth group when horseplay and wrestling went terribly wrong when Brian’s shoulder was broken and fractured, ending his ability to play the drums.

Brian found that his social group and sense of acceptance vanished when he lost his ability to play the drums, and then his mother remarried and he moved with his family from California to Oregon. On the drive up, everything the family owned was stolen.

By this time Brian had discovered social acceptance through the recreational drug scene. The stress of the move was just another excuse to get high. Brian dropped out of high school and was using opiates- prescription narcotics, such as vicodin. He was scamming hospital emergency rooms for painkilling drugs.

He held jobs during his addiction and had an apartment. One day a package arrived from his father. It was a Bible in which his father had written, “The answers to life are here.”

“I literally had a drug pipe in one hand and that Bible in another, and I realized I needed to quit everything and move to Texas where my Dad was,” Brian recalls.

In Texas things changed for Brian, he was going to church, playing the drums again and received a full ride scholarship to LeTourneau University. A visit to the dentist and prescription for vicodin for a toothache had Brian going back to his old ways; he started stealing painkillers from his father and flunked out of school.

It was at this point Brian received a $28,000 settlement from his shoulder injury. He moved back to Oregon and went on a drug using and partying spree. The money was gone in six weeks. Brian went on using and selling drugs. He burned bridges with his mom and the rest of his family. They realized the depth of his involvement in the drug world when federal agents showed up looking for Brian.

He had been selling drugs under the Burnside Bridge when he went a friend’s apartment and was standing over the sink crying out for help. He then checked into Hooper Detox Center where he met Christina, a nurse that told him about LifeChange.

Christina had graduated from LifeChange herself, and recommended it to Brian. He spent four years in LifeChange growing spiritually, and overcoming issues he had struggled with like acceptance and mending the wounds of his past.

Today, Brian works as a youth pastor and is very excited about what life has in store for him. He says the kids are very surprised when they learn about his past, but he says, “I’m grateful to help kids get on the right path, when years ago I would have been the one getting them on the wrong path. Now instead of a corrupting influence I can be a positive one.”

What is LifeChange?

LifeChange is a community. Each member of LifeChange lives and works together at the Mission. The cornerstone of LifeChange is faith in the transforming power of Jesus Christ. LifeChange is a peer-based, each resident helps each other to identify issues and grow in their recovery. LifeChange is self-governed, as residents work together to make decisions as a community. LifeChange is long-term, and goal– oriented. Most residents spend two to four years to complete LifeChange.

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