Ron Simmons

was a dope dealer. I had several dope houses in the Los Angeles, Calif. area, and I transported it around the country. But I became my best customer. I ended up with an $800-per-day cocaine habit.

Mainly it was peer pressure that got me started. I was just getting high and drinking and smoking marijuana and thinking nothing could ever happen to me.

Then my mother and father got a divorce, and my brother and sister and I stayed with my mother. It was a big strain on her to try to keep the bills paid. That's when I got into sales, to help out my family; and I even helped get my brother through college. But I became hooked on the product.

I got tired of it and wanted to stop, but I couldn't stop. I was walking around just skin and bones. Finally I said that prayer that most addicts and alcoholics say: "God, if you get me out of this one .... Will you please help me?"

I went to my uncle and told him I couldn't take it anymore. He called my mother, and they met with me and found a drug and alcohol program for me to go into at the Care Unit Hospital. The program was the old 21-day-treatment model and cost $28,000. The drug dealers paid my way to go in there because they thought I would come out in good shape and go back to work for them.

At that hospital I learned about the disease of addiction and was introduced to a 12-step program.

But the important thing is that's where I was introduced to the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the nurses on staff, June Joseph, was a Christian. She has since gone on to be with the Lord. She brought Scripture into my room every night and shared it with me. It seemed like the words started jumping off the pages for me. I fell in love with the Lord and gave my life over to the Lord.

When I got out, I asked God what He wanted me to do. At first I thought He wanted me to be a singer, but then He told me He had enough African-American singers. The more I started growing in the Lord, I knew I couldn't hide what God has done for me.

I found out that the 12 steps programs came right out of the Bible. A lot of pastors had a problem with the 12 steps because of people having to say "God of their understanding" or "Higher Power." Once I started doing my research and found out the steps came right out of the Bible, I put the Bible back in.

I presented my pastor with an idea to start a Christ-centered 12-step meeting in the church to help addicts and alcoholics, and it took off. Along with Reverend Ron Wright and Reverend Renee Whitehead in 1987, I ­started an organization called Free N One Drug & Alcohol Program. It's a faith-based organization to help churches better serve those suffering from drug and alcohol addiction. Our program has the 12 steps and the Scriptures that go along with each one.

I knew I had to do my own thing to bring the Lord into our program. In the usual 12-step programs, they don't want you to bring the Lord into the program even though it's a spiritual program. There are people of a lot of different faiths there, so they try to keep any one religion out. Also, there are a lot of recovery programs where the funding guidelines won't allow them to profess the name of Jesus or they would lose some of their money. We're not afraid of that. We trust the Lord and exist solely on donations.

When we started presenting our program to pastors, it really took off. People came to the meetings because it was something they hadn't seen before.

Then I also became the Director of a Christian recovery home in Los Angeles called Transition House, sponsored by First Jurisdiction of Southern California Church of God in Christ. It has a very high success rate of men who graduate from our program staying free from drugs and alcohol. Free N One also started an outpatient program.

Our program went to another level when we started working with the family members of addicts and alcoholics. We found that 70 percent of married people who go into the program without their family members also going into the program end up in divorce. Those co-dependent, enabling, family members have to be healed too. Now we have Free N One "Tough Love" meetings at many of the churches that have Free N One drug and alcohol meetings.

Today I celebrate 26 years of being free from that $800-per-day habit, and God is really blessing everywhere we go. We train church members and assist them in setting up meetings and chapters in various cities. We have meetings all around the country - in the LA area, Chicago, St. Louis, Mississippi, and we're doing the week-long training in Dallas this fall.

I think prison ministries are going to have to start taking recovery into the prisons and helping those who really want to be free, not just preaching to them. If you're called and trained to help in the prisons, what you're doing is dropping something in their spirit that you hope they will hold onto because you're not with them long.

You're really just planting seeds

I think the more that Christians go into the prisons to minister, the more the prisoners will see that there are people who will love them when they come out. They need to know that there is a place for them to go, or else they'll go back to that old neighborhood and that old life.

When I fell down on my knees and asked God to please help me, it was because somebody had dropped a seed about the Lord in my spirit when I was growing up.

Every year at Free N One, we sponsor an awards banquet. One of the awards is the June Joseph Angel Award. She was an angel in my life; in the recovery program I entered years ago because of my own addiction, she is the nurse who dropped seeds about the Lord into my life. We give that award to women like her, who go beyond the call of duty and share with others that you can be free in Jesus.

Dr. Ron Simmons, director of the Free N One Drug & Alcohol Program, a Christian 12-step recovery program, is the author of two books: "Understanding Christian Recovery" and "Recovery Tower," both to be published in 2008. He received an honorary doctorate from Southern California School of Ministry and is currently working on his Master's degree in Christian counseling. For more information about Free N One, contact Ron Simmons at freenone@msn.com or visit www.freenone.net.