Brittany walked into her freshman year of high school feeling confident.

She had spent the summer rollerblading, losing weight, and taking cough medicine pills to numb her pain and keep her appetite at bay, “I also got accepted to a magnet program of performing arts. So not only did I feel confident but I was doing something that I loved … I felt like I was happy for once.”

And then her mother had respiratory failure and almost died.

During high school she continued to cope with pills, and went from boyfriend to boyfriend. But after graduation, she was left feeling aimless, “I went to community college, but I didn't have a goal. I didn't have a focus. I was lost.”

That’s where her addiction to prescription pills started, “I would take Adderall every day and then I would drink, do ecstasy, and smoke weed. I was just partying,” Brittany recalls. This path even led to multiple seizures — once while she was driving.

In her 20s, things only got worse, “I just was very addicted to the man I was with ... And as long as I had my boyfriend, and I had my drugs, I was okay.” She had already been to five or six rehabs, all the while still taking pills to cope. Then finally, at 27, she hit her rock bottom.

Brittany felt like she was an embarrassment to her family. Her mom suggested she move to Big Bear Lake, California to go to rehab, but all it felt like was a way to get rid of her. So Brittany agreed, even though she felt like it would be easier to just disappear.

After three months at the rehab center, she met a man. Even after everything she’d been through, she was still looking for a relationship to solve her problems. So she decided to leave with him and move to Fresno. That’s where she was introduced to methamphetamines.

Those soon became the darkest years of her life, and toward the end of her addiction she began to hear voices. They would talk to her constantly and imitate her family and friends, “I look back now and I know for a fact that God allowed that to happen so I could really know him and come to him. I was so stubborn, I was like, ‘I don't want anything of God.’ But as I sat in that room losing my mind to voices, I cried out to God and I said, ‘If you're real, you're going to have to show me and prove it to me.’”

One day her sister brought up Teen Challenge. At this point, Brittany was desperate — so she decided to leave Big Bear and go. She sold almost everything she had, and walked into Teen Challenge in Los Angeles with one bag. But she finally felt peace, “I knew this was going to be good. I just knew it. I didn't know how God worked. I didn't know because I didn't believe in him, but I was willing.”

Gradually she started asking questions about God, trying to figure out if it was him that she was hearing in her head. She learned about spiritual warfare and how the voices she was hearing were demonic. But one day, when she was in the worship choir, she stood up for the first time and began to praise God — that’s when the voices stopped.

Today Brittany is still leading worship with Southern California Teen Challenge, and still using her voice as a powerful weapon against the enemy, “Even the bad moments, and God was still with me. There's beauty for ashes. God always turns everything for the good. And I'm so grateful to be able to come to work every day and to talk about Jesus, and to teach these ladies that they don't need to cope with pills, they don't need to cope with drugs, they don't need to cope with men, and that God is everything they need.”

There are so many people lost in their addictions who still need to know they don’t need a substance to cope; they need the hope only Jesus can provide. Will you help us continue to share hope with the hopeless? You can set up a one-time or a recurring gift today. Your faithful giving is making a difference in the lives of people like Brittany.