17-18 years ago on January 25, my life changed completely.

It was the day I finally got into rehab and was able to turn my life around and start building the life I have today. I always remember this day as one of the most important days in my life.

Every year around this time I think back on that period in my life and I feel so grateful to be alive and blessed for having the life I have today.

I was 29 years old at the time and a living dead, I only existed, and I could feel an increasing awareness of the fact that if I didn’t get help, I would die.

It was a very dark time in my life and I had tried to get into rehab for at least a couple of years but the waiting list to get into one in Norway is long and many people die while waiting.

I knew it was just a matter of time before I would try heroin even though I had promised myself to never touch it.

And I also knew that the moment I did, that it would very quickly spiral even more rapidly downwards for me.

When I began using drugs I promised myself two things;

That I would never use a needle, and that I would never touch heroin, and I had already broken one of them so the next promise was not far away from being broken too.

I was also in more or less constant pain because my teeth were decaying from the decade long amphetamine use, but the pain was not only in my mouth, I was also deeply depressed and had severe anxiety.

In addition to that I was also psychotic and people around me were scared of me because of my temper, and I literally felt as if I was dying, and in a way I was.

My friends kept pushing heroin on me, saying that all my pain would go away in just one little sniff, and I knew it would, and that’s why I was afraid to touch it.

I knew that once I did that, it would be the beginning of the end for me. I don’t know how many people and friends I lost to heroin use or things related to it so I saw what it could do very closely.

I knew I was dying already, I wasn’t living, and heroin would be the thing that would push me off the cliff and then there would be no coming back for me, so I kept the last my promise to myself – for the time being.

Then in the end of the summer/early fall of 2001 I think it was, I was at a party and I was completely out of it and had a nervous breakdown bigger than any breakdown I had ever had up until that point.

I remember I was in the woods, on my knees, crying out to God for help,

and in that moment I saw a hand coming down from above me and towards me to take my hand.

It was like the hand of God you can see on some of the pictures where you see a big hand coming down from the heavens to help someone.

This happened to me, and it was one of the most profound experiences I’ve had in my entire life.

I have always felt as if something or someone is watching over me and that my life had some kind of purpose, even if I at that time didn’t know what it was.

I knew I had to live to fulfill it, it was what kept me trying to get help and which gave me the strength I needed to get well.

A lot of things happened that evening in the woods after my breakdown (too long to share in this post) and the following days afterwards I was just laying in bed and crying and crying, and crying.

But something had happened out there in the woods, the prayer I cried out was the beginning of my transformational journey to healing, awakening and coming into wholeness.

Shortly after that episode I found a rehab center (by synchronistic events) and when I applied for it and for the funding of it, I got it and from then on my life changed dramatically.

I spent the next two and a half years in rehab and was able to heal and get my life back again.

Here’s a post I wrote many years ago (on my ten-year anniversary) where I shared a little bit of my past: MariaErving.com/my-story (Reading it now I can see my English has improved a lot since then! 😊)

Please remember this always:

Whatever you might be going through in your life, and maybe you’re even reading this because you’re having similar problems and challenges that I had;

Know that there is a Higher Intelligence that is available to you if you call out to it and ask it to help you.

I can tell you this because I know without a doubt that It is the main reason to why I’m still here today and that lead me to live my purpose and share my story with you.

Believe in it, believe in yourself, and believe that you can have an amazing life – because you absolutely can!