I was born in 1958 in a usual family. At 13 I went into
sports. At 16 I began to make money. Crime became a way of life for me. My “business”
was to cheat tourists who came to visit St. Petersburg. I came up with many
ways of doing that. 
I
was fit and considered myself smart. I very easily could grab a handbag from
somebody and run. At 19 during one of these “operations” I ran into a dead end
where the police caught me. I was sentenced to 3 years in prison. There I took
drugs for the first time. At first I tried hash and then injected heroin. All
the horrible things I heard about drugs before at that point seemed to me not
true.
But when I got out of prison at 23 I was hooked. I thought I’d be able to control using drugs, but before I knew it drugs were controlling me. In 8 months, after stealing from several apartments I was back in prison. This time for 4 years in a strict regimen. When I got out I decided to live a different life. I was invited to participate in a promising business. I had all the money I needed and more – no need to get into crime. I thought I’d never be in prison again but I was in prison already – in prison of drug addiction. If you are a drug addict you can’t live a normal life. I tried to fight this devilish affliction. At first I was hiding it from everybody, invited doctors to my house, paid money, they’d clean up my body but in a few months I’d be back to my needle. Time went by, I grew older, and in order to clean up my body I had to go through treatment in a hospital. I was ready to pay any amount of money, but deliverance from drugs was just not a thing you could buy. I lost my job but I didn’t even care. I was going down, down, down. My wife lost hope that I’d be able to do anything with my drug addiction and left me. Very soon the only thing I showed any interest in was heroin.
Life made no sense, nothing gave me joy, I could find peace nowhere, no one really loved me, I loved no one. Finally I told myself that death is the best way out. On October, 31 - my birthday - I went to my country house with a dose of heroin that would kill me – more than 2 grams, plus a bottle of vodka and a pack of very strong sleeping pills. I had no fear, no regret. I wanted to die. I took this extremely deadly mixture but in 2 days found myself still alive. I did not die physically but inside I was dead. I felt neither joy nor sorrow, I had no plans. I had no understanding how should I live further. I moved just out of habit. I came up with five hundred bucks to get myself into a hospital. In two weeks I got out and went straightway to buy drugs. I totally lost my emotions. I lived like a wind up doll, a wicked doll that was ready to commit any crime for a dose.
I was telling everyone about my attempt to commit suicide. I told my doctor who’d been trying to help me for many years and asked him, “What shall I do?” He suggested a more sure way of ending my life – find a building as tall as possible and jump off. One day I was sitting in the apartment of some drug addicts that I knew when a men came in and after hearing my story about suicide suggested help. I didn’t believe my ears when he told me there is a drug rehab center in the village of Sablino near St. Petersburg, and he offered to help me get there. In just a few days we went there. Most of all I was concerned about withdrawals in case these guys refused to help me. But they told me I would not have any because they would pray for me. At first I thought there was something wrong with these guys’ heads but when they suggested for me to pray too I thought, “If God really exists and will help me I will stay to the end with Him. And if not – it won’t be worse than now”. I DID NOT have ANY withdrawals. God did a miracle. He completely changed my life. He completely changed me. I was born again.
My past was as hopeless as could be. Everybody wrote me off. I wrote myself off. I did not see any way out of my nightmare. I thought I had no chances to have a different kind of life. But there was a chance. And this chance is there for everyone. If the worst came to the worst in your life, if you see no way out REMEMBER God IS and He is ALL POWERFUL. And He loves you so much that He gave His Son Jesus Christ to die. Jesus died but rose again and by His death He paid for ALL your sins and mistakes. And you have a chance to receive forgiveness from God, to get set free from the bondage of sin and start from scratch a new life without sin.
If you believe that Jesus died for your sins, if you know that you need His forgiveness, if you want to get cleaned from sin and start a new life, if you want to know Him, if you want to be the person you were originally created to be, if you are hearing His call in your heart, you can turn to Him right now.
(Leonid is now a pastor, a leader at the rehab center and is very happily married)
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