I’m excited to have Celeste Vaughan here today talking about addiction and how God used it in her life. You can follow her on Twitter here and Facebook here.

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Addiction is the best thing that ever happened to me.

Nine years ago, when addiction unleashed The Beast in my brain, I’d never have uttered those words.

When this Southern-Baptist-sheltered-only-child-goody-two-shoes girl grew into a successful pharmacist, wife, and mom of three, life was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

The words, “Celeste, are you okay?” became my last memory. I’m told that I fell, wiping out the “P” through the “T” sections of the pharmacy shelves, leaving me with a badly broken nose, a broken tailbone, and quite a few bruises.

I’d had a grand mal seizure.

After a confusing ambulance ride and visit to the E.R., the hospital released me with prescriptions for a medication to prevent seizures, a narcotic for pain, and a referral to a surgeon for my broken nose.

During the two months following, the narcotic became my “friend.” The soreness slowly dissipated from my muscles, and the bruises on my body faded away. The bruises on my soul, however, were growing.

Once my nasal nightmare ended, I stopped taking the narcotic. Within a day, I started throwing up constantly. My body ached and I couldn’t remove the ice pick that was apparently lodged in my head. “Stomach flu?” I thought, “Well, I have this pain medicine. I’ll just take it for the aching while I’m getting over this.” Within an hour I stopped throwing up. My heart fell to my stomach when I realized narcotic addiction had unleashed The Beast within, constantly wanting to be fed. My “friend” had now become my enemy and the key to my normal.

The Beast that morphed from my brain was relentless. It ravaged my body with constant nausea, migraine headaches, insomnia, and The Great Depression.

For the fourteen years I’d worked as a pharmacist, I dispensed medications for pain, sleep, depression, and anxiety every day, and could never understand the desperation people felt for these drugs. I now found myself in their shoes.

It took seven years, nineteen seizures, three head gashes, one split top lip, two slipped discs, a twice broken tailbone, a twice broken nose, one broken eye socket, constant headaches, insomnia, and The Great Depression for me to get it.

God was working on my soul.

I’m pretty hardheaded, but after seizure nineteen, something clicked. I stopped praying for healing. I stopped praying for the rapture. I started praying for God to show me his purpose for my life.

Seven weeks later, on Saturday, September 25, 2010, I woke up happy, excited, and energetic for the first time in seven years.

God had given me a miracle.

My need for any pill vanished right along with my seizures. Unbeknownst to anyone, I weaned off my seizure mediation. By January 1, 2011, freedom was my new best friend.

Modern medicine could have healed my body, but only God could heal my soul. Addiction was hell; but without it, I’d never have experienced the slaying of The Beast by my Savior. I can now say, “Addiction saved my life.”