As heroin addict Stuart Patterson craved his next fix, the last thing he wanted was to talk to a pastor.
His neighbour, urged by Stuart’s desperate mum, promised to look for the number of the rehab centre their junkie son had used, like others on the notorious Easterhouse estate in Glasgow’s east end. Instead, she brought back a card with the phone number for a pastor called Ken Persaud.
What was a hardened, drug-addicted gang member going to do with that? It didn’t fit into his life of fighting and fixes.
Only a few days earlier, he’d been held at gunpoint in a car, feeling the gun jabbed in his back, hearing a click and one of the two men yelling that the weapon had jammed.
“In the 1980s, Easterhouse was a bleak place,” said Stuart (pictured above, with wife Tracy, on his graduation day from Strathclyde University). “I crashed in different houses most nights, sometimes so high on a drug cocktail I could go days without sleep.”
Violence between rival gangs was common.
“One time, I was on a bus when I spotted a rival gang member. We shouted and swore at each other, then he challenged me to a fight. I was high on LSD, which made me feel like Superman, so we jumped off the bus and were punching and kicking each other in the pouring rain.
“I felt a thud on my head. That’s when I saw the other guy had an axe, but I carried on fighting. He struck me again, this time on my face and blood splattered all over us and onto the pavement. I managed to grab the axe and he ran off.
“I walked home in the rain, feeling like a champion even though blood still ran down my face. The axe had split my lip and cheek so that my teeth were visible.”
Aged 19, he was in prison for selling drugs.
“In 1996, I turned 26 and I was certain I wouldn’t see 30. Every moment of every waking day was consumed on how to get money to buy drugs.
“I rarely washed. My greasy hair was shoulder-length. My skin was patchy. My thighs and arms were red raw from needle injections. I almost lost my left hand as a result of a bad injection, with it remaining damaged to this day. People avoided me like the plague.”
PASTOR
If anyone needed rehab, it was Stuart. Instead, he had the card from the neighbour with the pastor’s number. He gave it to his mum, who called.
Pastor Ken told Stuart about Teen Challenge – a Christian project of residential rehab centres to help drug addicts – and how he could get him a place.
“The last thing I wanted to do was talk to some Christian guy about God. I was desperate for a fix. He listened to me ranting then at the end, asked if he could pray for me. I agreed, thinking I could get him to tell my mum to give me the cash for drugs after.
“I can’t remember what he said, but something changed in me. When we finished the call, I went into the living room and apologised to my parents for all the hurt I’d caused them. I felt unusually peaceful and went to bed where, instead of fretting about drugs, I fell asleep.
“From that day, I never stuck a needle in my arm ever again. How strange that after thirteen years of taking every kind of drug, of endless promises to quit, it was a simple prayer on the phone that stopped me from injecting drugs ever again.
“I came to realise my pain did not revolve around what others had done to me but the wrong I had done to others. I had to take ownership of that whole world of hurt.
“I began to see I could only do that because God forgave me completely and unreservedly.”
Stuart spent three years at Teen Challenge, where his relationship with Jesus grew. One day, in the congregation, he thought he recognised someone.
“Slowly, it dawned on me. This was the guy from a rival gang I had fought with, the guy who hit me with an axe on the head and face. We laughed, then hugged.
“We were once both lost in sin and rage. At one time, we would have gladly killed each other. Only the love of Jesus can turn someone from that destructive, hate-filled life into someone who knows real love and forgiveness.”
Stuart eventually established a church in Easterhouse, yards from the streets where he once fought and injected.
He said: “I can’t think of a better place than Easterhouse to show the love of Jesus, the love that changed me and which can change anyone who opens their heart to him.”
