Testimony of faith. Hold on, François!

Guadeloupe, where I grew up, is famous for its rums. Around 12 years old, I started drinking it and using tobacco. After my military service, I smoked my first joint, then I tried crack, hallucinogenic mushrooms. With this, you feel like you’re in paradise. Addiction has become the glue of my relationships, and the driving force of my daily life. When you do drugs, you need money, but you can’t work, so you live on small-scale trafficking. I ended up in prison for six years. I’ve been on the street, I’ve forgotten how to write. A shame for the son of a high school principal, surrounded by highly qualified brothers and sisters.

Despite the substances, I never stopped praying. While I was on the street, evangelical Christians invited me to fight, telling me that I could testify afterwards. They were my first hope. I tried to stop, but how could I do it while staying close to my addict friends? So I had to leave my island for the metropolis. After thirty years of daily consumption, stopping alcohol and drugs causes terrible pain in the body. There were numerous relapses. I had to take antidepressants to compensate. But the hardest part was the loneliness. All my relationships had been built around drugs. I gradually stopped all consumption, but at the cost of what pain…

And then one evening, lying in bed, stunned by medication, with the TV on, I heard: “Call me François. » It was March 13, 2013. We had just elected a pope who bore my first name. I like to see signs from heaven in everyday coincidences, and I took this one as a gift. I drew from the example of this homonymous pope the courage to hold on, to lead this fight of body and mind. I learned to write again, to tell my story*, to bear witness, as the evangelical Protestants had encouraged me to do, and to break the solitude. Holding on is a constant battle. But for eleven years, I have regularly seen a gentleman dressed in white, in a popemobile, traveling all over the world, and telling me: “Francois, I am in a wheelchair and I can do it. So you too, hold on! »

* Several books, including From mushrooms of the gods to Jesus Christ (Publibook ed.).