Session Summary:

In this session I interview a good friend and overcomer Benjamin Hampton. Benjamin is a great example of what it means to be faithful in challenging times in life. His story will inspire you and give you hope. We all have, are, or will face the 7th floor in life. It is what we hold on to in the midst of the 7th floor that makes the difference. Hope is the anchor in the storms of life. Know that it is your faith that will guide you throughout the good and hard times in life. I hope you enjoy this interview with Benjamin.

You can connect with Benjamin here on Facebook

My Druggie Screwed-Up Past: How It’s Helped & Hurt Me, And What Now

by Benjamin Hampton

 I Can’t Just “Fugg-ed-Abaht-it…..”

Have you ever known real terror/horror? I mean, not from some horror flick, but in a real life experience? Something so unexpected and so far from your radar that you never possibly imagined it could be?

That and more I can’t put into words happened deep inside of me when I was tackled by several strong men, had my pants yanked down to my ankles, and injected with a syringe of who-knows-what in my then bare buttock… To make matters worse, I woke up in a bed hours later, only to realize that I have been strapped down, spread-eagle on a bed with full restraints and can only move a few inches…. That’s when the terror and horror of what had transpired descended. It grew the longer I lay there in a largely bare room with some meager hospital equipment here and there… It began to gnaw at every fiber of my being as the hours dragged by…. 28 hours from the time I awoke as best I can tell when I was finally released from those padded shackles.

I discover I’m in a psych ward at a hospital in my rural Pennsylvania home town of the last 6 years where everyone knows about everyone else… I had heard of this mysterious place known as “the seventh floor”. What went on there or who was involved with what went on there I had no idea. All I knew was that whenever I heard about this place in the past it was spoken with shudders, and you were REALLY screwed up to have landed there.

As I roamed the halls, was involved in special small group therapy, continued to have pills thrust in my mouth, and in and out of meetings with various PDocs, (psychiatrists) I’m told that I’m broken. I’m told that out of the blue, (we don’t know why) I had a manic episode that peaked while I was in the psych ward, requiring restraints and that for the rest of my life I will be on psychiatric drugs. I will pass this disease onto my children if I ever have any. My entire future would be riddled with various trips in and out of psychiatric wards as Meds were to be adjusted, and relapses into mental episodes occurred. Bi-polar disorder they said…Even though I had never been depressed at any point in my life.

Backdrop

I had just turned 18 after graduating high school, and missing second in my class by the hundredths of a GPA… I was driven. Ever since the age of 10, I had had my own jobs, made my own money, and purchased all of my own clothes and Vessi vegan shoes. I heard at nighttime my parents discussing their financial struggles, and I determined early on that I would not be a burden to them. (Later in life I learned that my father who was teaching in a small Christian school had raised us four children on $12,000 a year for several years. It’s no wonder they would frequently discuss financial stresses at night in hushed, but strained tones!)

So me being the oldest, felt a responsibility for myself and the rest of the family. My parents would often say that as a child I viewed myself as one of the parents and the rest just as kids. Can any of you relate to that? 🙂  As I grew older I got more and more side jobs, and while in high school held a regular job at Burger King and later Subway as soon as I could legally work, did a paper route Sunday am early before church, took care of the large church property as the only landscaper all by myself, as well as worked side jobs on Saturday from time to time. All this was done while playing all sports available in school, and maintaining high grades.

The Search for Purpose Begins in Earnest

Since I had no specific direction to go in after school, I determined to take one year off and truly pray and seek God’s will for my next steps. I felt that I could go anywhere, but needed to know that where I went was exactly where I should be. (It’s important to note that the summer prior to my senior year, I had been overseas on a mission trip, and had contracted a serious parasitic illness of some sort. After all sorts of tests and exams, all the way up the ladder to the specialists it was determined that they had no clue what it was or how to change the course of my body’s functions. Not to be gross, but I had nothing but painful, horrible diarrhea for almost 9 years thereafter.) My health issues made life more complicated, and not pain-free, but like all of the other struggles in my life I didn’t let it stop me for one second.

So here I am, working construction jobs now earning more money after graduating from high school. When you need crushed stone cincinnati oh for the construction project, go to sand and gravel website. still involved with a lot of things I was already involved with, and seeking God’s direction for my life earnestly.

My day started at 3:30 AM, and I would be on the job site before dawn at 5 or 5:30, sometimes the jobs would get cancelled because of the commercial mortgage rates and terms were not the right ones, every time this happened we had to wait several weeks to start working again, which meant no money. I worked on a mason crew. Moving 50 and 70 pound block around the job site all day long, mixing mortar, setting up scaffolding, and generally taking a beating from the 6 or 7 masons I worked with. And I did a great job! After my first month there, the crew told me they had not seen anyone stick around on that job for longer than one day or two days. They could not believe it! I knew it was the job I was supposed to be doing. In spite of the heavy workload and the creatively excessive use of the “F word” all day long on the job site (which I had never been exposed to) I knew that’s where I was supposed to be.

Life Stops; Crucible Begins

It was during this time of seeking God, praying, working every day as hard as I could that my mental health crisis referred to earlier struck. Out of nowhere. No family history, no drug use, no triggers of any kind that they could find at the time. So I’m dumbfounded. I’m in the psych ward for nearly a month, and after being released I have no idea what I was supposed to do. I’m told take your pills, never get off “the meds”, and expect to be back here at a minimum within five years.

Everything from that point in my life forward became simply a matter of survival. The person who I was prior to that moment in my life began to disintegrate. I had no drive. I had no purpose. Everyone, my friends their families everyone in my church knew that I had been on “the seventh floor”. There were few places I could go where people didn’t give me sideways glances. I was on a deserted island  like Tom Hanks in “Castaway”, with no one, not even Wilson, and no hope. God maintained “radio” silence, so practically it was as if He wasn’t there either. He had given me no clear direction, the exact opposite of what had been happening the previous three years.

Every day of my life was lived reactively, coaching myself from small task to small task. “Wake up!” “Put your feet over the side of the bed.” “Take a shower.”  Have you ever been there? All the while wondering what in the world happened? Replaying the tape of my experiences over and over in my mind. Begging God time and time again to please tell me what had happened and more importantly what do I do now? He was entirely silent. A month or so passes…..

More Wandering in College

My parents now tell me that I need to go to college. For what? Why would I want to do that? They tell me I just need to get going. To begin to do something. So, I packed my bags and headed to Pensacola Florida. I have no reason for being there, I’m coming in during the winter semester, and will have a screwy class schedule because of it, but at least I’ll be where no one knows about my “problems”. And based on the stigma of mental illness, I’ll never tell.

In spite of how I was feeling and as dead as I felt inside, I defaulted to my work ethic and plowed forward ignoring my inner pain and struggle. I worked 25+ hours per week, and took 16-18 credit hours per semester, while participating in inter-mural sports, and a regular workout routine. The drugs that I was on made me so drowsy, I could not even stay awake during most of my college classes. Somehow I still managed to get good grades, in spite of working to pay for my college bills Eventually I stopped taking the drugs even though I knew I was risking being re-hospitalized.

Every day, survival was the goal. Literally coaching myself from breath to breath sometimes. I never wanted to die or to kill myself, but as there was absolutely no purpose for my life as it had been presented to me, I might as well have been dead. During college years is when I picked up some very sloppy personal habits. Being late, and procrastinating were the two worst.

FINALLY Some Hope!

Now, there certainly were some bright spots during that time in my life, as that was the place I met my wife during my junior year. My Samoan Island Princess, Nadia… Truly a gift from God. It was not until years later when I was considering names for our children that I looked up the meaning of my wife’s name. Her name literally means “Hope” in Russian. She was the first girl I had ever dated. I was committed from early on in my life to finding a mate, not a date. Besides, as you know I was too busy anyway to deal with dating etc.

Looking back on one of the most hopeless periods in my life God gave me “hope”, literally, and a partner. She was one of the few who ever knew my secret for many years.  But that void and pain was still beneath the surface ALWAYS….. I am broken, any day I could have a manic episode, my cover will be blown and everyone will think I’m some kind of freak…Will she leave me? Would I ever risk having children? 

Surviving and Thriving in the Professional World

Even though I got good grades in my classes, I still had no reason for being there. Eventually in my senior year, with two semesters left to go since I changed majors a couple times, I decided to throw in the towel and begin working to prepare for marriage to my future wife. 3+ years have passed….

I worked from there forward in the car business. And I thought mason work was hard? Wow… This work was hard on a whole new level. At least they prepared me for being able to deal with all the F bombs in sales meetings and in conjunction with doing business daily min a highly emotionally charged environment…Lol… This was a different kind of tired at the end of each day. Starting at age 21, I was the youngest hire this store had ever made. They doubted me. However, I succeeded and God enabled me to rise to top of the ranks, and stay there. Both in my store group and nationally.  Marriage, house purchase, new baby, then babies, a crazy busy life, but at my core, still no purpose. 10 years pass.

Purpose Lands!!!!

Then one day, a guy named John Maxwell said he was coming through Pensacola for “A Small Big City Tour”…I had heard his name in passing, an author or something, but beyond that did not know anything about him. I attended the conference, hoping to pick up some professional tips or something. John took the stage, and began to share…….. B     O     O     M!!!!!!!!!

And that’s when God finally spoke to me. It was almost as if He sat down next to me and put his arm around me and pointed towards the stage. He clearly in my spirit told me to follow John, learn his principles and try to model the way that he teaches them and apply them to my life. That was next steps for me. WOW!!!

So when John made the offer to stay after the event and learn more about what his work was, I stuck around obviously! I cannot believe that finally after all this time God had given me the next steps. As a matter of fact, when someone took a picture of the crowd that day, if you still have the picture, you should see me in the first few front rows of the crowd of about 300 or so that stayed.

I went to the back of the room, gave my information for more follow-up, I then received a call in the next day or two from Tom Martinelli. After giving a brief understanding of what would be entailed, I almost immediately joined the team after I ran it by my wife. I had been sitting on “G” waiting on “O” for 13 years almost, and I was STARVING for this content and truth. I really didn’t care what was on the team, I knew I was instructed to move forward whatever that meant.  I’m on the team!!!!! Happy Day!!!

Awesome right!?!? Actually, the opposite of awesome. I needed the personal growth side desperately; I knew this. All of the things that prior to now had been outside the bounds of my awareness, all became painfully visible. Bad habits that had wrapped up around me and all of the horrible views of myself at my core, the negative self-talk, negative self-image the scarcity mindset, etc….all of those things I had developed over the years were my Giants to then begin slaying. One by one…Some I’m still working on, and some have come back from the dead a few times. The more my awareness increased, the more problems I recognized in myself, and the more work I began to do to address them. 3+ more years pass…

The Help and the Hurt

So as I begin this process of personal growth, unwinding and unraveling from all of the things that were well entrenched negatives in my life from years before, I journeyed forward and begin the formation of entrepreneurial pursuits as next steps. I began to cross paths and intersect with other JMT members: Farshad Asl, Victor Arceo, Scott Fay, Barry Smith, Mary Riesburg, Laura Prisk, Debi Markland, Deb Ingino, to name a few. These and others on this PC group have modeled for me what I wanted desperately to become, what I was convinced was absolutely necessary for me to become in spite of all my hang-ups and all my past issues that were still haunting my steps, some in more ways than others.

Looking back now all the pain I had to endure for all those years, I developed muscles and endurance and perspective that could never have been built in any other way. Thankfully from a health perspective my digestive issues cleared up as well as any lingering issues that could be contributing to a mental instability or emotional instability that I’m aware of. When I first quit the meds in college after a year or so on them, I never took them again, and never had any relapses by God’s grace. I achieved this through natural and homeopathic means, and simple but effective protocols. That’s the help- who I’ve become, what I know I can take, and I am now on a focused mission to help others come out of the bondage they are in.

The hurt part that still lingers began when I allowed my circumstances at age 18 to dictate to me the fear and the facts that there was no point in continuing in a disciplined lifestyle. I had been unknowingly been cultivating a highly successful lifestyle, mindset and practice from an early age. It was simply who I was and what I did by default.  So I have been working diligently the last almost 4 years to be freed from what took almost 14 years to grow, and recover the essence of the child and young man I once was, and can now be in my later years, coupled with intentionality. I must say, I am extremely glad for the progress that’s been made in that period time considering how much garbage there was, and I am still in process.

There’s many more things that have happened in the last few years, and my journey has now taken me overseas to American Samoa in order to spend time with my wife’s side of the family after her father’s sudden death. Much more could be said about these recent happenings, but that is for another time.

I hope as you’ve read this that you’ve been encouraged in some ways in your own life to recognize hope and purpose in your path, even during those dark times. What I’ve come to understand is without those labor intensive times in the dark, who I became in the light would not be the same.

General Goals Moving Forward

To serve, guide and encourage others who are journeying through their growth to becoming who they’re meant to be. This will be done through direct engagement with others, and through a model of mentoring, equipping and certifying people to coach, speak and train those who are in need of hope, healing, direction, clarity, and purpose for their life in any or all arenas of their body, soul, or spirit. The focus on the spirit will be the driving force behind all this work, since it is the only part of us that will directly impact people’s eternity.

Much more to come, but this is all for now. Thanks for taking the time to read!

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