| Back in the sunshine |
|
Ben Austin is 38, lives in the Canary Islands with his Christian wife and two children and serves in leadership at an  English-speaking church. It sounds an idyllic lifestyle – but Ben’s come a long way from the dark times in his past. Damaged by his parents’ divorce when he was young, drugs took over his life – but the father who walked out on his mother when Ben was only four was to be the means of his restoration. “My sister Louise probably felt our parents splitting up more than me as she’s two years older,” Ben recalls. “It was with her that I smoked my first spliff and had my first acid trip, but if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else,” recalls Ben as we chat in the armchairs of his impressive home in Lanzarote. I sensed he was relaxing in a security that was missing in his formative years. “I idolised my absent father, who was into everything fast, particularly cars, while I felt I was always second best to my step-dad – particularly after the birth of my younger half-brother.” Ben left home while still a teenager to live with a girl in Northampton, and was soon introduced to the emerging rave scene. “I was working with this bloke who asked if I wanted to go to a rave in Leicester and he gave me my first E (ecstasy). The feeling releases something in you, something like an enhanced in-love feeling, so that you have the energy to dance all night. “After that I met an old school friend who was living on a canal barge in Milton Keynes with a couple of drug dealers. He suggested I left Northampton and join them. I simply upped and went – that’s the sort of thing you do when you’re high.” This was the period when Ben’s habit really kicked in as he partied hard and also dealt drugs. From the barge he eventually moved into a room on the neighbouring housing estate with more dealers. By now, dad Mark, new step-mum Julie, sister Louise and her future husband Andrew had all become Christians. But Ben still had a long way to go. “Drugs took over for me,” he admits. “I was going deeper and deeper down that road. I had really bad experiences.” He had a new girlfriend who was at college in Bath, and hitchhiking between there and Milton Keynes to pick up his benefits giro he was often picked up by Christians. “I think I told them I would probably become a Christian one day as I had seen the change in my dad, but not yet as I thought I was enjoying myself. I remember telling my dad ‘You’ve sinned for 40 years, so let me as well!’” Thankfully Ben didn’t go on that long and became a Christian in 1995. But things were to get worse for him before they got better. Living off drugs money, his giro and from a washing-up job in a restaurant, he started going out with an older woman from a gypsy family and lived with her in Bath. It was she who introduced him to heroin. “I said no for ages as I was fighting it, but I gave in to a nagging mistress,” he recalled. Within a month he was hooked and soon he was on prescribed drugs. Again he was stealing cars and committing burglary, but never got caught – “I always seemed one step ahead.” But his behaviour did catch up with him when two cousins of a Rastafarian in prison ‘did him over’ for selling him crack cocaine. “My girlfriend was shaken up and decided to come off heroin and ended up in hospital,” Ben says. But God’s hand was still on him. “I was visiting her in hospital while off my head, but I remember this Rastafarian walking in to visit someone else. He was a newly converted Christian and said to me ‘The Lord is with you’ before walking off. “But I walked after him to talk. I was still on drugs but I was eventually restored to the Lord.” A new challenge  Ben began to settle into church life and soon met his future wife Di. They soon married in 1997 and moved to Lanzarote about six years ago for a new challenge. Ben recalls, “Dad moved here in 1999 to help establish an English-speaking church for the growing expat community and we wanted to support him. “Another big challenge was when dad and Julie moved back to England, but I now feel it has probably done me good. All the time I was the pastor’s son and in his shadow. “I can step into my own now.” It’s been a long, hard road for him – but he’s where he ought to be, clean, serving God, and using his experiences to help other people. By Ian White |
| Next > |
|---|