Life was a nightmare but now I have a second chance
Date: 06-12-2006
Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited Kingdom |
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Ballymena man Billy Morgan (52), ex-marine and former body building champ, has had his life wrecked by ill-health and drugs. He even drove while drunk one Christmas and crashed into an oncoming car, killing an eight-month pregnant woman and her unborn baby. But Billy's is also a tale of hope. He tells Marie Foy how, after coming to terms with his shame, he put his life back on track
06 December 2006
You can tell something's not quite right with Billy Morgan as soon as you meet him. When he turns to speak to you his whole body moves, not just his head. And you can clearly seen the jagged line of a deep scar rising a few inches above his shirt collar.
That is because Billy has had steel rods inserted through his vertebrae to support his spine. But that's only one of the stories in his life.
A former drug addict, Billy has had a troubled time of it in other ways too. As a young man he caused an horrific car crash in which a woman and her unborn baby died. Plagued by guilt, he immersed himself in gym workouts and became a prize winning bodybuilder, only to have his own health destroyed by disease. His marriage broke up and he slipped into steroid use and then on to harder drugs. Life became so desolate he tried to end it.
But that is all in the past - Billy (52) has impressively turned his life around and now helps addicts and their families. And the thanks for this amazing transformation is squarely down to his new-found faith in God.
Grown-up life started for Billy at the age of 18, when he left home in Ballymena and joined the marines. During this time his cousin, a UDR corporal, was kidnapped and murdered, and Billy was one of the last people to see him alive.
"I think I have experienced everything in my life," Billy says wryly. "This was my first encounter with violent death." Regrettably, though, it was not to be his last.
He later joined the UDR, but events were to take another terrible twist. After coming off duty he went drinking with his mates, but on the way home early on Christmas morning 1975, he was involved in the devastating car crash which was to haunt him.
Badly mangled, he lay in hospital for months torturing himself with graphic images of the woman and baby who had died in the collision.
"Anything that happened to me after that, I looked at it as just punishment for the accident," he says. "Whatever happened to me wouldn't be bad enough for my part in it.
"I felt guilt, shame and I think probably the worst thing was when the charges against me were reduced to careless driving."
Billy was fined L200 and lost his job in the Army. "I felt I deserved worse, that I hadn't been punished," he freely admits. "I was discharged from hospital, which is when I started going to the gym. It was a place of escape.
"It is a very individual sport and I felt I was competing against myself. Nine months later I competed in Mr Ulster in the King's Hall in Belfast and finished second.
"Things were great for a while. I thought I was over everything bad that had happened. I won Mr Ireland and Ireland's most Muscular Man in the same year and things were looking up."
During this time, Billy got married to Katrina and they had a son, Paul.
"For the next four years things were fine and that is when my health began to deteriorate," he continues. "I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, which can be brought on by acute stress."
At 5ft 3in, Billy is not a tall man, but he was 14 stone of muscle when he first became ill. Within the first year his weight had plummeted to 5st 12 lbs.
"That is when I was told if I didn't have a colostomy I might not survive," he goes on. "I didn't have a lot of option really. It was horrific. I couldn't have imagined what it would be like. It affects your whole life.
"The years from the onset of the disease from 1980 to '83 were just a nightmare. I spent most of that time in and out of hospital and became depressed. Then the only thing I did know was training. The one place I could hide from the surgery and all the rest was the gym - and that is when I started using steroids.
"By injecting steroids I broke the drugs barrier, crossed the line to where I was open to other drugs."
Billy began selling steroids to a few friends to pay for his own supply. He started to experiment with speed, then LSD, cannabis, crack cocaine and, finally, became addicted to heroin and more deeply embroiled in the shady world of dealing.
"In 1989 I retired from competition," he adds. "From then my whole social circle changed, the focus of my life changed."
With vivid memories of the car crash still swamping him, Billy fell into deep depression and took pills washed down with vodka, intending to finish it all, but fortunately he was discovered in time by two friends.
But by then Billy was having problems with his hips and discovered that he had developed ankylosing spondylitis, a condition which causes arthritis of the spine.
"It is a progressive disease where your bones fuse. The first real problem was when my hips collapsed and I had to have one replaced in 1995 followed a year later by the second. Since then I have had both of them done again.
"When you are ill you think you are the only one suffering, but my wife was suffering too, worrying about me, trying to keep a house, bringing up a child. We just drifted apart and broke up.
"Later, we got back together again. We had had a happy marriage and I believed that we could still make it work. We had a daughter Laura, who is 19 now, a beautiful girl who I see every day.
"But my illness was still in the background. I spent more time in hospital. Before, my focus was my family, training and job. I had lost my job because of my illness and spent more time drinking and taking drugs. I became a different person." Unfortunately, the marriage couldn't survive under the strain.
"I always considered myself as a strong-willed, very positive person, and probably saw someone who took drugs as weak and without a lot of discipline in life. To go from that to someone who was completely negative, broken and unable to do anything for himself was a real lesson for me and one I don't want to forget," he adds.
But, strikingly, Billy refuses to blame his past for the way his life has turned out. "I look at people who have to deal with much worse things than me and they deal with them in a positive way," he explains. "All the drug taking and all that, those choices always have consequences. What I was doing to myself accelerated the effects of my diseases until my spine collapsed in 2002.
"I underwent 15 hours of surgery in two parts. The likelihood of me surviving was very slim. I spent a year in Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast and then transferred to the Royal."
But there was a light on the horizon for the former strong man. A friend from his bodybuilding days visited him just before his surgery. "I remember him saying he never thought he would see me in that state. I noticed something different about him and he said he had become a Christian and was a totally new and much happier person," Billy recalls.
Later, Billy came across a leaflet about a man who had been paralysed in a diving accident and how praying had given him peace of mind. The story gripped him and he saw parallels with his own life. He began to wonder if God could do the same for him.
"I thought it was all too much of a coincidence. On my own I was afraid, depressed, very scared and I just asked the Lord into my heart," he says simply.
"When I left hospital I went to a wee church in Ballymena called Victory Praise, a very evangelical church. They do a lot of outreach in the community and I saw a completely different side to this faith. There was a love for people attached to it.
"I started working for a community action programme - cutting grass, sorting out furniture for people who don't have any, getting groceries. The more I did that, the more my faith grew.
"Over a period of a year everything changed. I look forward to going to church on a Sunday. I started working at the Ballymena Family and Addicts Support Group centre as a volunteer.
"I saw people coming here with a look of hopelessness and emptiness. The reason I knew that was I used to be one of them. God was gradually changing me.
"It has been three and a half years since I was saved. I am not trying to tell people it is easy, but it has solved all my problems. People don't remember the old Billy Morgan now."
And the transformation has been truly impressive. Among other things, Billy is now working on a year's paid placement as a community support worker at the centre. The charity, recently renamed The Hope Centre, is non-religious and offers a whole range of services from alternative therapies to computer courses and arts and crafts. There is even a sauna and a gym.
Billy has designed a new programme working with people from the moment they arrive at the centre to retraining them with accredited qualifications to get them back into work and contributing to society again.
"Getting out to work, paying my taxes, being integrated into the community again, was a big thing for me and I want to see that for everyone who comes through the doors," he explains enthusiastically.
He has also started a Christian group called Club Outreach, which involved handing out cups of tea and chatting to passers-by, helping youngsters who've had too much to drink or have been taking drugs, and getting them home safely every Friday night in Ballymena.
"There are so many people out there on drugs or taking alcohol, but who are searching for something. I see kids every weekend binge-drinking, the violence, all of that.
"Once we found a young lad in an alleyway who had fallen asleep. His skin was cold and clammy. We gave him a blanket and a taxi home. If we hadn't found him, dear knows what would have happened.
"Just being out there to tell people there is a better and different way feels good. There's nowhere I'd rather be on a Friday night."
And it doesn't stop there. With the help of a friend, Billy has also started up another group called Strong Words, for ex-doormen and bodybuilders who are now Christians.
They go to rehab facilities, prisons, and schools all around the province giving weightlifting demonstrations, using this as an ice-breaker to deliver their deeper message to people, especially the young.
And last year, he walked the 100 miles to Dublin in two days as part of a fundraiser for addicts.
"I have a purpose in my life now, a reason for being ... every day I get the chance to talk to people about my faith," he says.
"I would be naive to say that I won't face struggles and problems in my life, because I will. But no matter what happens I have the conviction now that I will get through them.
"I don't know what the future holds and my health will always be an issue for me, but I believe my future lies in my faith in God. He knows the plans He has for me. I just trust Him for that.
"I wouldn't give up one day of my life now for all the stuff that happened in the past. It was temporary and superficial. I don't think what I'm doing now will ever compensate for anything, but I don't believe I should waste the experiences I have had.
"I have a chance to turn them around and use them for God. If God has forgiven me, how can I not forgive myself?" he asks. "That isn't forgetting, it is just moving on. Every day I thank God that I am still alive and can do the things I can do.
"I think within everybody there is the potential for a good life and a better life, freedom from addiction or anything that can control our lives.
"For me, the change has been powerful and I'm a totally different person.
"It used to be all about me and what I could get out of life. I have a completely new life now."
He also hopes that a new book, Rough Diamonds, which recounts his story and that of another Christian, will spread the message that, through Jesus, life can change.
"It has been a real journey. For me the fulfilment of my life is my faith in Jesus. I suppose my message is that there is hope, so never give up - because all things are possible."
