Anything for music...

My name is Vladimír Dirda and I would like to share my life story with you.

Dad was a musician and he also led his children to have a relationship with music. He wanted us to be good, quality musicians, artists. And so we started learning. Me on bass guitar, brother Pavel on keyboards and brother Honza on saxophone.

However, modern music appealed to us the most, specifically the funk style, when we started listening to Steve Wonder, Kool & The Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire. We wanted to be like them. Our friends, who also had great musical talent, got us into smoking marijuana. They told me "You can be a good musician, but try to marijuana or rather meth (pervitin) and you can practice for hours without a break. You can be really famous."

And this is how I began to learn about narcotics. It started with weed and it really worked in such a way that when I smoked I suddenly heard better, suddenly I perceived the music completely differently. So in my mind I was thinking "you're a fighter, you're the best bass player in the world". And it continued like this until I got to the pervitin. But that was a different power. Pervitin took endurance. One dose worked for me for 10 to 12 hours at a stretch. And so I practiced for 10-12 hours, practicing the bass guitar. I was in my own world. Well, I felt in my heart and mind that something was very wrong. I had two young daughters at the time who I basically didn't raise. I couldn't even approach the youngest, who was a few months old, because I was ashamed and I didn't want to come to her like that. So the wife was alone for everything, she had two small children, and the husband was always away. The day my second daughter was born, I took pervitin and went to see her in the maternity hospital. My wife recognized it on me, so she didn't even look at me. She was crying, so I left, thinking that at least I had to leave the pervitin from me. I knew it was bad and not natural. So I decided to quit with pervitin, so my wife took me to her parents' house for 3 months, who had built a house right in the middle of the wood . For three months I was away from my friends who might otherwise have pulled me back into pervitin. For three months I was in terrible pain, crying from morning till night every day. I was in an awful lot of psychological pain. But because of that, I was able to get rid of the pervitin. But I still smoked marijuana, I didn't want to get rid of it. I used to tell myself that if it was a plant, it was for my own good. I smoked marijuana for 30 years.

I also tried harder drugs, I played slot-machines and when I lost the last money we had, I would get crazy depressed. I tried to commit suicide several times and that's why I always ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Because I was always longing for some kind of fulfillment and love, I looked for this fulfillment in women. Even though I was married, I was looking for other women. I cheated on my wife, I had many women, but despite that I did not find fulfillment for the emptiness I had inside.

In 2013, my daughter came home and told us that she believed in God at summer camp and that she was therefore a religious person. I said to her." Well, you're going to be a fanatic, that's going to be terrible." But my daughter was really serious. She went to church regularly, where she met her future husband. After a while she brought Marek home to introduce us and I could see in them that they had something I didn't have. I could see them glowing, literally glowing, and filled with love. They were just different, they exuded peace.

I longed for this peace. When Marek's dad came to visit us for the first time, he told us his whole life testimony of how as a former mobster he met the living God who saved him, delivered him from all his addictions and changed his life. And I was so touched by this story that I asked him afterwards if he could pray for me.

I had a very powerful experience where I felt God taking away my addiction even to marijuana, which I was not so willing to give up. For 30 years I was under the influence of this drug every day and suddenly full deliverance came. Then I also experienced God taking away my craving for cigarette smoking as well.

God gave me a new chance...

It's been almost 10 years since I stopped smoking cigarettes, marijuana, taking drugs, playing slot machines and cheating on my wife. I have a absolutely new life and I thank God for this opportunity, a new beginning. My wife and I have forgiven everything and started over and I can say that we are experiencing true love.