However Parnell learned how to win, and it is that message he now spends his time sharing with as many people as he can. That’s why he’s spending the evening at Christos’ Banquet Center Thursday, beginning at 6 p.m.
“I dearly loved the game of basketball and everybody around me thought I would go to college and I thought one day I would coach high school or junior high,” said Parnell. “At 13 I started using marijuana; at 18 I was introduced to cocaine and at 21, meth — and it spiraled downward from there.”
Parnell says the drug gave him paranoia and delusions, pushing him to suicide.
“Finally one day I put an SKS assault rifle under my chin and pulled the trigger,” he said. The act literally blew his face apart.
“I thought my wife and kids would be better off without me. Suicide was not an answer to anything,” he said. “It was the worst mistake I ever made. Thank God I survived. I gave my life to God and found something stronger than myself.”
While still in the hospital Parnell felt the urge to do something positive.
“I wrote on a piece of paper for my wife on the sixth day there, ‘I want to tell people the truth about drugs’,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking anything other than I’d spent 20 years of my life doing drugs and I wanted to tell people the truth. I started talking to youth groups. The next thing I know, we’ve had a chance to talk to people all over the United States and Canada, and have even gone to London, England.”
Parnell’s message is a simple one. Love of family, love of basketball were not enough to save him from the allure of meth.
“For me it was God. I’m not sure where I would be if I hadn’t given my life to God,” said Parnell. “Every other time I started to feel stronger again, I would start using again. If I hadn’t asked God into my heart I have no doubt that I would have started using again. I try to make it clear to kids, that if you are using you have to get away from the crowd your using with.”
Parnell will be sharing his story with residents of Marshall County at a special Town Hall Meeting at Christos’ Banquet Center in Plymouth beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday.
Admission is free. For more information, contact Mayor Mark Senter’s office at 574-936-6717.
Those attending are warned that some information may be too graphic for children under 13 years of age.
Visit
www.facingthedragon.org for more.
