Formerly drug addicted pastor creates church for drug users

“I had some pretty scary moments in my life, but that day I felt a calling. I felt a tug on my heart. I felt something different,” said local resident Brendan Maroney.

Those moments were “near death experiences” involving Maroney’s addiction to drugs and alcoholism. It was on Christmas Day when Brendan found himself crawling into a friend’s car after getting into a bloody altercation.

“When I got in the car with my friend she looks at me,” said Maroney, “and she was a drug addict. So it’s really weird for her to say this, but she looks at me and says ‘have you had enough yet?'”

So he sobered up and now lives a clean drug free life.

Maroney is also the pastor of Restoration Church. He said he wanted to help people overcome what he went through since the age of 13 by creating a church for those struggling with drug addiction too.

Maroney said it hurt him to know he was hurting a lot of people. And not just people, he said, “Myself as well.”

He said that’s when he decided to take his problems to the cross, to deliver himself from drug abuse through his belief god.

“I felt like we needed a faith based service that was in Christ, that we can reach people like me and others that were addicted to drugs, and alcoholism and to everything else,” Maroney said.