At a young age, Zach Vachakhan found himself hanging around bad influences as a result of unresolved issues concerning his father. I grew up without my dad. He left when I was pretty young and throughout my life I was always wondered why he left. I always had this feeling that it was my fault. So I started getting into the wrong crowd. I just had that didn't care mentality. As insecurities took over and depression set in, Zach looked to drugs for the answer. I started swicking weed at the age of 11, 11 or 12 all the way to about last year. It's 11 years. And on top of that, I was always partying. Trying to fill this void, just trying to just flesh out reality. And so I was always partying every weekend, getting drunk. Then I introduced the pills. You know, that really was my escape. You know, it was high almost every day. Almost off of anything. Really any narcotic. I could find Xanax, Adderall. You know, I just had to have something. Still void of peace, Zach turned to his family's religion a Buddhism. And even when as far as becoming a monk. I became a monk. You know, try to find inner peace, try to, you know, overcome these things. And I only felt like I was going more down because I couldn't even live up to that expectation. I just couldn't do it. I couldn't succeed at anything I did. And so there was really discouraging and it brought me deeper into depression. Living as a Buddhist monk seemed to leave Zach worse off than before. Life had become too heavy for Zach to carry any longer. Then one night I just, you know, thought to myself like I'm just dead weight. So my mom hides her gun in her room. I couldn't say where, but I went and grabbed it. You know, and ran downstairs and locked my door, turned up music and tried to pull the trigger, but it just jammed. You know, I figured I was assigned somehow. Zach had planned to commit suicide once more, but was caught by a friend who had stopped him in the act. It was going to hang myself, but he snuck through my window and found me. And then, you know, took the rope from me and just stayed with me that night and made sure I didn't do anything. And I was just, I just poured out to him. So like, man, I don't know why I can't do anything right in my life. Why? I am the way I am. After some convincing, his friend had talked to me into coming to use service that next day. The presence here was amazing. It was really good, but it was weird to me to see how much people care. Like, I was wondering where all this, you know, excitement and love and stuff was coming from. Where these people worshiped, it's got so much because I'm over here going to what I'm going through and I just didn't believe in a God. The words spoken that night had reached Zach in a way that nothing else had. I was being touched. I felt really, really convicted, but in a good way, like it re-evaluated my life. And I went home and cried. I didn't make it to like 20 minutes of the service, but I went home and I cried. Something sparked in me that I somehow found a Bible in a Buddhist home. It was kind of ironic. And then I read through Psalms and Proverbs in one sitting and I just got curious like, what is this me? Like, why do I feel the way I feel? That following Sunday, Zach was back in church and gave his life to Christ. I felt this push to come up on Autocross. I gave my life. Things have been great. I was set free from drugs. I never went back. I actually found a big packet of pills. And I called my girlfriend and told her that I just didn't want to do it anymore. So I fleshed them. And then God has taken me through so much now. Me and my girlfriend were living a sinful life. And we decided to separate and try to focus on God. And now we're getting married. And now we're both serving in the church and it's amazing to be in an environment where people care and to feel the presence of God, to know what true love and true pieces. My name is Zach Batsykan and this is my testimony.