I began smoking and drinking while attending art school

Shigeko Hosoki

I began smoking and drinking while attending art school. For twenty years after that, not only was I unable to stop, but I was more and more often at drinking parties, becoming a strong drinker, although I did not get drunk. My friends tried to make me drink until I was intoxicated, and there was no end to this bad cycle.

At Christmastime in 1972, a kind church member took me to a Sunday service at a Church of Christ, Scientist. There I felt my years of questions regarding Christianity were answered. Beginning with the New Year I was privileged to attend the Sunday services and Wednesday testimony meetings regularly.

During that year several of my problems began to be solved one after another, and I was able to realize God's presence. However, to stop drinking and smoking seemed very difficult. My friends were painters, sculptors, and designers. We drank together a lot; we believed that this was the way to do good work. Some of them even tried drugs. In my case, I drank only to continue my friendships, but my friends began to demand my company at increasingly stimulating activities, and to stop drinking seemed to call for very severe discipline, so I postponed the idea of giving it up.

A year after I began to attend church I had the opportunity of visiting a Christian Science practitioner's home. I was told that there was nothing I needed to do to stop drinking, that I simply didn't have to do something I didn't want to do, and that there was nothing as easy as that, for it was my God-given right to demonstrate dominion over error. At this time I felt as though something weighing heavily on my thought disappeared, and I could understand so clearly the words in that week's Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly (Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, p. 428): "The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal."

Soon after that I went to several gallery openings. My friends did not notice that I was not drinking, or if they did notice, they did not force me to drink but instead poured fruit juice into my glass. At this time I was completely released from the mistaken thought that I must drink to be sociable, and I lost all desire to smoke, as well.

The fact that I have been completely freed from twenty years of bondage to these bad habits is due to the power of God as understood in Christian Science, and I am indeed grateful that Mrs. Eddy established the Lesson-Sermons, which can bring us healing and spiritual growth.

(Miss) Shigeko Hosoki
Tokyo, Japan

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June 21, 1975

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