Orthodox Apologetics

During the summer of 2001, Eszterhas was diagnosed with throat cancer. His doctors worked to remove 80 per cent of his larynx and told him to immediately quit drinking and smoking. Eszterhas was 56. He lived a wild lifestyle and knew that changing his habits would not be easy.


His Conversion
On a day Eszterhas describes as “hellishly hot,” he was walking through a tree-lined neighborhood when he realized he had hit rock-bottom.

Eszterhas described his frame of mind: "I was going crazy. I was jittery. I twitched. I trembled. I had no patience for anything. … Every single nerve ending was demanding a drink and a cigarette.”

He sat on the curb and began to cry. In between fits of crying he began to pray, “Please God, help me.” He hadn’t prayed since he was a child. "I couldn't believe I'd said it. I didn't know why I'd said it. I'd never said it before," he wrote.


God reached out His hand
Eszterhas was immediately overwhelmed with peace. His twitching stopped. He no longer trembled. He saw a "shimmering, dazzling, nearly blinding brightness that made me cover my eyes with my hands." Similar to Saul seeing a blinding light on his way to Damascus, Eszterhas had seen the light of Christ.

Eszterhas described the experience as “absolutely overwhelming."

He went from doubting if he could make it through life without tobacco and alcohol, to knowing that he could "defeat myself and win."

After years of smut and violence, Joe Eszterhas says he found God one hot summer day in 2001 as he desperately battled to survive throat cancer and his addictions to alcohol and cigarettes.

“I didn’t even really know how to pray,” Eszterhas writes in his upcoming book Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith. “I didn’t know what to say, so one of the first things I said was ‘I’m sorry. I’ve acted like a colossal A-hole. I’m really, really sorry. I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but please try to forgive me.’”

In their effort to prolong Eszterhas’ life, doctors at the Cleveland Clinic removed 80 percent of his larynx, put a tracheotomy tube in his throat, and told him he must quit drinking and smoking immediately.

While Eszterhas wanted to change his ways, after a lifetime of wild living, the 56-year-old Hungarian native knew it would be a struggle to do so. And it was.

In the summer of 2001, Eszterhas reached a breaking point and for the first time since he was a child, he prayed for God’s help.

"I was going crazy. I was jittery. I twitched. I trembled. I had no patience for anything. … Every single nerve ending was demanding a drink and a cigarette," he writes in Crossbearer.

After his prayer, however, he felt an overwhelming peace.

It was "an absolutely overwhelming experience," he recalled to the Toledo Blade earlier this month.

Eszterhas went from doubting if he could make it through life without tobacco and alcohol to knowing that he could "defeat myself and win."