About Melissa Huray

Television news reporter by day, blackout drunk by night – no one suspected that capable and competent Melissa Huray needed alcohol to survive. Despite her paper-thin public persona, the squeaky clean girl from small-town Minnesota spent years carousing seedy bars – shockingly drunk and out of control.

Booze, men, and attention seemed the only remedies for the painful childhood abandonment wound she struggled to manage. Anxiety was a constant companion, and though Melissa had met Jesus as a child, people-pleasing soon became a counterfeit god with an increasing need to be fed.

Dutiful, pleasant, and Minnesota Nice, she longed for an 80’s sit-com family, but reality screamed the truth – her dad was a drunk.  With a mother too distracted to be emotionally available and golden-boy brother, Melissa felt forgotten. Television and junk food offered relief for a time – but by fifteen, frequent panic attacks demanded stronger medication.

Booze and boys opened a world of relief, but the frequent blackouts she experienced ushered in something else: an awful, insidious portal to hell. The first innocent sip of beer just spiraled into higher levels of sin. Friends made it home by curfew, but Melissa was blacked out and roaming a gravel pit or speeding down the highway with strangers. She wasn’t like the other drinkers, not by a long shot. And she knew it.

Soon, blackouts highlighted every weekend, and she’d pay a high price for a night of relief. From fifteen to thirty, Melissa danced with the devil. The need for alcohol was fervent and compulsive and waking up in strange places just the price paid for sleeping with the enemy. With alcohol the only outlet to bury the suffocating shame following each drunk, Melissa was trapped in an endless cycle of sin.

The deadly cost of gambling on alcohol’s temporary relief brought multiple arrests, harrowing car crashes, and pathetic attempts to quit. Melissa’s pledges to stop always crumbled. Soon, she faced a deep knowing – she couldn’t save herself, and an accident or overdose would take her life. Something had to change, but how? Each new low brought increasing revelation – every worldly remedy had failed. She didn’t need another “thing.” She needed to an eternal Who.

With surprising candor and raw emotion, Blackout to Blessing – How the Perfect Love of Jesus Saved Me From the Highway to Hell invites the reader into Melissa’s journey through childhood dysfunction, the fleeting relief of alcohol and empty relationships, and the dreadful daily grind familiar to the functional addict. As the enemy bore down, Melissa’s frantic quest to break the stronghold of addiction rocketed her toward a horrifying convergence point. But the God of her youth was in hot pursuit – ready to offer the only power that could save.