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 her painful childhood abandonment wound. Anxiety was constant, and though Melissa had met Jesus as a child, people-pleasing soon became a counterfeit god.

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 a golden-boy brother, Melissa felt forgotten. Television and junk food offered temporary relief – but by fifteen, frequent panic attacks demanded stronger medication.

Booze and boys opened a world of promise, but the frequent blackouts that followed ushered in an awful, insidious portal to hell; the first innocent sip of beer spiraling 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 painful price. From fifteen to thirty, Melissa danced with the devil – her fervent and compulsive need for alcohol leading to bad choices and increasing shame. 

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 and soon she faced a deep knowing – she couldn’t save herself – an accident or overdose would surely take her life. Each new low brought increasing horror as every worldly remedy failed. Another “thing” wasn’t the answer: Melissa needed an eternal WHO.

With gritty candor and jarring 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.

Melissa’s frantic quest to break the stronghold of addiction finally rocketed her toward a horrifying convergence point, the only answer being total surrender – but can she? Will she?