Listen to What Ralph Zuranski Has To Say When He Answered the Heroes Question "When Was The Lowest Point In Your Life and How Did You Change Your Life Path To One Of Victory Over the Obstacles You Were Facing at That Time?"
Ralph Zuranski: My lowest life point was after I turned away from God in high school. I went to a Catholic high school, and there were no girls there. Most of the time, I just thought about girls and sex. It was right about the time that Playboy came out.
I started taking vitamins and working out when I was 13 and that completely changed my life. It actually started my path from being a 99 lb. weakling to becoming a muscle bound anomaly in the universe. I was your typical nerd with a big nose, horn rimmed glasses, and plastic pen carrier, but I had muscles.
When I started taking vitamins and working out I suddenly had this huge surge of testosterone. So I was thinking, “I have to get a date! I have to go out with girls! I’ve got to find a girlfriend! I’ve got to have sex!”
So that was in direct opposition to what I had learned in Catholic school as far as being a virgin until marriage. So I went to UCSD which is sort of a revolutionary college. It had a lot of communists on the staff. You had to take a socialist program, Humanities, that talked about the reason why you were screwed up is that you needed to rebel and you need to get involved in mind expanding drugs and sex.
Just to rebel against what your parents told you and what society was telling you. It was the time of the Vietnam War and so I was disillusioned with what was going on and so I figured, “The reason why I’m screwed up is because I’m not having enough sex, drugs and rock and roll!”
I decided I would go down that trail and I still remember the first day that I didn’t go to Mass. I decided I would go surfing instead. I was sitting out in the ocean and it was the time of the movie Jaws and I just kept on thinking about this big giant shark opening up its mouth and just consuming me, like the whale consumed Jonah.
Sitting out on my board as punishment for turning away from God, and when nothing happened like that, that sent me on a spiral on getting involved with sex and drugs and rock and roll, and psychedelics.
It completely evolved into a situation where I was smoking pot all the time. I was living with a guy that was into coke and all the horrible things involved in freebasing coke and I saw all that. Ultimately it led me to a point where I was just so depressed and I was ready to kill myself.
I still had that problem with depression. Even though I had money, sex and drugs I was just so depressed.
The idea of training a child in the way they should go and when they are old they won’t depart from it. I know my parents were praying for me and spontaneously at the lowest point of my life when I was ready to kill myself, out of the blue, subconsciously I started saying the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary.
That seemed to put me in a situation where I was able to find my relationship with God and either accept the free gift of salvation or just kill myself. Thankfully God gave me the grace and the faith to make the right choice.