MACON, Ga. — Having once lived in a tent near the Ocmulgee River, Don Lance knows a good bit about lows.

“When you have nothing, it’s hard to hit rock bottom,” he said.

After nearly three decades of taking methamphetamine, or any other drug he could find, Lance also knows a good bit about highs.

He doesn’t hide that fact. “I’m a junkie,” he said. “I’m an intravenous-needle-using, methamphetamine junkie.”

His life has always been one of extremes.

Just more than a month ago, Lance, 43, purchased one of the 6,500 raffle tickets sold for the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway. After waking up one morning, he said God told him to buy that ticket. He told his wife, Hope, to go buy it, but the $100 price was more than she was willing to spend.

Hope Lance said she blew off her husband’s order to buy the ticket until he became more insistent.

True to form in his life of extremes, Lance won that 3,250-square-foot house in Warner Robins, Ga., valued at $350,000.

While buying that ticket changed his life, an even bigger transformation began two years prior, he said, when he finally decided to give up drugs and follow Christ.

Through all the highs and lows, he said that decision was the best choice he’s ever made.

Before things went horribly wrong in his life, Lance’s childhood growing up in Macon, Ga., was quite normal.

He was born and raised here. He attended the former Cochran Field Christian Academy, where his mother was a teacher. He met his future wife at the school when they were in kindergarten. He played Bloomfield Little League baseball. “I can’t say anything bad about it,” Lance said of his childhood.

His upbringing at the Christian school instilled in him a strong belief in God and morals, even though he didn’t always heed.

He went to high school at Windsor Academy and then transferred to Mary Persons High School, where he played football.

His father was a Macon-Bibb County, Ga., firefighter before taking a job on the railroad. Lance’s brother followed his father and an uncle and also went to work for the railroad. Lance wasn’t interested in that job.

“I didn’t ever do any railroading,” he said. “I did my own railroading. Mine was on the midnight train,” he said with his wide smile revealing only three top teeth. The other teeth were causalities of nearly three decades of using meth.

“I got a smile that kills,” he said.