Jackie Pullinger arrived in Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City in 1966 — a lawless, sunless labyrinth of crime, prostitution, and heroin addiction. Within its dark corridors, she found families where addiction had been passed down like a family trade: grandfathers, fathers, and sons all enslaved to the same needle, the same despair, the same death. Generational addiction was not a metaphor in the Walled City. It was a documented, visible reality.
Families Chained Together
The pattern was brutally consistent. A father would introduce his son to heroin. The son would grow up addicted, start dealing, and eventually introduce his own children. Mothers used opium while pregnant. Babies were born dependent. Entire family trees were entangled in addiction spanning three, four, sometimes five generations. Every government programme, every clinic, every secular intervention had failed to break the cycle. The relapse rate was nearly one hundred per cent.
Praying in Tongues and Watching Chains Fall
Jackie discovered something that no rehabilitation programme had achieved: when addicts cried out to Jesus and were prayed over in the power of the Holy Spirit, they came off heroin without withdrawal symptoms. Not reduced symptoms. No symptoms. Men who had been injecting for decades were set free overnight. And unlike secular programmes, they stayed free. The generational pattern of addiction that had enslaved their families for generations ended — not through methadone or willpower, but through supernatural intervention.
Whole Families Set Free
The breakthrough was not limited to individuals. Entire families were transformed. Fathers who got clean led their sons to Jesus. Sons brought their mothers. The generational current that had flowed toward destruction reversed direction. Jackie's ministry, St Stephen's Society, has seen thousands of addicts set free over more than five decades, with a success rate that no clinical programme has matched.
What This Means for You
If addiction has run through your family for generations — alcohol, drugs, gambling, or anything else — the testimonies from the Walled City prove that Jesus can break the chain at any link. The generational pattern does not require a generational solution. One encounter with the living God is enough.