(So facts of this chapter's recount have been altered to protect anyone that may or may not have been involved, in fact I could have dreamed the whole thing.)
I discovered alcohol and drugs somewhere in my early teens. It started with alcohol and it was love at first taste. I remember the first time I experienced a “buzz”, a bunch of us were at a friends house during summer and his dad had a fully stocked liquor cabinet. He made us amaretto and coke. I drank it down like I was drinking Cherry Coke. Then the warmth began to creep through my body, like being bathed in the warm glow of angels. I loved that feeling. I should have known then to stop, but of course I fell in love. I must have been around 13 or 14 when that happened. Soon after smoking and drinking became my favorite hobbies. The sweet little mystic was under the influence.
Once I arrived in high school that path only eccelerated. I drank every chance I could, my weekend plans were centered around it. I had found a way to feel numb, and to fit in. I got to be more popular during those times, which to me is funny, because the more I drank the less I cared about any of that. I had my group of party friends and they were all I cared about.
I still carried with me my holy war however. In fact if anything the alcohol added fuel to the fire. I attended quite regularly a group called “Campus Life”, it was a “Youth For Christ” organization. I became close to director for our school. He played guitar and had his own CD out. I felt a kinship with him. I admired what he did and wanted to be like him in many respects. Yet, there was this other side, this darker side that would never let me. So as I grew my conflict grew.
Doug was most likely my first spiritual mentor. I would go on to have so many more, but he was the first person that I had met that had dedicated themselves to a spiritual ideology and lifestyle. I stuck close to him, as close as I could. He would come over and give me guitar lessons and we would talk theology in between lessons. I loved those days! I’m sure he thought he needed to bribe me with guitar to teach me about Jesus. The truth is, I would have sat and talked about Jesus without the Guitar. The music was just an added bonus.
So at this point there were two very different people living in the same body. There was the person that was involved in Campus Life and loved to talk about Theology. Then there was the guy that partied all the time, hated school and wanted to be a rock star. The only thing that both had in common was this overwhelming sense of purpose. A feeling that my life was important and that I was supposed to do something. Outside of that, I tried to keep the two from interacting too much. I didn’t talk about my Campus Life at parties and I didn’t talk about my Parties at Campus Life. Not to Doug anyway.
Then came the drugs and like everything else I went all out. I will never forget the moment I decided I wanted to try something other than alcohol. I was at a school assembly about drugs. They guy was talking about the effects of marijuana and I leaned over to my friend and said, “I wanna try that”.
So plans were put in place for us to score some pot and try it. I approached one of the older kids that I knew had connections. Little did I know at that time they were the connection. They were glad I came to them so I could get the “real thing”. They hooked us up with I think three joints. Then looked me straight in the eye and said “Okay, this is some good shit, so smoke half, wait and see how your feel, don’t smoke the whole thing”. I agreed and went on my way.
We planned our weekend around our new toy, all meeting up to spend the night together. None of us drove yet, so this all took some planning. Then the night came, I was nervous so I turned to my old friend alcohol and was on my way to being drunk by the time everyone was there. We decided we would go out away from the house to smoke it. So off we went, in the dead of winter in Indiana. I was grateful for the peach schnapps in my pocket to fend off the cold.
We arrived at our destination, two of my friends went off by themselves and two of us stayed behind to finely smoke some pot. We smoked a whole joint before the others came back. I remember saying “I don’t feel anything” then I looked down and went “Oh......Shit”. The ground seemed a so far down. It was obviously kicking in, and I was high, I mean really really high. I’m sure all the alcohol I drank only added to that effect.
Things soon got interesting because someone had the great idea to find a cure for our munchies. Now, keep in mind it is the middle of the night in the winter. So it wasn’t like we could just walk into a 7 eleven or something. However, there was a convenience store of sorts that was closed. We decided we would go in there and get some snacks. This seemed like a great idea at the time.
So we broke in found some bags and filled them with snacks drinks, hell everything we seen. I was so high, the whole thing seemed like TV, I remember looking for where the music was coming from. then one of them said, “There is no music playing, your just really stoned”. I was shocked by this, as it turns out, I have a strange reaction to pot and hallucinate both auditory and visually from it. I thought that was normal, apparently not everyone has that kind of a reaction.
So anyway, ya I committed a crime the first night I ever did drugs. That should have been a clue, but nope. Now as we were leaving with our loot we seen a squad car pull around the corner and turn on its lights. We dove behind a snow drift. I thought for sure we were busted, but I couldn’t stop laughing. Then the cop got on his speaker and said “I see you there”. Oh, man we were busted for sure. Just then we heard him laugh and get out of his car. Apparently he was talking to a car, a guy he knew. He was playing a prank. Can you imagine, we were freaking out!
He soon drove away and we made our way back to the house the whole time I kept seeing things in the sky that I thought were UFOs. The one thing I had not counted on was that the drugs seemed to amplify all the existing psychic experiences I was already having. What I was really seeing I could only imagine. It was something in the Bardo or astral plane for certain. I would end up having many psychic experiences as a result of drugs, most of them however, because of my inner torment were not pleasant.
So we made it back home, I finally drifted off to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I thought the whole thing was a dream. I mean, it couldn’t have been real. Just then I looked up to see one of my friends eating a candy bar then looking down in front of him I saw an open bag full of them. Oh my God, it was real, that all really happened!
That week when we went to school, the school was all a buzz with the break in. Since it happened in such a small community it was big news. That didn’t stop me from continuing on with drugs, in fact over the next couple of years it would get even worse. Although it would be some time before I would commit a major crime again. I was regularly driving under the influence of something. In fact, it got to the point that the first thing I did in the morning was get high, and the last thing I did before I went to bed was get high. So I did more and more and harder and harder drugs. All of this to numb myself out, I actually remember thinking at one point, if I did enough then maybe I wouldn't wake up.
During all this time however I also had my straight friends. My church going Christian friends. I still hung out with them and hid my drug use from them. I had my smart friends that I loved and so I hid all this from them as well.. I’ve ran into several of them and they have told me that they had no idea that I was using as much as I was.
After some time I manipulated my life so I didn’t have anything or anyone interfering in my use. I moved out of my house and into a friends house and only attended school if I needed to deliver or pick up drugs. Then the scary blackouts started to happen. During one of them I walked into one of my drug dealers house, sat on his bed and smoked a joint. Went through his stash, took some and then left. All the while he and his girlfriend were in the shower. They heard me and came out to see me leaving the house. I went over there a couple of days later to score, not remembering any of that and was greeted by a gun and told to get out and never come back. I tracked down his brother to find out what was up and his brother told me the whole story. I was horrified, but I still didn’t stop. It took the collision of heaven and hell to get me to stop. My holy war coming to a head.
No comments:
Post a Comment