Psychedelics, Marijuana and...Christianity?!

Let me start off by saying that I was given a choice as a child when it came to what I believed. My family was ex-Mormon and ex-Catholic having been excommunicated for several reasons. By the time I was born, they had converted to non-denominational, Biblical Christianity and still claim to be to this day. They never wanted to force my salvation. The way my father put it, he wanted my faith to be "organic". As I grew, I naturally wanted to be a part of what my family was, so I claimed to be a Christian and believed in it wholeheartedly.

However, this all changed when I turned sixteen. I got into playing in a Ska/Reggae band with my high school friends, became more interested in other religions and philosophies, stopped reading the Bible, and eventually stopped praying altogether. In March of 2007 (several months after my sixteenth birthday), one of my best friends offered me some pot. I knew virtually nothing about marijuana, because at the point I had avoided all drugs, especially alcohol. This was a point in my life where I was very susceptible to temptation, and I took him up on his offer.

My first high was a very immature, child-like adventure that blew my mind. Needless to say, I enjoyed it very much and became a "stoner" very quickly. I was living in Arizona at the time (it is a FELONY there!), and the weed there is imported from Mexico in brick form. It's low in THC levels, has pesticides and if I knew the exact details of how it got to Arizona, I would probably vomit. But I was stupid. For the next year I experimented with alcohol (which I still do not like very much) and tobacco. Much like alcohol, tobacco seemed useless to me, and still does. But all the while, I was still smoking weed.

Now THIS is where it got complicated for me. All of my life I was taught that marijuana was an evil "drug" that killed brain cells, caused cancer, made you mentally challenged, damaged the body's reproductive system, was physically addictive, automatically made people jump to hard drugs and was the icon for rebellion against all that was good. Even the Bible spoke indirectly about hemp, with the command to stay sober. Remember, during this time I was bouncing back and forth between flimsy Christian, to full blown adherent to Jesus. I was flip-flopping with my faith. In reality, it wasn't faith at all simply because I flip-flopped so much.

Life continued, I ended up dropping out of high school (classic relation to marijuana, right?), and moved to Portland, Oregon to visit my older brother just three months ago. Let me just say, Oregon was a life changing visit for me. Oregon has been claimed to be a drug haven. Marijuana there is cheaper and (according to many, many people) better than what California has to offer, which is saying A LOT. Clean, almost pure LSD is prevalent there, as is Oregon-grown psychedelic mushrooms, salvia divinorum, and extacy. Cocaine I know very little about, seeing as I have never tried it and don't intend to. Same with methamphetamines, heroin and crack. I've even heard of traditional opium being grown there.

On the brink of my failing faith, I turned in every which way to find "truth". I studied Buddhism, Hinduism and New Age philosophies, reconstructed my entire philosophy on life, and at one point was brought down to complete agnosticism. Never would I have been an atheist, but I was an agnostic for sure. One direction I went in, was in the direction of psychedelics. Marijuana was the first "psychedelic" that I tried (if you can call it that) and at that point it was old news. I took a HUGE leap and defied all of my logic and tried Extacy. Extacy was a very psychedelic drug for me. It made me very introspective and made me aware of my own social anxietys and how I need to work through them. I considered this to be very positive for me. However, I understood that extacy is a very neurologically damaging drug, and after one more use (I took "Molly" which is pure extacy not cut with speed) I was done with it for good.

Psychedelic number three was one of the most influential. Mushrooms. I got homegrown mushrooms that were apparently "rare" and potent. I took an eighth of them which was a mistake, as I was not prepared for the intensity of the trip. The trip was a grand conglomeration of introspective thought and humor. Everything was cartoony for half the trip, and the other half was beautiful and chock-full of intense self-examination. At the end of the trip, I had been brought down to size and realized that I indeed still believed in God. I actually prayed to God during my mushroom trip, asking for forgiveness, wisdom and direction.

Psychedelic number four was...and I'm ashamed to say it, cough syrup. DEX. Vile, disgusting and childish. It's what the kids did in high school that I NEVER wanted to do. And you know what? After actually doing it, I STILL don't ever want to do it again. DEX was a series of vomiting, lack of sleep, depression, fear, lack of appetite, and utter self-loathing at exactly how dumb I was to do it and how horrible it made me feel. The ONLY thing positive about doing too much cough medicine...was the realization of exactly how stupid it is. This trip was not profound, nor helpful. Never again.

Psychedelic number five. LSD. The "king of psychedelics" as my brother puts it. It was the one drug I never ever thought I would do. I swore up and down that I would never do acid. I was a hipocrite. I took one dose of acid, and had the most intense and profound trip of my entire life thus far. Acid brought me down to the very very core of my personality, and showed me how weak I am, how small I am, and how much I do not know. It was the most intense introspective trip I could have had at the time. I tripped for ten straight hours, getting lost in my thoughts and freaking out. In my own mind I asked myself the big questions. "What will you do with your life?" or "Who do you serve, yourself or a Higher Authority?" and questions such as, "How well do you know yourself?" and "Why did you abandon your faith?"

After the LSD had run it's course, everything stopped moving. Visual distortions were gone, fear and paranoia left, and everything was still and quiet. I had never experienced such a calm...such a silence in all of my life. And as soon as the still came, so did the answers.

The Truth was in front of me all along! I went so far away from it, that I just made a HUGE circle! I believed everything the Bible had to say, I believed that Jesus Christ was my Lord and Saviour! The Trinity, the Crucifixion, the virgin birth, Jesus rising from the dead. Everything! Everything everything everything! It was so blatantly clear. I thanked God over and over for showing me the obvious Light. I asked for forgiveness for acting so foolish (I am still asking!). The Holy Spirit certainly worked through the psychedelic drugs that I ingested, and brought me back to my faith.

Needless to say, I still struggle IMMENSELY with my life as a born-again Christian (perhaps it was the first time I was truly saved???), but I have made leaps and bounds in reclaiming my faith.

I still smoke marijuana from time to time...but I'm slowly but surely removing that from life. I don't need it! And on top of everything, I've lost complete interest in all psychedelics.

This is the first I've told anyone but God all of this...

I would love some feedback. Perhaps some prayer? I have such a hunger for Him...and I'm still riding the boundaries, unfortunately.

I can somewhat relate to your story. I have experimented with two different types of drugs, both legal however. I think my experimentation was sparked because I have never done an illegal drug and when I found out about legal drugs I bought some and tried them.

The first I tried was amanita muscaria, a legal form of shrooms and the effect I got was one that I did not expect. I didn't see things melt or anything trippy like that but I was stuck in infinity for 10 hours. It was very frightening at first, every thought or thing I did would repeat in my head a million times over and over again. Then I accepted it and started to really think about it. I had questions in my head about God and who I was. It then went back to frightening when I had the feeling that everything I had ever experienced or seen was just a figment of my imagination and completely not real, I was God in my own little screwed up universe and I had reached the end of everything I would ever imagine and here I was stuck in a room only to relive my past experiences forever and ever and ever and ever, I had found a glitch in the universe. If I have to use this experience in relation to my Christianity, I would have to say that eternal life without Jesus will be hell to the utmost! I think if everyone in the world experienced what I experienced that night then those non-believers would definitely seek a higher authority and really question their purpose here on earth. I did this drug by myself and I swore it off, I will never do this drug again in my life.

Second experience: Unfortunately for some dumb reason I couldn't stop there. I had plans on getting another legal drug. This time it was Salvia. I had this stuff shipped to my house and since I have never been a drug user in the past I didn't have the right stuff to do it so it was a home made bong made out of a soda can. This drug was easier and quite fun at first. I did this drug with one of my close friends who has experienced illegal drugs in the past. It started with non stop laughter which was fun and then I went overboard and did hit after hit until I started to melt into the couch. Don't get me wrong, still fun until my mind started playing tricks on me. I had a slight visual hallucination which was totally screwed up by my friend and I completely started to freak out. I always seem to think really deeply about things and again the whole "understanding of infinity" came back to me. Then my mind went off the deep end and I started thinking that this world was actually hell. That I was forced to live an earthly life over and over again like reincarnation, that sometime in a past life I had rejected Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and this life was my punishment, as good as life might have been for me on this earth that it would never even compare to a life with Jesus in Heaven. These thoughts lasted for about two hours, luckily my friend wouldn't leave the house until I had calmed down, he was there to reassure me that all was ok. In the midst of all these thoughts, I swore off doing any mind altering substance ever again. I believe as euphoric as these experiences may have been that they are not from God and should not be played with.

Enough about me, back to you. I would stop doing the drugs immediately, even the marijuana, swear them off and pray for forgiveness in your mistakes. You are still young and probably about to enter an important time in your life where drug test can easily ruin your career. If it was the result of doing hallucinogens to get you to the breaking point of true salvation then so be it, start fresh and go from there but don't go back to the drugs. I have sought Jesus and more and more since those two experiences, I contemplate infinity a lot now and what my life will be like after I die with Jesus. I have to come to realize that anything without Jesus or God will be Hell no matter how insignificant it will be. I encourage you to keep thinking about your experiences and really contemplate what it means to live a Christ filled life. Some people have to learn from their mistakes, that is life, take your mistake and use it to a purpose that glorifies God and Jesus.

I would love like to keep this entry going and see who else joins in the convo, this could get pretty interesting.

And remember, you are not body with a soul, you are a soul with a body.

Hey Kyle

Moriah first met its Maker four days before its 16th birthday. It had been a major acid head in its teens from age 14 onward -- ate the stuff like candy, no exaggeration, particularly at age 15 -- and had the unfortunate experience on the night in question of having its first Really Bad Trip. So bad, in fact, that Moriah went catatonic for awhile and even after recovering the ability to move, could not speak or communicate with anyone. That would be where He found it and He talked it down that night, brought it out of the spirals of cyclical redundancy and confusion and pointed it in the direction of the light--though it would be still another two months before Moriah gave itself to Him for the first time and had the born-again experience occur (or at least, believed at the time that this had occurred).

The human mind develops, socially over time, a complex series of buffers and filters between its conscious awareness and the contents of its subconscious. It comes part and parcel with learning socialization, from the most basic components of "things you don't say out loud in public", for example, to the most complex social dance steps involved in negotiating with the humans. LSD breaks down those buffers and strips away those barriers, so anything you have not been dealing with, been stuffing down inside or not giving enough attention to, will come to the forefront when you use this substance. So it would not be surprising in the least that you found yourself confronted with the big questions about your life. But LSD cannot put something in your mind that bes not already there. Being raised in a primarily Christian environment, paradigm and milieu, you naturally gravitated toward the faith of your childhood for answers, and because those cues and waystations had been engraved in your neurological pathways from pre-verbal age, they can suddenly be recalled with such vibrancy in their rawest forms that they appear transcendent of language (and hence of its correlate, rational thought), thus imitating a Gestalt or spontaneous enlightenment, so to speak, like a divine revelation. Especially under the heightened pattern-recognition and spiritual synaesthesia which drive the core of the LSD experience. For you this would represent a return to your "roots" -- ties with your sense of origin, innocence, family bonds, etc. -- after having wandered into things not a part of your upbringing experiences. This mimicks powerful symbolic templates heavily reiterated in the Bible such as the prodigal son, or the notion of Israel going astray after "false gods" (different and highly engaging aspects of life) from "other nations" (other subcultures). Small wonder you had the experience you did.

Being raised in America where the culture, "conventional wisdom" and moral reasoning have all been heavily steeped and marinated in commonplace mainstream Christian memes and paradigms will convey sufficient groundwork in the psyche in many cases even without a specifically Christian or church-inclusive background individually. Moriah's experience speaks to this as it had not been raised in any kind of Biblically-oriented or religiously devout family but more or less as a "nominal Catholic" like many American suburbanites born in the 1960s and 1970s. Church got considered as part of what "decent citizens" did, while in fact those taking religion "too" seriously got looked at askance as if they bes "kooks". Know whadda mean?

I will reply to this in a while. I just can't right now.

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Hi Kyle,

Glad to see that your life is getting on track. I do feel God has had His Hands on you through out this, and will take even the bad things and turn them into His good.
I too messed with the many drugs of the 1970s, and have had many of the same experiences. Only it didn't stop there for me until many years later.
I have seen these drugs do to people just what you mentioned. And of coarse meth can bring someone down so fast.

Perhaps looking into the drug recovery field may be something to think about as a career, you have been down the hard road and may be able to help others. It is called CAADAC, check it out.

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Kyle...I wish I could join you in this. I wish drugs had brought me full circle. Unfortunately, I am more half circle. A full circle would be wonderful. But my drug use has done more of a dance next to my christianity. I've done pot...which was just basically a fun drug to do when I was bored. Alcohol the same. Salvia never went anywhere because it was too intense and too expensive. DXM (cough syrup) was something I tried a bunch of times trying to go deep into my unconscious...all I learned with that was that there are multiple levels of consciousness and unconsciousness. And I tried LSD but it was never working. Now I am trying to stay completeing off drugs because even if drugs are good (and I am not saying whether they are or not, that is not for me to say) because God wants me to not do them. I can get my highs off of God in all ways and explore all of myself through exploring what Christ shows me of himself and me. He has that power to show me myself the most fully.

I can never say whether drugs are wrong or not. I especially cannot say that here. It is a deep thing that you must discover with God. He will tell you. I know it is wrong for me. God is the answer. Drugs never NEED to be the answer. He can give you everything you need.

__________________
I've got lots of poems...if you wanna read them...PM me....

Our stories are similar in a number of ways, I related a lot to what you've said.

I've been clean for over 21 years - might I suggest you find a Narcotics Anonymous meeting?

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The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?"
Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you....For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink..."
As a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him...
John, Ch. 6

Note: The (C₂₁H₃₀O₂) image above delineates "one THC molecule", in which (53 atoms amalgamation) is the combination of chemical element(s) 21 Carbon atoms (White), 30 Hydrogen atoms (Grey) & 2 Oxygen atoms (Pink).
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Note: The (C₂₀H₂₅N₁O₃) image above delineates "one LSD molecule", in which (49 atoms amalgamation) is the combination of chemical element(s) 20 Carbon atoms (White), 25 Hydrogen atoms (Grey), 1 Nitrogen atom (Pink) & 3 Oxygen atoms (Purple).
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Note: The (C₁₇H₂₁N₁O₄) image above delineates "one Cocaine molecule", in which (43 atoms amalgamation) is the combination of chemical element(s) 17 Carbon atoms (Black), 21 Hydrogen atoms (Grey), 1 Nitrogen atom (Blue) & 4 Oxygen atoms (Red).

Zone, I merely question the purpose of the post.

__________________
I've got lots of poems...if you wanna read them...PM me....

Hi TheMainException,
I am a chemist, etc.