The London Years

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The job I was offered in London was working in a brewery.. Free Beer!!.  But I wasn't able to work there for long.  One day while I was crossing the road I was hit by a van, and hurt both of my wrists badly.  With one arm in a plaster cast, and the other sprained very badly, my mother had to come and look after me.  She washed me, fed me, combed my hair- it was like being a baby again.  Finally I went to the hospital to have the cast taken off.  They warned me to be very careful, my wrist was still very weak.  But as soon as I got out of the hospital I was so happy - no more humiliating baths, no more spoon feeding - Freedom!!  I was so relieve to be out  of the plaster, I shook my wrist...  Another month in plaster.  Of course I lost my job at the Brewery, but anyway, the beer wasn't all that good.

The next job that I had was working as a security guard, but I had to be 19 to start this job.  I had a few months to wait before I my birthday, and a large amount of compensation from the accident.  I wasted the time drinking in different pubs, and getting into the rock group "Guns and Roses" and their debut album  "Appetite for destruction".  To start off with I was on my own, but gradually I became part of a group of friends with similar interests.  They introduced me to the world of heavy metal culture.  I had friends who called themselves witches and warlocks, and they told me about the occult and spiritual world.  I wasn't really interested in this, but listened anyway.  I had started my job by now, and at this time I started to get into the most amazing thing in my life up to that time- Drugs.

My new friends introduced me to so called "soft" drugs, cannabis and marijuana.  These opened doors in my mind.  My senses were heightened, and I could see that there was so much more to life than what I had known before.  I started to experiment with these drugs, mixing them with alcohol, but soon the buzz from this wasn't enough.  I wanted to see more, and to explore what was out there.  So I moved on to LSD.  It was the most wonderful experience that I had ever had, until I accepted Jesus into my life.  My whole perception of life changed as I entered into the spiritual world.  I became obsessed with finding out the limits of this new world.  My taste in music changed as I started to follow Jim Morrison and his band "The Doors".  Morrison was known as "the electric shaman", "the lizard king" and "the high priest of LSD"  I also looked into the LSD culture of the 1960s.  I read about Dr Timothy Leary, Ken Casey and Alan Ginsburg.  These were the founders of the Beatnik culture, and the explorers into the expanded world that drugs opened up- and I was following in their footsteps.  As well, I was looking for true love but couldn't find it.  I moved from one girlfriend to another searching for my soul mate.  I can see now that I was doomed to failure- no relationship based on the evil of selfish lust can truly last.

After about 4 years in my job as a security guard I left.  I found the dress code -short cut hair, smartly turned out- to restrictive for the rebel image that I was getting into.  I was offered a job at a building site that I was guarding, and I jumped at the chance to grow my hair long, and dress as I wanted.  But I soon found that I was unable to hold down any job.  This what because of the rebellious and disrespectful attitude I had.  I was getting  into the Doors and Jim Morrison, searching for the truth.  I laugh at myself now, but at the time I was deadly serious as I imitated Jim Morrison.  I dressed like him, acted like him, and ended up calling myself "The Lizard Prince".  I would tell people "Hey I am Morrison Re-incarnated".  "But" they would protest "You were born before he died!"  "Don't cloud the issue!  His spirit live on in me, the Lizard Prince!"  I was possessed.  Eventually the friends that I had drifted away from me, and I became a recluse, alone on drugs and listening to my music, searching for hidden meanings.  I only had two cares- to be happy at any cost, and for my next drugs high.  I became unemployable, and for a while lived with one on my girlfriends.  Eventually when we split up and I could no longer live at her house, I was homeless.  I moved from woman to woman - basically I went home with anyone who would give me food, drugs and a bed.  After a few months my uncle asked me to look after a house for him until it was sold.

I had no where else to go, so I took up the offer.  I moved in, and really became a recluse.  I had low funds, but even so found enough money to spend my time totally on drugs and drink.  It was strange that I always seemed to have enough money for drugs.  Soon after I moved in, my Mother and Step father gave me a large amount of money to put down as a deposit to get my own flat.  This money helped me to stay high.  I met a girl called Angela and  I thought that I had finally found my soul mate, and true happiness would follow.  I was, however, a druggie and alcoholic- I was caught in a depressive cycle- I the more I drank and took drugs to combat my depressed state, the more depressed I became.  I was getting lower and lower- I saw that my life was going on a downwards spiral, and there was no way out.  Suicide seemed best, but my fear of hell kept me from killing myself.  Then God called to me again.

One day my real father knocked on the door.  I don't know how he found my address, but there he was, inviting me to come and stay with him for a while in Scotland.  I remember traveling up on the train to Glasgow after a night partying- I was hung over, bleary eyed and out of it.  I arrived at the station in my skin tight black jeans, leathers, chains, ear rings and heavy black eyeliner.  I can clearly see my fathers face falling as he realized that this wasted rock and roll punk before him was his son. But he took it bravely enough, and opened him home to me.  Dad is a Christian, and at the time he introduced me to some young believers.  I could see that there was something different about them, and I wanted to know what it was.  But the spirits that were inside me made me mock and make fun of what I heard.  After a few days I couldn't take it any longer, and left for London, desperate for drugs.  I was frustrated, finding no answers.  I remember a conversation that I had with my father, when he asked me "What are you going to do with your life?"  I said, "I only want to get high- I will be dead by thirty"  I told him that I had no life, I was trash.  He told me "God doesn't make trash- God has made you for a reason".  He also told me that God had his finger on my life.  I just laughed in my mind, for I knew that I was hell bent, and just wanted the most pleasure that I could have out of this rotten life- drugs, drink and sex.

Back in London, my depression grew.  I became more and more desperate, searching in music and books for some meaning to my life.  But it was all empty.  So empty that one night I way laying on my bed, crying, and I cried out "Save me Lord, or take me Satan".  Nothing happened.  But I believe that God heard that prayer, because looking back, He started to work on me from that point.  But I didn't know it at the time, and so I carried on searching the music of my god Jim Morrison for the answers that I needed- especially in one song I considered at the time to be my personal anthem "Break on through (to the other side).  But there was nothing there for me.

Eventually the house that I was meant to be minding for my uncle was due to be sold.  I was kicked out a few weeks early to give my uncle a chance to tidy it up - far from looking after his house, I had trashed it.  I would have been destitute, homeless and jobless out on the streets of London, but for my mother.  She heard about my situation, and came up from Southampton, and took me back home with her.  I had been in London for about 8 years, and was in a far worst state leaving it than when I had come- addicted to drugs, rock and roll, and alcohol.

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