To the Doors of Hell

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My Mother found me a shared house in Southampton.  She also requested prayer for me with some Christian friends that she knew.  One couple told her of a young Christian around my own age, who had been saved from a similar background- drugs, heavy metal and so on.  She persuaded me to meet him.  His name was Peter Mark, but as we talked we found out that we had gone to the same school, the same class, the same Nazi club!  It turned out to be my best friend Paul, who had left to go to the Isle of Wight.  We had both changed so much- he had changed his name as well- that we didn't recognize each other.  From that time Peter did his utmost to convert me.  Whenever we met, he spoke to me about the goodness of Jesus, and how I could be set free.  It was strange, whenever I was at my most depressed and low, I would bump into him.  This continued until I was saved.

There were 4 other people in the house that I was sharing, the family that lived there, and James.  James and I soon found out that we had a lot in common, drugs, drink  and The Doors music.  He introduced me to his drugs circle, so I was back in contact with those things far more quickly than I might have been otherwise.  That summer I counted as my "Summer of Acid".  I spent all the money that I got from Government support and what my mother gave me on drugs and drink.  I also made small amounts of money doing little deals with other drug users.  I went to Glastonbury, the largest rock concert in Europe.  I got very high- a complete weekend of druggie fellowship.  I visited my girlfriend in London an few times, and she came down to see me.  I was totally happy and secure in my own little world, walking round in a drugged daze looking out at the real world.  My mother would bring me food and support me, and she asked me once "How long am I going to have to keep doing this?"  I just said "As long as it takes..."  I didn't really care about getting a job, or anything.

This went on for about 3 years.  But finally my bubble burst.  Angela left me.  I was totally devastated.  I thought that I had finally found true love and happiness, but it was as empty as all of the other times.  I now realize that its totally useless to try to find true love outside of the love of Jesus.  That weekend I counted my money with another friend, Ben, who had moved into the house some time before.  I said that I wanted to go to a club, "pull" some girls, and get some drugs.  It seemed almost prophetic- we had exactly the amount of money that we needed.  We went to the club, got the drugs that we wanted, and got talking to six girls, who came home with us.

In the early hours of the morning, after the girls had left, Ben and I stayed up in his room talking.  Gradually I noticed a strange power build up in the room.  I became very uneasy, for I had never experienced anything like this before, in all my time of drug use.  Its hard to describe what happened.  A wave of power surged through me, trying to take over.  I knew that if I gave in to this power that I would surely die.  I battled against it, with all my will power.  I sat ridged in my chair, tense, and hardly daring to move for fear.   Ben saw that there was something drastically wrong, and telephoned an ambulance.  They arrived, but when they heard that we had been taking drugs, they wouldn't have anything to do with me.  They left, saying that it was a drugs effect, and it would soon wear off.  I continued to struggle against these waves of power that wanted to swamp me, but I understood now that it wasn't anything medical, but spiritual.  This seemed to help me in my battle and I started to gain control over the power.  The ambulance crew must have reported the incident, because shortly after they left a doctor called.  She checked me over, and one of the strange things that I remember about it was when she took my pulse, it didn't seem to be matching the rate at which my heart was pounding.  Before she left, the Doctor phoned my mothers house, and my mums boyfriend, Dave, came out.  When he arrived, I could still feel the surges, but they were nowhere near as intense as when they first started.

When Dave arrived we sat in my room and talked.  I poured out all of my problems to him- all that was wrong with my life at that time.  He didn't give me any sympathy, but just told me a few hard truths that I couldn't disagree with, then left.  By this time the strange power had completely gone.  I sat on my bed, thinking about what had happened to me in my life so far.  I saw a picture in my minds eye.  My whole life lay before me as a sheet of glass.  A hand with a hammer in it struck the glass, so that it all shattered.  The pieces lay on the ground, each shard of glass an aspect of my life, totally broken up.  I felt like someone had torn my soul apart.  I saw that I had to put my life back in place.  I started crying as I tried to pick up the pieces, and put them back into their position.  As I placed each shard in its place, like a jigsaw, my whole life started to make sense to me.  Eventually all of the pieces were in place, and in that moment of time, I totally understood what my whole life was about.  I realized that I was no longer crying from misery but from joy that everything was all right.  I looked up, and in the room, hanging in the air before me was a white burning cross.  I rubbed my eyes, not believing what I could see- was it the lights of the stereo blurring against the moisture in my eyes?  But no, it was there.  It was real.  In that moment of time, I accepted that there was a God, and dedicated my whole life to good, despite how evil I was.  I decided that I would be a servant of good, and fight the evil that was in the world.  I woke Ben up in his bedroom, and told him, "Everything will be alright".  There was such peace knowing it was all for a reason.  Ben shared this peace with me, and we cried together from the joy and relief we shared.

Without a Christian Godly influence in my life, I went about using the knowledge that I had to fight evil.  I knew of the power in Shamanism, and decided that I would tap into that power, and become a "white wizard", using magic and spiritualism for good.  Of course, this did nothing for me, as the is no good power in the world outside of the Lord Jesus.  So all I had done with my good intentions was trade one form of emptiness for another.  I became lonely once more, and depression seemed to follow me around.  For a long while I had been prescribed various anti depression tablets, that I had been saving.  I was drinking heavily at this time, as well as taking drugs.  I started to experiment with the various pills I had been given.  I would be drinking 2 bottles of red wine a day, and up to a liter and a half of rum.  On top of this I would take 5 or 10 of the anti depressant pills or sleeping pills that I had, and also my drugs.  Even though I called myself a Christian, (I thought that if you believed in God you were a Christian), I knew that I was hell bound, because of all the Evil that I had done in the past.  I couldn't believe God could forgive me, and I was resigned to my fate.  But I had a great fear of hell, which really stopped me from killing myself when I felt suicidal.

But I wanted to see how far I could push the experience of this realm, which is why I used such deadly combinations.  I took more and more drugs and pills.  For a period of three weeks in particular, I was totally out of this world.  I would find myself talking to rooms full of people that I could see and hear, but in empty rooms.  I did many strange things that frightened me- I was loosing my mind.  I didn't realize how serious a state I was in, until I kicked a wooden clothes horse through a window in anger.  When I did this, I dislocated one of my toes, and a friend called an ambulance.  When the crew arrived, they took my heart rate, which was incredibly fast due to the build up of drugs in my system.  When they heard what I had taken that day, they rushed me to hospital, and hooked me up to a heart monitor.  The doctors told me that my heart was on the verge of failing, and if I left hospital I would surely die.  This scared me, and when I was released I cut back on these experiments.  Shortly afterwards I moved out of the house that I had been living in for the past three and a half years, to a new shared house.

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