Evil Exists

I had a gun to her head. She had turned me over to the police, made a deal with them so that she could get out of trouble. A week previous, I had come home after doing a burn (making a batch of methamphetamine) with several ounces of meth and took a shower. When I got out of the shower, there were people in my house tearing it apart that identified themselves as police. She had let them in to search. They found the meth I had brought home and arrested me.

When you get arrested, you eventually get out. I got out sooner than she thought I would. They held me for 24 hours and then let me go. She was still there when I showed up at home. I went straight to a stash spot they had not uncovered, grabbed my gun, chambered a round and grabbed her by the hair. I pushed her to the ground while putting my gun to the back of her head.

Time stopped. It was like a slow motion scene in a movie. She started crying, telling me she was sorry.  “I didn’t want to tell on you. They pulled me over with drugs and were going to put me in jail. I didn’t have a choice.” My companion was screaming at me as well, “Pull the trigger, coward. Don’t get scared now. You HAVE to do this.”

At that moment, I only knew a few things. One, I was about to make a choice I could never take back. I prided myself on never hitting a girl, and I was preparing to take one’s life. Second, although I was not sure I wanted to kill her, I knew my companion wanted me to pull the trigger and put her out of her misery. Finally, I knew that my companion was evil beyond anyone or thing I had ever met.

My companion always wanted me to hurt either myself or other people. He was there a lot in the shadows, but he only came around when things were getting ready to turn bad. He would encourage me to do the absolute worst thing. If I was going to collect money, he would remind me to take my gun. If I was in a fight, his would be the voice telling me not to quit punching and kicking long after the fight was over. If I was in a house of people I didn’t know, he would whisper in my ear, “They want to kill you. They are going to kill you. You should get them first.”

If I was thinking about quitting drugs, he would show up and remind me of all the times I had tried to quit and failed. “You have been using for over half your life. You’re never going to be able to quit. This is the only thing you are good at. You are not a quitter. DO IT! You know you want to get high. You can’t live without it.”

This time, my companion was not giving up. He was screaming at me, “Pull the trigger, coward. She tried to take your freedom away.” I turned to look at where the voice was coming from and saw my companion. He was a figure blacker than black. He was standing right behind me, darker than any shadow could possibly be. He was not all smooth lines, but his outline was jagged and rough.

I could never make out any features of his face, as his face was always dark and cloaked in shadow. The most remarkable thing about him was his eyes. They were pulsating, red eyes that burned into me every time he looked at me. The scariest thing was not the eyes, or even him being beside me in my ear but his voice. He never spoke, he shrieked and screamed and yelled. Even his whispers oozed with rage and hate.

People have asked me if he was just a shadow person. He had started out that way. Shadow people are there when you have been up too long. They come out of trees, around corners, run by you so fast you can only catch a glimpse. When you look, the figure fades away, blends in or is gone. You’re mind is unable to explain what you see, so it explains them away to something you can understand.

I was an atheist when my companion was still a shadow person, and did not believe in spirits. I rationalized what I was seeing. I would tell myself it was the wind blowing a branch, or the fact I had been up for a week and had psychosis. Sometimes I thought maybe it was the police watching me, waiting to arrest me. That is the reason so many people think they are being watched when they are not. The shadow people become COMET or DEA to them. That is what they were to me. The problem was, they seemed real and I shared the visions with other people who were with me.

If I was alone I only saw him. When I was by myself, it was just the solitary shadow man. I have talked to some people who saw groups when they are alone. Not me, I generally saw just one. When around other needle freaks, I would see more than just one. They would stand around in a group, almost like they were talking. Maybe our demons were comparing notes or sharing new ways to get us to do things we didn’t want to.

I would explain it away as a group hallucination, telling myself it was sleep deprivation or my mind playing tricks on me. Over time I started seeing him constantly in the shadows, or out of the corner of my eye. The bad part was that I was starting to see him when I was not high. He was always there lurking.

That was how it began for me, with my shadow man. Then I started to hear whispers that I could not quite make out. That advanced to the voice actually speaking to me, telling me what to do. At first the voice was harmless, encouraging my drug use and validating what I was thinking on occasion when I would think out loud. Then it began to tell me to do horrible things, to myself and to others. It was no longer a whisper, it was a scream.  Yelling and nagging at me to do things.

Then one day it appeared before me. I saw something out of the corner of my eye and when I turned to look, it was still there in the shadows watching me. From that day on he would randomly appear next to me, often at the times I was at my weakest, angriest or highest. Always egging me on, encouraging me to do the worst possible thing to either myself or other people.

There were times, like when I was contemplating not using after waking up Sunday, he would show up and remind me that I had never been able to quit and would never be able to. Today I was angry, and it was telling me to do what a part of me wanted and another part of me did not. It was telling me to pull the trigger. I was seriously thinking about it.

I started trying to reason with my companion, “I can’t pull the trigger. I really don’t want to do this.” My girlfriend started talking back to me, thinking that I was talking to her, “Then put the gun down, David. I know you don’t want to shoot me.”  I pulled her head back and started laughing in her face as I told her I wasn’t talking to her. “Who are you talking to then,” she asked? “The demon standing behind me, can’t you see him? He wants me to kill you and part of me wants to kill you as well.”

I am not sure if he showed himself to her or if the craziness of what I said scared her but as she looked behind me her face turned to sheer terror and she started screaming. Not yelling at me like she had been, trying to plead with me. There were no words, just a shrill keening. Her face froze as her eyes went wide.

I had never seen such an intense look of terror before.  The gun to her head had not caused that look of fear, but either her seeing my companion or the insanity she saw in me scared her to death. I took the gun away from her head and pulled her off her knees. “You have one hour to get your stuff and go. You have until tomorrow to be gone. You are going to leave state and go back home. I never want to see you again, or it will be a bad deal,” I told her.

She did not speak. All she did was nod and run out the door. I never saw or heard from her again. She lived with me and she left all of her stuff with me. She left her clothes, make up, purse, everything. She left it all and disappeared.

Looking back now, I hope she made it home and out of her addiction. I pray she is somewhere clean and sober, living a better life in recovery. If you are reading this, and you know who you are, I hope that you can forgive me. You are just one of the people I met in my addiction whose life I wrecked. 

When my shadow person stopped being a shadow person lurking about and started talking to me and had taken form, I stopped being an atheist. I knew that my companion was evil and that he was a spirit. He made me an agnostic, because if he existed than surely other spirits did as well. Or was it all from my imagination and random misfiring neurons in my brain? Was it the drugs working on my brain? Even when I was not high, I still had drugs in my system so it could have been that as well.

I have thought about it for years. I have talked to many other addicts who have shared the same experience that I have with my companion. Due to so many others having very similar if not the same stories, I have come to believe that my companion was a demon, and that when I was using drugs I opened myself up to forces that were evil beyond comprehension.

What is even scarier is the period of my life from 1994 – 2001 and how little memory I have of that 7 years. I almost wonder if I wasn’t possessed for large parts of that time, or if the memories just didn’t form because of all the drugs I was using and the lack of sleep I experienced. I have come to a place where I hold on to a few things about this time in my life so that I can function today:

1.      I know that evil exists and at one period in my life I made very evil choices

2.      I know that nothing good lived in me during my addiction and that all people are capable of doing things they never would believe they would do

3.      I know I am no longer the person I was in my addiction, for I have found a better life in recovery

4.      I know that I have made my life a living amends so that I can help rebuild other people’s lives today instead of destroying them like I once did

5.      I know I believe in a Higher Power I call Jesus that has freed me from my addiction and supports, encourages and guides me in all that I do today

This is actually the rough draft of the first chapter of the book I am writing. I am open to feedback. It is a little rough, but I feel that it gives people an idea of how far down I had gotten in my addiction. I also would ask that if you have had similar experiences or thoughts on what I experiences that you leave comments as I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say.

Quality not Quantity

I am seeing a growing trend. There are bigger and bigger churches springing up all around the area I live in. Some of them look to be the size of NCAA Division I football stadiums or concert arenas. Some of them are spread out over many acres and would make a junior college campus envious. They are packing the seats inside of those churches, too.

As big as they are, they continue to open up other “campuses.” That tends to be their term for the new churches they open up, not mine. When you look up campus you will see definitions ranging from “grounds of a college, university or institution of higher learning” as well as “a large landscaped business or industrial site.”

Next we will look at the church service itself. I have seen multiple churches promoting their services as a “60 minute experience.” Come visit us and listen to a great message. There are also the buzz phrases: “seeker friendly,” “seeker sensitive” and “culturally relevant.”  Then there is the promise of being comfortable and having fun. There sure is a lot of things going on at these places. Let’s look at that next.

There are the electric guitars, strobe lights and fog machines during worship music (which sometimes includes secular songs that don’t tie into the sermon at all). There are the subjects discussed, as well. Let us talk about pop psychology and media 101 in our church “experience.” We can talk about the latest books, movies and popular music during your 60 minute stay so that you feel comfortable, safe and informed.

Great advertising, good marketing and top notch entertainment provided in a minimal amount of time. Sounds like an amazing place. I can see why they are packing them in. Who wouldn’t want to go there? It sounds simply amazing, especially to someone from “old” churches that could go for 2 hours and sang boring hymns and had choirs. Who wants that? Not the average, unchurched person of today. In fact, not that many of the churched, either based on attendances.  

After all, the new church is just being Biblical. That is why Jesus then Paul packed them in to hear them speak. They had the harps and horns rocking, and when people came to hear them it was for only 30-60 minutes so that they could go about the rest of their day and not be inconvenienced. They even talked about entertainment, often referring to archery and wrestling contests as well as the latest games held in the coliseum.  

Okay, maybe not. I am confused by some of the wording. For starters, why is it called a campus? The argument could be made that it is because it is an institution of learning. On the opposite side, the argument could also be made that it is because it is a business per the definition of the word. After all, businesses tend to have cool logos and catchy slogans. They also use buzz words to attract people to their place of business. It is all about the marketing.

Calling service a 60 minute experience is wrong on many levels. For starters, how do you actually know how long the sermon will be? What if the Holy Spirit leads you to preach longer” What if the worship leader is compelled to play longer? What if prayer takes 15 minutes instead of 60 seconds? We are putting the Holy Spirit in a box. “Well, the Spirit knows how long it has to work on people,” is the answer. After all, that is Biblical????

Next, we look at seeker friendly, seeker sensitive and culturally relevant. We are non-confrontational as we slide in beside people and tell them what they want to hear. After all, the message in the New Testament was never about judgment, in your face instruction or discipline.  “We are not to judge. If you don’t believe me read Matthew 5:1,” said no one who has read the Bible EVER! We are no longer Christian soldiers engaged in warfare with this world, but Earthly hipsters’ intent on making sure everyone likes and accepts us!

We need to keep up with the trends. After all, we are part of this world too, right. How can I possibly share the hope of salvation and the impact of Christ’s grace if I don’t know how to relate it to people in a funny, engaging way by talking about a movie they have seen, a book they read or a song they listen to on the radio? Plus, how can I possibly get people to visit my church if it is not loud, short and exciting.

We need to dress down, so that the people coming in can feel better and more comfortable. It sends the message that we are no different from them. Also, remember to keep the “message” superficial and positive. There is no need to go on and on about this being a sin-filled, fallen world. After all, we are part of this world and that would send the wrong message. We are not separate, we are just like the rest of the world and that is why they will come here.

Now I ask you, what is the problem with the above scenarios? There are many who attend these churches that have great Biblical knowledge and live amazing Christ-like lives and it puzzles me. I would like to know why you are drawn to these churches. I personally and Biblically see major issues with these churches. Here are some of them:

1.       The message appears to be determined more by the world than the Word

2.       They try too hard to fit in with this world, becoming of it more than just in it

3.       People who are  hopeless are looking for something different, not what they already know

4.       Change does not happen when you are comfortable. It happens when you are uncomfortable

5.       There is a focus on the unchurched, not the unsaved. There is a big difference in those 2 words

6.       Churchgoers are being entertained instead of equipped to share the Gospel with all they come in contact with

7.       There is a focus on attendance instead of discipleship

8.       The Holy Spirit has been given time constraints

9.       It can be highly uncomfortable to be a Christian, and people are misled into thinking otherwise. Jesus said that they would hate us as they hated Him and that we are to daily pick up our cross and follow Him. He told the prostitute to go and sin no more. Those do not sound like very seeker sensitive messages.

10.   People are not being taught to stop sinning. We can no longer continue doing the things that we know are wrong. You cannot put new wine (a Christian lifestyle) into an old wine skin (your previous secular life)and expect to begin living Christ-like.

I am not judging, I am instead fruit-inspecting. When the fruit is not ripe, there are problems with the tree. When someone says it is an apple tree and all you see are oranges hanging from it, you know there is something not right. When I ask someone what they like the most about their church and they say the music or how laid back it is, that worries me. When I hear no mention of the Holy Spirit moving or the presence of God being felt, I get a little scared. When they don’t speak about how it made them feel uncomfortable and see that there needed to be big changes made in their lives, I get worried.

The seeker friendly church may be a good place for those who are not Christians, but I am not sure that it is a good place to go other than the first time or two.  After that, you need to grow and I am not sure that real growth is encouraged in church service. Instead, you are tasked to go to small groups for that. Small groups are an awesome thing, but church is where your coach should be using the playbook and teaching you how to win the game. Translation, this is where your pastor uses the Bible and teaches you how to live Christ-like.

In closing, don’t judge the validity of a church by the attendance. After all, rock bands sell out 50,000 seat arenas every day. People love to be entertained. They don’t like to be called out, though. That is why just because a church has 1,000 or 20,000 members does not mean that it is better than the church of 50. In fact, it may be worse.

The Complete Suit of Armor part 1

To begin this series we looked at James 2:26 and discussed what it means when it says that faith without works is dead. It meant that you can have dead faith. Works are not the key to salvation, they are the proof of salvation. If we have the Holy Spirit filling us, we will live our lives differently. How we are to live our lives was then discussed in the second part of this series by looking at the Beatitudes, found in Matthew 5:3-12.

According to the beatitudes we are to be meek, righteous, pure of heart, and persecuted to name just a few. How are we to do this? How can we apply the beatitudes in this evil world we live in? Most of these are attributes the world despises, uses and abuses. They may make us look weak, cause us to not fit in or simply seem impossible to us because of the influence of the world. To live as Jesus told us to live goes against the normal, and is attacked by those around us at every turn. How do we do it?

It sounds like we are at war. We are! We are at war with the standards, ethics, morals and values of this culture. When you go to war, you need to be prepared. In order to be prepared, there are things we need in order to successfully battle the ways of this world and live our lives with a higher purpose. Our needs are summed up in Ephesians 6:10-18:

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people"

So, first and foremost we are to rely on God and the power of the Holy Spirit He has provided us with. He has provided us with various gifts that will allow us to stand up to Satan. Here we are told that we are struggling with spiritual forces. We cannot defeat those of the spiritual realm with tangible weapons and muscles. No matter the amount of muscles we have and the hours we put into self-defense training or the guns we have and the amount of time we put in at the firing range we will never be able to defeat the devil. We cannot use physical things to defeat spiritual ones.

In order to defeat spiritual attacks we have been given spiritual gifts to use. We are given spiritual armor and a spiritual weapon then told to use it. We are not told to apply some of it, but instead to don the full armor of God so that when temptation comes we are able to withstand it. If we put this armor on Paul said that not only would we stand our ground and overcome temptations, but that at the end of all that the world and the devil have to throw at us we will still be standing tall for Jesus.

Next time we will look at what each individual piece of armor represents in The Complete Suit of Armor part 2.



BLiR VLog From 09/09/2012-09/15/2012

BLiR Vlog 09/15 Spiritual Attacks and Overcoming Them

BLiR Vlog 09/14 Why God is Never Disappointed in You

BLiR Vlog 09/13 90 Days to Hope or Your Misery Refunded

BLiR Vlog 09/12 The Bully and the Bullied

BLiR Vlog 09/11 I Am Against Decriminalizing Marijuana

BLiR Vlog 09/10 First BLiR Event

My Journey of Addiction - From Fearing Death to Fearing Life to Living for Christ One Day at a Time

I can still remember the first time that I smoked marijuana. It was the summer before seventh grade. I had just moved to a new town called Highland and my dad worked overnights. I went for a walk the first night that I was there and saw a cluster of kids as I walked by the square. There were a couple that looked to be my age, but most looked older. As I walked by the square one of them called out to me.

As I walked over I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. One of the kids asked if he could bum a cigarette. I gave him one and we talked for a few minutes.  It came up almost immediately that I was new in town, and he told me what to expect when I started school. Looking back, it was typical stoner conversation, "School sucks because we don't fit in, the teachers try to fail us, the cops in this town sucks and everybody is out to get us."

Another kid came up and whispered in his ear then walked off. He turned to me and asked, "Are you cool?" Not knowing what that even meant, I said yes. He asked me if I smoked pot. I had no idea what pot was. I knew that I smoked cigarettes, so I said yes. We walked into the gazebo on the square and entered into a circle of kids passing around joints. I took my first hit of marijuana. I coughed like I had tuberculosis and everyone laughed. I continued to smoke in that circle.

By the time I left that night I was stoned and drunk. And I had friends. The two years that I had lived in Branson I had only made one friend. The entire time that I had lived in Peoria I had made one real friend. Both times, they lived right next to me and I was the only option their age. This time, it was different. I had multiple friends and most were older than I was. Suddenly, I had found my place in the world.

It felt good to be accepted. That weekend I went to a house party with the same kids. There were more kids there and some grown-ups. I smoked and drank again. That night I also used cocaine, tripped acid and had sex. Now I had a lot of friends who felt just like I did. Some of us were born to alcoholics and drug addicts, some of us were abused. Most of us were both. We were different, but we had each other.

I had found my niche, and the days of partying and fighting had began. I soon smoked every morning on the walk to school with a couple of friends. We did rush/poppers between classes and smoked again on the way home. We drank most weekends, fought a lot and took white crosses constantly. Cocaine was rare, it was only with adults at big parties. That was my 7th and 8th grade years. When I moved to Eldorado, it was just more of the same through high school.

I would never change all that I did and all that happened to me. It has all made me stronger and wiser. I do wonder what I would have done if it was someone other than my teachers and the "Just Say No" program telling me not to do drugs. Would I have done them? If someone could have told me where I would end up ten years later that I could relate to would my use of stopped, stayed the same or increased? I will never know.

All that I do know is that no intervention ever worked, and my use just increased. I ended up moving to Hollister, Missouri the summer before my senior year and hung out in Branson at the lakefront then went to keg parties most nights. I was also introduced to methamphetamine when I got to Branson.

That was were things really started to get bad, but I could always justify it. "I am only snorting and smoking it. It's not like it's going to kill me." I dropped out of high school because it got in the way of my partying. I could not place school and learning above partying and having sex. My journey from abuse to addiction landed me in jail and on house arrest. When I was 20 I graduated to prison. I got out when I was 21 and by that time I had spent about 10% of my life behind bars.

I still justified my drug use and the hustling that I did, because it was fun and I enjoyed doing it. I liked my life. You could even say that I loved my life. When I got out of prison I used meth intravenously for the first time, and my life was never the same. I still wanted to live, because shooting up felt like nothing I had ever done before. It was the most intense feeling that I had ever had. Now I know why.

Here is a quick lesson in brain chemistry. Dopamine is responsible for generating feelings of pleasure in our brain. It is the chemical that is released when we have an orgasm. When you do cocaine it releases almost twice the amount of dopamine that an orgasm does. Methamphetamine is 3 times stronger than cocaine. Our brain releases over 600% more dopamine when we do meth as when we have an orgasm. That is a level that is biologically impossible to reach without drug use. As addicts we soon find that nothing comes close to the euphoria we feel when we do meth, and we crave it. Soon that high becomes the only thing that matters, and we lose interest in everything else!

I slowly began to phase out my friends and family that did not use. I wanted nothing to do with them. I did not want to hear them preach at me. I began to miss family events like birthdays and Christmas. They were just not that important to me. I wanted to get high, and I was enjoying doing it. I could justify my drug use, because I was working full time (and hustling the rest). It got to the point that I would sleep one day a week, on Sundays. I would stay up from Sunday night through early Sunday morning.

I had a car accident a year or so after that, flying a Firebird 97 feet and 32 feet into the air. I was in the hospital for a while on opiates, and if you forward 6 months from the wreck I was addicted to opiates also. My use continued, and it got worse and worse. When I was 26 my sister found me unconscious in my bathroom with both of my wrists slit and blood every where. She called an ambulance, and they were able to save me.

My sister made me promise that I would never attempt suicide again. I promised her that I would not. I meant the promise when I made it. I even kept that promise, kind of. More on that later. I continued to party, and had gotten put back on probation just as my parole was ending. I rode out my probation for the first several years. I was always able to stop using 48-72 hours before I saw my probation officer and I would flush my system or use a Whizzenator.  I thought that I was doing okay, but I was wrong.

My addiction had gotten so bad that I shot up right before I saw my probation officer. Literally, the day before and again on my report day. When I got in, she took one look at me and said, "If I were to test you right now, what would I find?" I told her that I didn't know what she wouldn't find. Just like that, I was on my way to rehab.

I won't get too much into the details, but before I went to rehab I put everything that I had left in a spoon and used it. It should have killed me, but it didn't. Instead my sister drove me to detox. While I was in rehab, I thought that maybe they were right and I needed to quit. I completed residential, but did not do outpatient aftercare. I was doing great, or so I thought. I even started an NA meeting in my home. I was all about showing everybody how wrong they were about me, thinking that I would relapse. In the end they were all right. I made one major mistake, I kept the friends I had before I went to rehab. It is hard to stay clean when you are playing in the mud. I was bound to fail.

Finally one day I needed money, and the only way I knew how to make it was to do a burn. I made a batch of dope, and just like that I was back out there. It was actually worse this time around. The first 7 years of my life I had never overdosed. I overdosed 3 times over the next year. I always had to do more than everybody else.

I had a death wish. At one time, I would watch how much I did because I did not want to over do it. This time around, I didn't care. I had discovered something. I could not quit. I thought that I had it beat, but I discovered that methamphetamine owned me. I would do opiates, benzodiazepines, hallucinogens,  powder and rock cocaine. I would shoot up ice water and liquor just to feel the needle. It did not matter what you had, I would do it.

I soon found what my true addiction was. I was addicted to more. I wanted anything you had and would do all that you had. If it was sex, drugs, liquor, fighting or money. I wanted it and I wanted it all. The only thing that I did not want was to live. I would go to dope cooks houses that I did not even know, hoping that they would kill me. If I knew that someone was spun out and sketchy, I was there and would refuse to leave.


I had friends, but I couldn't trust them further than I could throw them. I had good dope, money and a house. They loved me for that, but they would steal from me given a chance. They were just like me, all about themselves. Sure they would have helped me hide bodies, but they would have hid mine too if the money was right. It was the drug world, and sometimes people just disappeared. Everyone thought that they had moved, but we usually knew better. Those were my running mates. I WAS NOT ALRIGHT!


I had promised my sister I would not kill myself, but I never told her that I wouldn't let someone else kill me. I have had people come at me with guns and knives. I egged them on. I WANTED TO DIE! I ended up with holes in my body that I was not born with.  I did stop breathing on several occasions, but I always came back to life. I hated my life, but it was all that I knew!


The reason that it all got so bad was that I had been running from feeling my whole life. I was abused as a child and felt like a loner. The only time that I felt like I fit in was when I was doing drugs with other people. We shared a connection. Drugs were the only stable relationship that I ever had. It never tried to take advantage of me, never lied to me and I always knew what to expect from it. Plus the rush was unlike anything that I had ever felt. But the downside was intense. I loved drugs, I loved the way they made me feel but I could not stand the people it brought into my life and I hated the person that they made me. They made me evil!

By the time I realized what it was doing to me, it was too late. I can remember seeing one of my friend's friends after he had overdosed. I walked into the bathroom and he was sagging against the wall and the toilet, dead. As I looked into his eyes I could only think one thing, "That sure looks nice. He finally looks calm and peaceful. I bet that feels great."

You see he no longer had to worry about the things that we as drug addicts have to worry about. He no longer had to fear someone sketching out and thinking he was an undercover or wearing a wire. He didn't have to play curtain patrol every 3 seconds because he knew that either the cops or the COMET (Combined Ozarks Multijurisdictional Enforcement Team) Drug Task Force was out there watching him. He no longer had to fear his friends, family and girlfriends were either turning him in or conspiring against him. His race was finished, he was done. He was at rest forever. I wanted that.  


To give you an example of where my life was at this time, if I got arrested with money in my pocket to bond out I would stay in county jail for a week or two. I could catch up on sleep, eat a bunch to gain weight and relax. I was calmer and less stressed in county jail than I was on the outside of jail in the real world. I wasn't institutionalized, but life as a drug addict is not all that it is cracked up to be. The combination of drugs and no sleep coupled with low-life friends (because I was a low-life too and we attract people just like us) sucks! It can only take you to dark places.  


I WAS A SOLDIER FOR SATAN! I can remember holding a cocked and loaded gun to my temple, contemplating pulling the trigger and hearing voices from these shapes that were darker than dark shout at me, "Do it. Pull the trigger and come home." I have seen shadow people in the corner while I was high and sometimes when I was not high watching me, always  watching. I have held a gun to someone else's head and been cheered on and encouraged by the same shadow people many think are fake. I tell you this for certain, after a while we become Satan's soldiers and do his bidding. 


Shadow people are real, and so is possession. When I was on meth and would get mad people  have seen my entire eye turn black. I have glimpsed myself out of the corner of my eye in the mirror and saw the demon that had possessed me. How can you not fear life when you are possessed by demons and they are all around you. When you see perfectly sane people doing insane things, that is not the drugs. That is the evil that pervades them. METH IS EVIL!


I know that some may think that I am crazy when I talk about this. I know that our minds can play tricks on us, especially when on drugs and not sleeping for days and weeks at a time. Imagining that you see people in the trees and seeing and hearing something in the room with you are two completely different things. I have talked to many a drug user and we have described seeing and hearing the same things. How is having the exact same experiences in different towns at different times possible. The only way is if it is real. I would see the same things in the corner daily, but in different corners. I believe that when we use we weaken our resolve and we become an easier target for the devil. If meth is evil, then when you do it demons can walk in through the door that you have already opened. I and many others have seen and heard them. 


How can you ever be happy. I feared life because I never knew what I would do next. My family thought that I was undependable but did not know half the truth. I never knew what I would do from one second to the next. I would be sitting shuffling cards one minute and go to the bathroom and come to an hour later playing Russian Roulette the next. I have months of my life that are just missing. I have no recollection of them. I sometimes still have nightmares of me doing things that I do not remember. 


Add to that all of the damage that was caused by the dope I had a part in making and the drugs I sold. How many people got high on my drugs then beat their wives or children? How many people got high off of what I created and raped or molested somebody? How much money did I get that should have been spent feeding neglected, starving children? How many people overdosed on my drugs? 


That is why towards the end of my addiction I was afraid to live. I knew all that I was responsible for, all that I had done, the things that had been done because of my drugs and that evil owned me. I WAS EVIL! Nothing good ever came of drugs, only evil! People in my life were only pawns and I had to use them before they would use me. Nothing good ever came of me, only evil. I hated myself. When I looked into the mirror all I saw was an evil person, a junkie and a convict. 


Don't get me wrong, I did not want to be that way. I tried everything secular to get off of drugs and away from alcohol. I was in jails, prison and rehabs. I saw psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors. I was given one mental health diagnosis after another and switched from medication to medication in order to fix me. I was beyond fixing and there was no natural cure. 


The problem wasn't that I was broken. I couldn't be fixed. The problem was that I had become evil. Friedrich Nietzsche talks about this, "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." My soul had become corrupted and I was left hopeless. Pretty nasty combination. I was devoid of all hope, and even though I wanted to die I was still here. I could not defeat drugs no matter what I tried and there is a reason for that. There is nothing worldly that can defeat spiritual corruption. 

There is only cure, and I have found it. I went to Christ in prayer. I was mired in drug use for 25 years, and never had more than 3 months clean the entire quarter century. I made a deal with God one night at 37, and since that night I have not used drugs, gotten drunk, or smoked a cigarette. I have devoted my life to Christ, and my life has been forever changed. When the Bible says, "I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH HIM WHO GIVES ME STRENGTH," it means what it says! I am living proof. After all of the near death experiences; trying to die and failing and wondering why I finally had the answer. There is so much I have yet to do to bring Christ to those who struggle with life-controlling issues!


That is all I do now. My life is a 12th step! My transformation has been talked about in multiple blogs on my site Spiritual Spackle. I share about recovery and the power of Christ when ever and where ever I can. I have talked on the radio, television, at colleges, churches, recovery centers, recovery groups (Narcotic's Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, etc.), seminars, conferences and to youth groups. I am now a substance abuse counselor. It is why I am starting a non-profit to share the dangers of addiction and the power of recovery with people across the state, eventually across the country and hopefully the world. Across the world is not out of reach, my blog has been read in almost 100 countries.  


GOD HAS PLACED ON MY HEART THE IMPORTANCE OF SHARING THE EVIL OF ADDICTION AND THE WONDERS OF RECOVERY WITH AS MANY PEOPLE AS I CAN. Please feel free to repost and share this blog and my site with as many people as you can. We are on facebook under Spiritual Spackle and Better Life in Recovery . Stay tuned as the non-profit BETTER LIFE IN RECOVERY begins to come together and let us know if you can help in any way with it coming to fruition. Here is a link about what we are doing and what our needs are:    http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2012/05/better-life-in-recovery-documentary.html I also am a little over half done writing a book that should be out next year about my addiction and what I learned in overcoming it tentatively called Spiritual Spackle. 


Thanks for taking the time to read this blog. It is probably the longest I have ever written, but it is also the most honest I have been. Methamphetamine, and addiction in general, are evil and linked to at least 80% of the evil in this world: murders, rape, child abuse, child molestation, suicide, cruelty to animals, etc. We need to bring an end to it, and I am hoping that Better Life in Recovery will help us reach youth with a more effective intervention than what is currently being done.  

It Doesn't Take Long

I was not in the gym for 3 months and stopped eating healthy. Before that 3 months I had lost almost 30 pounds, which had taken about 6 months. In half the time, all of the weight found it's way back. I am right back where I started 9 months ago. I am now three day into my workout, and I am sore and uncomfortable. It is unpleasant and I don't like the way that I feel. I will continue with my workouts for several reasons.

1. I know that it is good for me. 
2. I know that eventually it will become a routine and I will no longer be uncomfortable.
3. I know that I need to be in better shape.

Whether it is building muscles or building my relationship with God, the same positive reasons to engage in building ourselves up applies. I know that it is good for me. I know that the more I watch television, go to the movies and listen to secular music the more I am subjected to immoral and negative things. If I focus on meditation, prayer, worship music and my eye is on God I will be processing only good things. If garbage in, garbage out is true so is the exact opposite.  

I may be uncomfortable doing it right now because I am unused to it. That is almost always true of anything when we first begin doing it. Once we do something for several weeks, we become accustomed to it. I need to be in the habit of making God a priority.  Christ made me a priority when He died on the cross. The least I can do is return the favor.  

Finally, I need to be in better shape spiritually. I I know that building my relationship with God is important, and I know that the more I know about him the stronger my faith will become. This world is full of evil and temptation. They never take a day off. If my faith and relationship with Christ do not grow, then eventually the calling of this world will draw me back into it. I need to make sure that I am doing things spiritually healthy on a daily basis.

So, in closing here is why we need to stay vigilant and build our relationship with God. It has actually been proven that the more positive I am, the more I will draw positive people to me. So it would reason that the more I am Christ-focused, the more I will draw Christ-focused people to me. I also need to know that there is no difference between secular time and when I am in church. I always represent Christ. My focus should always be on God no matter where I am, and my actions and words should represent that. If not, I need to get back on track before I become so spiritually out of shape that I just give up. Here is how I stay in shape:

1. Pray without ceasing. Make prayer an ongoing daily conversation with God
2. Read the word of God
3. Live your life guided by the book of James (my personal favorite); read it weekly 
4. Attend church consistently (Church is like a workout supplement)
5. Find a small group or prayer group and begin building your community of believers
6. Find a mentor that you can go to when you have doubts or questions
7. Set up accountability partners everywhere you go (work, gym, small group, church, softball, etc)
8. Always represent Christ in all that you say, think and do!

The Longer I'm In Recovery

I shot one more interview for the documentary this morning then took my wife to worship team practice. We are shooting a friends testimony for her tomorrow so that she can have it to give to potential speaking venues so they can hear what she will bring to their audiences. I am meeting with my web designer Monday, my accountability partner on Wednesday and giving my testimony at Ridgecrest Baptist Church on Thursday. All week I work as a substance abuse counselor peddling hope while watching clients rebuild clean and sober lives. My life is recovery, and my life is amazing. It used to be filled with depression and anger as a soldier for Satan, now it is positive and optimistic with a focus on Christ.

There is a reason for that positivity and optimism. That reason is simple. I know what hell looks like and how it feels to wish for death. I have been to those places. I have seen demons and heard them scream in my ear. That was my past. Now I know what it is to be filled with love and guided by the Holy Spirit. I now want to live. That is all possible because I chose to turn my life over to Christ in a moment of need. I had tried everything but Christ, and they had all failed. With God, all things are possible.

Now I have a new lease on life; an outlook on my day that makes people like to be around me. I can now be a good example for others to follow and share with them a story of God's unimaginable grace. I feel that is my duty; to share my past addictions and defects as well as my recovery and how it occurred. The longer that I am in recovery, the louder my voice should be. It is not to be forgotten where I came from and how I got to where I am today. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul says that he boasts about his weaknesses, hardships, difficulties and persecutions. So do I.

That is what my testimony and life are. I get to show others that there is a better life in recovery. The longer that I am in recovery, the stronger and wiser I become. It is my responsibility to share that strength and wisdom with others. For years I took from society, and the further in my addiction I got the more I took. Therefore, the longer I am clean and sober the more I owe back. I got a second chance at life (more like an 8th chance. I must be a cat to have this many lives) and it is wasted if I don't use it to help others!