Part 1: My Life Story
There I was, walking down the streets of Vegreville, with a 26 of Rye in one hand tucked into the inside of my jacket, and a joint smoking away in the other. My 22nd birthday had just passed and I was on my way to meet my friend Kris to hang out. When suddenly, I had a flashback of something that happened to me when I was in grade 7. There was this girl in my grade; we'll call her Barb (not her real name). Anyhow, this girl Barb, I can remember, had to drop out of school for awhile because she had become impregnated by this much older guy. It was as if I was right there, back in that school at that time. I recall thinking to myself, in complete wonder, “Why? Why would she ever be with this guy in the first place? Couldn't she see what a loser this guy was, not only was he something like almost 10 years older than her, but he was a drug addict, hanging out with 13 year olds. Couldn’t this guy get a girl his own age? What was he doing coming to the school to pick up the grade 7’s for anyway?”
See most of the people in my grade rebelled pretty heavy when we hit grade 7. There had just been some tax cuts and the Junior High School got mixed with the Senior High School, seemingly causing most of the kids to want to fit in and be cool. I guess Barb was one of those kids and it had now ended up with her being pregnant. But more than that, I remember feeling towards this guy, who had gotten her pregnant, a great amount of disgust. In my own words I clearly remember thinking, “What a Loser.” (Notice the L is capitalized) And BAM, I was back walking down the street in Vegreville.
I began to wonder where this flashback had come from and why I had it. It was at that moment that I realized that I had just started having sex with a much younger teenage girl. I was a huge drug addict and I knew it. My life was a complete mess and I was wasting away. It was at that moment that I realized I had become that guy from grade 7. In my own standards I had become the biggest of losers. I knew I needed a change and I couldn’t help but ponder “How did I get here?”
It was when I was in grade 9 or 10 that I decided that I was an Atheist. It just seemed to make the most sense to me at the time. I had learned about 'God' from my grandfather when I was younger. My grandmother and him are Jehovah Witnesses. He had taught me that God had created the world and that those who would follow him would one day live in a beautiful paradise on earth for all eternity. It sounded good to me, but then my parents let me know that if I were to become a Jehovah witness I would not be able to celebrate any holidays anymore, because Jehovah witnesses do not believe in celebrating Christmas, Birthdays, or any other holidays. So it put a quick stop to me believing in that. I just wasn’t willing to give up those things. After all I was just a young kid and I loved Christmas and Birthdays.
As I got older I became friends with some guys who attended the Pentecostal church in Vegreville. In fact one of my best friends for a time was the Pastor's son. At the time he defiantly wasn’t, what I would call, someone who showed God in his actions, but he would still talk about him as if he believed. His beliefs were much different than my Grandparents which just seemed to show me all the more, of how God was just a man made idea, as everyone’s idea of him was different. I just figured that because people were afraid of dieing, that they had made up this myth about God and some kind of afterlife. So I took him completely out of my worldview and just decided to go after what I thought would make me happy.
When I was younger I was just your typical kid who liked to play outside and play Nintendo. This trend didn't seem to change much as I entered high school and I became friends with a group of guys who were also into video games, comics, and the like. We were not popular and had absolutely no girls in our group. As the high school years advanced I became more and more susceptible to peer pressure and decided that I didn't care what it would take, I was going to become popular.
Later down the road, after I graduated, I met a guy named Alex. Alex was a guy that had just gotten out of Juvi for the 2nd time. His sister was dating one of my friends, that’s how we met. After hanging out with him for awhile we began to go to rave clubs where I tried Ecstasy for the first time. I loved it. In fact when I first tried Ecstasy I thought I had found heaven. The reason for this was because it seemed to kill the pain I felt inside.
The truth is that when I got into high school, and beyond, I was quite depressed and hated life. I often thought about suicide, but decided that was the easy way out and that I'd deal with the pain. I tried alcohol for awhile to deal with it and it seemed to work pretty good. But after awhile it just made me get either even more depressed or angry and I'd go off by myself crying, having a self pity party for myself. Truthfully my life really wasn't all that bad, but to me at the time I'd trade anything for a different one. Surprisingly when I started doing harder drugs that is exactly what I got.
Part 2: The life of a drug addict.
Once I tried ecstasy, I began going to rave clubs every weekend and would use it every time I would go, and I went hard. Within 3 months I had to take 5 or more pills a night just to stay high for a few hours. For those of you who don't know much about drugs, one pill would probably get a normal person high for 5 or 6 hours.
About that same time Alex went back to jail. He was always with me when I would go to the clubs and now I no longer had him around to go with. Because of the price of the pills, and Alex going to jail, I cut back on the raves and the ecstasy for awhile and started just hanging around Vegreville, smoking pot much more regularly; like every day regularly. But I would only smoke one or two joints a day. Back then a 1/8 would last me a week. It was a pretty cheap habit compared to the ecstacy.
8 months later Alex got out of jail and I started going to raves and doing ecstacy again. I figured that because of the break I took from the ecstasy that my tolerance would go down for it, but it didn't. It still took many pills for me to get high and the high wouldn't last very long.
One night, after we were done at the club, a guy I'd recently met, who was also into raving, introduced Alex and I to crystal meth. I had sworn that I would never do crystal meth or cocaine, but hey, I was coming down and figured it would lift me back up. I remember the first time I tried it, so clearly. I didn't really like it at first because it just felt like the comedown off of ecstacy. Later on I realized that was probably because much of the ecstacy I had done was cut with meth, so when the MDMA (the drug that is ecstasy) would wear out, the meth would still be in my system. Even though I didn't care for the meth, when I started to come down I wanted more and over time grew to like it. We smoked it for the first while.
Then there was a time when I was at a bus station in Edmonton, waiting for a bus of coarse, and I decided I wanted some pot, but all any of the dealers in the area had was meth. So I bought some and decided to snort it. The guy warned me that it was really strong stuff, but I figured everyone said that about their product, so I snorted it all in one go. He was telling the truth though, this was really strong stuff. I was really high for about 48 hours straight and I really began to like it at that point. Snorting it seemed like a much better high than smoking it, so after that I began snorting it instead all the time. That's when my mind started to go and I began to hear voices in my head that didn't belong there. The next year was about to become pure hell for me.
When I started using meth everything changed. Suddenly I was hanging with an entirely new group of people. Major drug addicts, gang members, and other criminals. I never really got into alot of the criminal activity that gets associated with many meth addicts, because no matter how much I partied or how high I was, I would always show up for work and get my job done. At the time I was working in the bakery at my dad's grocery store. The hours sucked (2am-7 to 10am), but the advantage of working the shift was that no one else was at the store at that time so I could get high at work and no one was there to notice.
That was the main reason I never was heavily involved in crimes other than being an accomplice of the people I was hanging out with. Well that's not entirely true, I was stealing cartons of cigarettes and money from my dad's store, but I figured that because it was from family, that somehow made it not as bad. Over the years I actually stole thousands of dollars from his store. I even got caught a few times, but because I was family he never charged me. I figured I was smart because the most I lost was the trust and respect of my family, but the other guys I was hanging out with risked jail time. What a stupid way to think!
The crazy thing about it was that almost every time I would come to Edmonton to pick up, I'd end up driving drug dealers around the city doing deliveries. They would toss me an extra bag of meth for it. If I would have gotten pulled over at that time I would have probably gone to jail along with them. We would also go to pawn shops to sell stolen goods for drug money as well. I really didn't like the new crowd I was hanging with, but there was no other group who I could get meth from. All the meth addicts were criminals, even me.
As time progressed I began to care less and less about anything. I would drive while drunk or high regularly. I would have unprotected sex with different girls. I stole, I committed adultery, I lied regularly. Every second word out of my mouth was a swear word. I had no respect for my parents and I had no respect for myself. I didn't brush my teeth or take care of my body during that time. When I would shower I wouldn't bother washing, I would just stand under the water. I just stopped caring about anything other than getting high.
It was around that time that I went to Stage 13. It was the first time I began to see one of the very negative aspects about the drug use. Up to that point the drugs had always made me feel good. I'd heard stories of "bad trips" that some people had, but up to that point I had always only had good highs. It was there that something clicked in my brain and a voice came into my head that didn't belong there. This voice was not a part of my conscious. It was a voice that came from somewhere else and it had complete control of me. Whatever it told me to do, I would do it.
Part 3: The road to rock bottom
It was at Stage 13 that my mind began to slide into a state of paranoid, delusional, schizophrenia. I had stayed up for quite a few days on meth with maybe only a couple of hours of sleep, and I'm not even sure if I slept, I just remember laying there with my eyes closed.
On the last day of the festival the Tragically Hip were playing. While we were waiting in the mosh pit in front of the stage we smoked a huge joint. That's when a voice came into my mind that didn't belong there. My high peaked and I was higher than I had ever been before. The voice told me the guys I was with had put something in my water and that had allowed it to come into my mind. It also told me that everyone at this concert new me and new this voice was in my head.
After the show was over, the voice convinced me that I was supposed to get the band to come back out on stage to do an encore. So I went all over the grounds searching and asking people to come and help me to find the band. No one would help and I never did find the band.
It was crazy! I had broke onto a stage, broke into security and stole a security shirt. I even almost was able to steal a golf cart to get around the grounds, but ended up getting busted by security. Because I told them my friends had drugged my water I think they had pity on me and didn't have me arrested.
When I came down from my high many hours later, and the voice subsided, I was cold and scared. I didn't know what was real and what was not. One thing I did know was that I had lost complete control that night. What ever that voice was, it had complete control of me. It didn't matter how crazy anything it told me was, I believed it and did whatever he told me to do. He had total control over my reality and my actions while the high lasted. That was truly scary, because I wondered what would have happened if he had told me to kill someone who was in my way. I believe I would have done it, because I did everything he told me.
After that experience I swore off of crystal meth, but a week later was using it again. Eventually though I was able to lay off of it for a few months, but in that time I started smoking pot and drinking extremely heavily trying to replace the meth with pot and drinking. Now I would smoke, nonstop, however much pot I had until it was gone.
Also around that time I ended up flipping my car, while drinking and driving. I was driving on a gravel road and my car hit some loose gravel and started fishtailing. Then it clipped the side of a power pole and flipped end over end planting itself upside down in the ditch. I realized right after that if my car had left the road a half second earlier I would have hit that pole head on and probably killed all of us in the car. My perspective on life began to change a little bit after that. I realized that I wasn't invincible and that the lifestyle I was living could end up killing me or someone else. Also if a different cop had come out I might have gone to jail, but the officer who came out didn't know me and did not breathalyze me. If he had I would have probably gotten charged with an impared.
I couldn't buy another vehicle at that time because I still owed my dad quite a bit for that car, which was a write-off, but not covered by insurance because I only had PL PD. So I had no more transportation. I was also spending all of my money on booze and pot. It wasn't much after that we get back to where this story began, with me having a flash back and revelation of where my life was at and how it had gotten there.
About 3 months after laying off the meth and getting heavily into pot and drinking, Alex and I went to a Halloween all night rave. So I went and picked up some meth for it. We ended up doing some large lines and I was feeling pretty strange at the rave as if we had gotten some bad stuff. I ended up feeling sick, so after the rave instead of going to the after party we just went back to Vegreville. I went home and was trying to go to bed, but had too much meth in my system to fall asleep. I figured smoking a joint might help, so I went outside and smoked a big joint.
Again a voice came into my mind and took control of me. This time he convinced me that I was supposed to find my friend Kris for some reason and I ended up walking around the town of Vegreville with my friend Scott trying to complete the mission this voice had given to me. I never was able to find my friend Kris, because I think he was working on the Rigs at the time. It gave my friend Scott a real good opportunity to see what the drugs had done to my mind and how they had disconnected me from reality.
(Scott told me this next part later; I don't remember this, I just remember the words, not the actions)
When we got back to my house, after I couldn't find Kris, I was devastated about not being able to complete the mission the voice had given me. So I took a large knife out of the wooden holder on the counter. Holding it about 10cm in front of my face I slowly began rocking it side to side while staring at in intently, then looked over at Scott and said "I'm fine now Scott, I know what I need to do. You can go home now." Of coarse Scott was my friend and he stayed with me to make sure I didn't harm myself. I'm sure glad for that.
Around that time in my life I was crying out for help in so many ways. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back it is so obvious to me. I was leaving drugs just laying around anywhere; from the dresser in my bedroom to the front seat of my car, in plain view. I tried asking people for help too. I begged my brother Greg to help me, but he didn't know what to do. I asked my friend Scott for help as well, but he also did not know what to do. They had never had to deal with this kind of thing before. So I told Greg that if he ever caught me doing chemical drugs again, that he had to take me to ADDAC or something, but that pot and alcohol were OK. Only the truth was that they were not OK, and not just because the obvious answers of it just being another addiction. After that rave the meth had somehow changed how pot affected my mind. When I would smoke dope after that I wouldn't get a normal marijuana high anymore. Now when I would smoke it, it would really mess me up as if I had done a bunch of meth beforehand. Sometimes I would have the voice come and take control of me during those times and he would do the same thing every time. Convince me that I had some mission to do and every time I would not be able to do it, no matter how simple the task was.
My life was in shambles. Everything was stripped away from me. All my money went to drugs and gambling. My car was destroyed. The health of my body was deteriorating and even the sanity of my mind was now gone and left in a insane state. Yet everyday I would get high. No matter how hard I tried to stop, I would just keep using and I didn't know what to do. I just knew that I needed to change my life. I didn't want to live like this anymore. I just didn't know how to get out. There had to be a way out.
Part 4: The search for God
It was early in November, 2002 and the northern lights where insanely crazy that year. I remember looking up at the bright dancing lights that filled the entire sky, with wonder and awe. Even though I had made the decision in my mind that there was no God, I couldn't help but wonder why the sky was so glorious, as if it was trying to declare the glory of something. I mean if there was no God, then where did all this come from and why was so much of it so amazing and beautiful.
I had heard stories of people who had lived bad lifestyles and been delivered from them by turning to God. At the time I was desperate, nothing I did seemed to help me in any way. So I decided if God did exist, that maybe he could help me. But even if God was there, how was I supposed to know who was right about him and who was wrong? I mean there's so many religions and ideas about who God is and the path to get to him out there, and they can't all be right.
I was leaning toward that Jesus Christ was somehow connected to God in some way though. The reason for this was because I had read many of the bible stories in this children's bible stories book my Jehovah Witness grandparents had given me when I was younger. So I knew many of the stories from the bible from when I was younger. I actually used to try to use as much of these stories as I could to try to convince people why God didn't exist and why the bible wasn't believable. But the one thing that I could never find fault in, no matter how much I wanted to, was the person and character of Jesus Christ. All the stories I had read about him, I had to admit that he was a pretty divine dude, whoever he was. But even if Jesus Christ had something to do with God, there were so many different Christian religions and they all seemed to be against each other. Such as my grandparents, who are Jehovah Witnesses, and some of my friends who were Pentecostals. They both said that the others ideas about Christ and God were wrong and twisted. So how was I to know who was right? After contemplating all these things I was pretty confused about who God was if he did exist and which religion was the right one. But that didn't really matter, I figured if he was there, no matter who he was, that he could help me if I asked. So I prayed.
That first time I prayed I remember like it was yesterday. I hadn't prayed since I was a little kid so I wasn't really sure what to do or say, so I just started talking. I said to God, "Um God, er Jehovah, or Jesus, or Allah, or Buddha, or whatever. Whatever your name is. If you're there and you do exist then I need your help. I kinda got myself in a place that I don't like anymore and can't seem to find a way out. I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to pray or what I should pray for. All I know is that I need your help. So if you could help me to know how to pray and what I should pray for, I'd appreciate it. And I'm not sure if you even exist or if I'm just talking to myself right now. So if you're there it'd be nice if you could somehow show me that you're real. But even if you do exist, how am I supposed to know who you are? So if you could show me who you are, I'd appreciate that too."
Then I said, "If you show me yourself and the proper religion, whatever it is, and get me out of this lifestyle of addiction, then I'll give my life to serve you." That was my first prayer. After I was done I went to my bedroom and found a Jehovah Witness bible in my room my grandfather had given me and started to read it looking for some sign or answer or something. I had taken the first steps in my search for God and for a different life.
When I opened up the bible for the first time, it opened up to a part called Proverbs. In this part, Proverbs, it talked about a wise man and a foolish man a lot, and every time it talked about a wise man, that wasn't me, but every time it talked about the fool, that was me. I had never read the actual bible in this way before. But what it said seemed to make some sense looking at where living my life in such ways had gotten me. I was quite the fool.
Although I had prayed that first prayer and had begun to read the bible, I just kept using drugs, day in and day out, everyday as a matter of fact. Only there was something that had changed. Now when I would go to buy some dope, my conscience would speak up and say, "No! Why are you going to pick up that garbage, you're trying to clean up, just don't go buy it." But I'd still go anyway. Now this might not seem like a big thing to a lot of you, but you have to understand that all the drugs I had used had killed my conscience a long time before this. This was the first time I had heard it in years, as a matter of fact. But I just figured that it was a coincidence because I wanted to get clean. So that had somehow made it come back. But that it probably wasn't because of God.
However that wasn't the only thing. Just other little things were happening too. I remember I was trying to open a can of soup for lunch one day and I couldn't get the can opener to work. The can just kept slipping out of the can opener. Then I heard a still small voice speak, this voice was not like the other voices that I would hear when I would get high, but a gentle voice, almost as if it were speaking to my heart, not my mind. And it said to me, "Why don't you pray and ask God to help you open the can of soup." So I did ask God to help me open the soup, and SNAP, the can opener worked perfectly stripping the top rim off the can. But I figured that was just a coincidence as well. It still wasn't even close enough to prove to me that God did exist and that he had heard me. But still little things like that made me ponder that it was possible. Yet every day I would still get high and my life wasn't really getting any better. As a matter of fact as far as the drug induced voices go, they got much worse. And so did the chance of them taking control of me when I would get high.
A little while after starting to read the bible and praying, I ended up going to an Our Lady Peace concert. And of coarse I got high at that concert. As the concert progressed it was as if the lyrics and the order of songs was just for me. They just related so much to where I was at at the time. But at the same time I was getting mixed signals. It seemed almost as if God were trying to tell me something through the lyrics, but then the voice in my head would send me off in another direction with some of the other lyrics. The first songs made me feel as if God was there and that he new my situation and heard me and to keep searching for answers. Then the next songs made me feel terrible about the person I had become and convicted me of not being a good friend to the friends I had neglected when I got into drugs. After that the songs made me feel as if death was coming for me. At this point my heart began to beat very quickly and erratically in my chest like a jackhammer. So I sat down and it calmed a bit. Then Our Lady Peace played Naveed and I really got the feeling as if death was coming for me. The beginning and later lyrics to that song are
Are you there, and is it comfortable?
Did you want to escape, try to escape the population?
The pressure is deceiving,
And for you particularly should we let a young man die?
Let him die if he wants to?
I can't live here anymore
...
there he's on his knees again
trying hard to understand
why Naveed would let a young man die
The voice in my mind once again, just like all the other times, gave me a mission. The voice told me he was sent by God, who supposedly was some guy my friend Kris new, and that I was supposed to get onto the floor and that on the floor I would die and go to heaven. Then he continued that in heaven there would be a concert and a rave and that I'd know everyone there and that everything there would be OK. I had $600 on me at this concert and I tried to bribe a security guard to let me on the floor and yet I could not get on the floor into the mosh pit. Once again I had failed the mission the voice had given me.
On the drive home back to Vegreville, we were in my friend Jon's car and I was upset, like usual, about not being able to complete the mission. By this time the voice had subsided and as I lay in the back of my friends car I just started thinking about how terrible of friend I had been to many of the friends I had neglected when I got into drugs. Then I noticed that on the radio every song that was being played had something to do with Hell. Like AC/DC Highway to Hell and Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. That song has a line that says
So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain.
And on top of that they'd have little things between the songs that also dealt with hell. This guy with a creepy voice would come on and say "Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha The Devil made me do it." It was just weird. As I lay there taking all of this in I had visions of the Highway we were driving on going into Hell. But at the same time I felt an eerie peace with it, as if that's where I belonged. (Jehovah Witnesses do not believe in Hell, by the way) We did get back to Vegreville though and I went home to bed.
The next day I couldn't get a lot of the Our Lady Peace songs out of my head and I could swear that God was trying to tell me something through them. So I searched out the song lyrics looking for answers and could find few, although some of them did relate greatly to what was going on for me as I said before. Yet still my life had no real change at this point for the better and I was still not sure if God was really there, or if it was him reaching out to me in different ways. The conscience, the little coincidences, and now the lyrics. Maybe I was just tripping it all out. A week later I was about to find out.
Part 5: It's a long hard road out of Hell
A week after the Our Lady Peace concert I went to the bar in Vegreville and found that my friend Calvin was there. He was one of my friends from high school who at one time attended the Pentecostal Church, although when he went to university he had also begun experimenting with some drugs as well. I knew this, so at the bar I asked him if he wanted to come smoke a joint with me. He concurred and we both left the bar and decided to drive out somewhere to park.
As we drove to find a good place to smoke up, he looked over at me and asked, "I got some coke. Do you want to do some lines with me?"
In my mind I thought to myself, "Yeah, why not? I mean meth has made me go crazy, so maybe cocaine will somehow be better." Once again my conscience spoke up and tried to convince me not to do it, but I didn't listen to him, just as I had done before. So I agreed, and Calvin began to crush up the bag of white powder to get it ready to snort.
As he was busy doing that I asked him if he used to go to the Pentecostal Church. He informed me that he had, but that he didn't go anymore. Then I asked him if he believed in God. He told me that he did and I asked him why?
He told me a story of how he had gone to see this healer with his parents, one time, and that there was a guy there who had a withered, disfigured leg. "It was the craziest thing," he exclaimed, "I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes. When the healer prayed for this guys leg I saw it get healed and strong right before my eyes. To this day, it still blows me away. So yeah, I believe that God's gotta be out there." As he finished saying this to me, he had also finished crushing up the cocaine and making 2 nice sized lines of it on a binder he had in the van. He looked over at me with a look of glee in his eye, and asked, "So are you ready to do this stuff?"
At that I was quite confused and I couldn't help but ponder to myself why if he believed that God existed, was he living a lifestyle of drug use as I had been. The two just didn't seem to line up to me. But in the end it didn't really matter because who was I to judge. So I looked over at him and nodded my head in anticipation of trying cocaine for the first time.
After snorting the line I began to feel good, real good as a matter of fact. There was no strange voices and a feeling of confidence in myself came over me. "This was it", I figured. I couldn't believe I was right, it was only the meth that was bad, this cocaine stuff was much better, or so I thought.
We went back to the bar for a bit and Calvin asked if I wanted to come to a house party with him. I was happy to oblige and off we went. I wasn't sure where this house party was, but I didn't have to work in the bakery till 2AM and it was only about midnight. When we walked into the house this party was at, I was surprised to see Barb sitting there.(Barb the girl from grade 7 who was in my flashback) Only 5 of us were there, and Barb's boyfriend came into the living room with a nice sized bag of cocaine and joyfully exclaimed, "Let's get this party started." It was simply a cocaine party. After hanging out for awhile and talking, I did a few more lines and it was time for me to leave and go off to work. So off I went.
When I got to the IGA I was still feeling pretty good. "Yeah," I thought to myself,"I'll just quit using other drugs that make me go crazy and switch to cocaine. This is a much better high." And at that, I began to mix the dough getting ready to bake. But about a half hour later I began to come down from my coke high and the come down was harsh, and I mean really harsh. I felt like complete garbage and just wanted some more cocaine so that I wouldn't feel so terrible. But I didn't have any, and the house was quite a walk from the store. Plus I had already mixed the dough and started letting it rise, which is very specific for timing, so I didn't have time to go pick more up. But I felt a worse comedown than I had ever felt before. "There has to be something that can lift me back up," I thought to myself. So I searched through my cigarette package and found a couple joint roaches in it. I rolled them up into a very slim joint and went and smoked it. That made me feel better, much better, lifted me right back up. But I just kept feeling higher and higher and higher, and once again I could hear a voice getting louder and louder, coming into the center of my mind.
As the voice became centered in my mind, He began to laugh diabolically at me and exclaimed, "I'm back! Thank you so much for inviting me back into your mind."
"No," I tried to convince myself, "You can't be real. You're just some voice the drugs have made up. You're not really there."
"Oh I'm real, and also I have complete control over you," he continued, "Just like all the other times."
"No it can't be," I repeated.
"Oh it can be," he stated, "and it is. In fact I have control over ever part of you. Like your emotions for example. I can make you feel happy if I want," and suddenly I would feel an overwhelming amount of happiness and joy come over me. Then he would say, "Or I could make you feel very sad," and suddenly an overwhelming amount of sadness and despair filled my being.
"Or your memory," the voice continued ranting. Then he would make up some memory of something that didn't happen to me, but in my mind right after he would state it, I could swear as if I actually could remember what he would tell me.
"Or I could even kill you if I wanted to," he viciously continued. At this point it was if I felt a hand grabbing my heart and it began to beat erratically and hard just as it had done at the OLP concert a week earlier. "But I'm not finished having fun with you yet, so I'm not going to do that," he finished and the hand let go and my heart began to beat somewhat normal again.
At that I dropped to my knees in prayer, "Oh God, please! I know I shouldn't have done the cocaine, but I just couldn't seem to help myself. Please just get rid of this voice and don't let him take control of me again. Please help me!"
"Ah, get up off your knees," the voice stated. "You're pathetic. You're on your knees crying out for help from God, but I got news for you. He's not there! Sorry to inform you, but there is no God, he doesn't exist. So please, get up off your knees, cause you look pathetic."
"No," I repeated, "There has to be a God. He's my only hope. He has to be real. Please just go away and leave me alone."
"Well there's not," he stated once again quite fiendishly.
"Well maybe you’re just the devil," I rebuked, "And that's why you're trying to convince me he's not there."
"Yeah, that's it," he replied very sarcastically," You got it. I'm the devil. Oh wait a minute, if I'm the devil and I exist, then that means that God must also exist. But wait! Here you are crying out for him to help you and make me go away, but behold, no help! I'm still here and there is no God to be found. So now you see that I'm right. God isn't helping you because he's not really there. He doesn't exist."
At that I was completely crushed. What he said seemed to make sense to me. If God was there, why wasn't he helping me? I was asking him but nothing major up to this point had changed and the voice was as strong in my mind as he had ever been before. If God was there why wasn't he helping me?
(To this day it creeps me out to remember this next part.)The voice continued," But hey look on the bright side. Doing drugs was the best thing you ever did because they created me in your mind and now you can know for a certainty that there is no God. And no God means no consequences for your actions. So now you are truly free. You can do what ever you want. If you want to have sex with a girl, just rape her. Anyone who is your enemy, you can just kill them and then if you get caught you can just kill yourself afterword, because there is no more fear of death. There is no point to this life, so just do whatever you want because nothing matters. Rules and laws are for those who fear death. And now you can truly be free from these things. So doing drugs was the best thing you ever did because it created me in your mind. And now you truly are free, because now you know for sure that there is no God."
By this time the dough was done rising on the table and needed to be rolled and put through the machine. So I went back to work pondering what the voice had told me and the validity of it. Up to this point every time I was able to finish my work no matter how high or crazy I was. But this time I couldn't get my job done. I'd set the machine wrong and it would shred up the dough. I just couldn't focus and get it done. I was just to high.
So the voice piped up once again and said, “Why, even bother finishing? What does it matter? You hate working and living here anyway, just leave it and go. Go find Calvin and pick up some more cocaine off of him. Then you can move to Edmonton and just live on the street dealing drugs or something, cause nothing matters anyway, right."
So I grabbed my jacket and decided to leave the store to go find Calvin. It was the beginning of February so it was quite cold outside and as I was about to leave out the door I couldn't get the zipper on my jacket to zip up. It was stuck and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it to budge. Then a still small voice spoke to me again. One similar to the one when I was opening the can of soup and it said, “Why don't you ask God to help you zip up your jacket."
So I prayed again and asked God if he could help me zip up my jacket. And ZIP, it zipped up perfectly. At that my mind was so confused. Was God real or not? I couldn't figure it out. So I battled in my mind whether I should stay and try to finish my job, or go and see Calvin. The voice in my mind now had changed what he was saying and just like every other time gave me a mission. This time the mission was to go find Calvin and that when I found him I would die and that he would take me to heaven where there would be an awesome rave and concert. He also convinced me that Calvin was an angel who would get me right with God. So off to find Calvin I went.
After wandering around the town for awhile, going this way and that, I eventually made my way to Calvin's house. It was about 6 AM at this point and I opened the door to his house, didn't knock or ring the bell, just walked in and proceeded down the stairs to Calvin's bedroom. Convinced completely by the voice at this time that Calvin was an angel and that he was going to get me right with God and take me to heaven; I was quite shocked as I opened his bedroom door to get a blast of heat coming out of his room. It felt like it was +40 Celsius in his room. He was still awake sitting in his room wearing a bright red house coat that looked like a robe. Now I might not have known much about Hell at this point, but a very hot room and a guy in a red robe isn't exactly a picture of heaven and an angel, quite the contrary.
He looked at me standing there with a confused look and asked me, “What are you doing here man?"
I looked back at him and began to go into a spiel about the voices and what the long term drug use had done to my mind. I explained that the voice had convinced me that I was supposed to meet up with him and that I was actually quite confused about what was going on. Like I've wrote before, when my mind was in these states my perception of reality was completely off and twisted. I didn't know the difference between the reality the voice had convinced me of in my mind, and the reality that is, in fact reality. Either way, after ranting on for awhile about it, I remember looking over at Calvin and pleading with him saying, “I need help. You gotta help me."
"What do you want me to do, man?" he replied quite eccentrically. "I mean I was doing coke with you last night! I'm kinda in the same boat as you. But not even close to as bad as what you're describing to me. But I don't know what I can do for you."
After talking for a bit more, Calvin insisted that I get some sleep in the spare bedroom next to his. As I lay in the bed once again the voice would pipe up and scare me, but when I was in Calvin's room with him the voice was silent. So I got up and again entered his room explaining the predicament. Then I began to think what my dad was going to think when he went in to the IGA in the morning and saw all the dough just sitting there on the table. "He's gonna freak," I explained to Calvin, “I don't know what I'm going to do. What I'm gonna tell him."
It was at that point that Calvin said one of the most true and powerful things to me. "Why don't you try telling them the truth?" he stated to me in a most profound way.
At that moment it was as if a light bulb went on in my brain and I responded, “You’re right, that is what I need to do." Up to this point talking to my parents about my problem was the last thing on my mind. When I began to look at my life before this, I had pretty much blamed all of it on them and their mistakes. Which weren't all that many, to be honest. In fact my parents were as loving and supportive as they could be. Yeah they weren't perfect, but they were always there for my brothers, sister, and I in the best way they knew how. However at that time I had many issues with them and much anger towards them, so talking to them about my situation was just not an option that I considered until this point. I lived with them at that time as well, but rarely talked to them as my parents.
So Calvin offered to give me a ride home to go and talk to them. When I got to my house I walked into their room, it was about 6:30AM at this point and they were still in bed sleeping. As they sat up in their bed, due to me turning the lights on, they looked over at me and asked what was going on. At that moment I broke down into tears and began to explain my situation to them.
I very sobbingly said to them, "Look you guys know that I've been into some pot, but you don't know even close to the half of it. I've been hooked on meth for the last while and I've been going crazy, hearing voices when I get high. I need help. I can't live here anymore because everyone I know here uses drugs and I can't seem to stop. You guys need to do something." I tried to explain everything to them about the voices and about praying to God, but I was still so confused and high at the time, that it just ended up making me sound crazy, which looking back now was a good thing, because I was crazy at this point. I'm sure you've gathered that from reading this testimony so far.
After some deliberation about whether or not leaving the town was best for me, we came to the agreement that it was. So I went downstairs to my room, still very, very high, but the voices had now subsided and I thought to myself that this was pretty good proof for me. Finally something major had happened and I knew it. Although I was still pretty confused about what had happened at the store earlier in the night I was beginning to truly believe that God really did exist and that he had begun to answer my prayers. And this wasn't just because of me telling my parents either. Yeah that was huge of course, but one of the things I had also asked of God when I would pray was that he would let me cry. At that time I wanted to cry so badly, I was in so much pain inside, but all the Ecstasy I had done earlier in my walk had changed something in my brain making it close to impossible for me to express emotions outwardly. I would still feel emotions, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't outwardly express them. And when I talked to my parents I balled my eyes out. So yeah, I was pretty convinced at this point, but there was still much confusion and doubt in my mind and soul. Who was God if he was there and where was I to go from here?
Part 6: The path to the end
After telling my parents the truth, quiting working for my dad, deciding I had to leave town, and the voices subsiding in my mind, I went downstairs to my bedroom. Quite convinced that God had to be real at this point I once again grabbed the bible I had and opened it up to Jeremiah and began reading it.
Now for those of you who don't know, the book of Jeremiah is quite a crazy book of God's wrath. It's basically about how God's people have turned from Him, the evil they do, and the impending judgement and wrath that they are about to suffer due to their rebellious ways. I was still pretty messed up in my mind while reading it, but many of the evils that it mentioned seemed to be the way everyone I knew lived around me at the time. No one in my life followed or feared God and many of the statements made I thought were about me and the people I had been hanging with. I didn't understand it, really at all, but it was intriguing reading for me at the time because of that fact.
A few days later I had to decide what I was going to do and I chopped it up between two options. The first option was to phone my grandparents (the Jehovah Witnesses)in Vancouver and see if they'd take me in. I remembered when I was younger, my grandfather telling me that if I was ever in trouble I could give them a call and come stay with them for awhile. My second option was that I had some friends from high school who had moved to Edmonton that were not into drugs, so I could move to Edmonton and reconnect with them and try to find some work or something. The first option seemed to make the most sense to me, because since I was searching for God and my grandparents were the most religious people I'd ever known, it just seemed to make sense for me to see if they would be alright with me staying with them for awhile.
So I called them up and asked if they would mind and they were excited to have me come and stay with them. A few days later they called me and announced that they had good news. My cousin had gotten a place in Victoria, because she was going to university there, and she needed a roommate. "It'll be the perfect place for you to start over and get to know this side of the family," my grandfather excitedly exclaimed over the phone. You see, I hadn't seen my cousin, who was around my age, in over a decade, and barly had talked to anyone from my dad's side of the family in about the same amount of time. As he finished giving me this good news, I got the feeling as if she was no better off than me. But I just ignored it because what did I know, I hadn't even seen her in over 10 years. So I booked a flight and it was decided that I would stay with my grandparents for a couple weeks and then move on to Victoria to live with my cousin. So off to B.C. I went.
Right before leaving to Vancouver, to start my life over, I met up with my old friends in Edmonton and went out for breakfast with them, where we were exclaiming how much we were gonna miss each other. Afterwards they gave me a ride to the airport and as I was leaving, my friend Jeremy looked me straight in the eye and lovingly said, "I love you, man. Take care of yourself over there." And off I went to Vancouver.
My grandparents came and picked me up at the airport and we were glad to see each other. I had been clean from drugs at this point for a week now, and a week off of pot and chemicals for me was a very long time because I had gone years with having it almost everyday before this. I stayed with my grandparents for 2 weeks before moving on to Victoria to live with my cousin.
The whole time I was living with them I was really searching for God. By this time I was reading the Gospel of Matthew in the bible that I had, which was a Jehovah Witness bible. I was also just looking for God everywhere. I looked for him in my grandparents home, but didn't really see him there. I also went to their Kingdom Hall meeting (their version of church, even though they are totally against it being related to that) but I didn't really see God their either. They even took me to a bible study with them, and at that study happened the strangest thing.
The study was on the book of Isaiah and after reading part of it, the people there asked what I thought it meant. I can't remember the exact verse, but I remember it said something about the Babylonians being used by God for his purposes for awhile, but that because they had no respect or fear of Him, that He would now destroy them. After they asked me the question, what I thought the verse meant, I looked at them kind of stupefied and said, "Well it probably means that God used the Babylonians for a time for his purpose, but that because they had no respect for Him, he was going to destroy them." That's right, pretty much word for word, a generic answer identical to what it said that anyone could probably come up with. And they all looked at me and my grandparents and start proclaiming, "Wow! Your grandson really has a gift. He has some kind of true insight about the scriptures."
And I, of coarse, started thinking to myself, "What the heck are all these people talking about?! I'm just some drug addict who knows nothing, and gave an answer that was pretty much word for word what it said, and they're blown away by it. What's wrong with these people?" It just seemed so messed up to me that they thought my answer was insightful. Due to this fact, I would have to say overall I just didn't see God in any of the Jehovah Witness stuff, except for in their bible, which I now know has only a few things changed from a normal bible. (Only the things changed are pretty major differences, but that's a post for another time.)
So as I said earlier, I was reading The Gospel of Matthew while staying with them and something else stood out to me as well. When Jesus would teach the people he would always talk about The Kingdom of Heaven. This confused me because Jehovah Witnesses do not believe that most people go to heaven when they die, only 144,000. So why then did Jesus mention it so much? I didn't really understand, but one scripture I read really stood out to me and that is in Matthew 9:12-13. In the story Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners and the religious people of the day ask his disciples why he would eat with such people. And he said to them
It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick...I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
This really hit me because I knew that I was sick and that I was a sinner. So it gave me some hope that Jesus had come for people like me. There was much in that Gospel that spoke to me though and I was praying a lot when I was there with them. But overall I was still to messed up mentally to really understand to much of what I was reading.
What was also strange, was that I could swear God was speaking to me from songs on a pocket radio I was listening to, throughout the time I was there. Once again the Our Lady Peace songs would play on the radio and relate to me. One song they played was called 'Somewhere Out There' Some of the lyrics to that song are
Down here in the atmosphere
Garbage and city lights
Gonna save you're tired soul
You're gonna save our lives
Turn on the radio to
Find you in satellite
I'm waiting for the sky to fall
I'm waiting for a sign
And all we are, Is all so far
You're falling back to me
The star that I can see
I know you're out there, somewhere out there
You're falling out of reach
Defying gravity
I know you're out there
Somewhere out there
I also heard a group called Evanescence, who had also just released their first song called 'Bring me to life' Some of the lyrics to that song are
(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can’t wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can’t wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I’ve become
And Linkin Park just released a song called 'Somewhere I belong.' Some of the lyrics in that song are
I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real
I wanna let go of the pain I’ve held so long
(Erase all the pain till it’s gone)
I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m close to something real
I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along
Somewhere I belong
Again just like at the Our Lady Peace concert it was as if the songs on the radio were made about my life, where I was at, and what I was feeling. But once again I'd get mixed signals because I would hear songs like these, but then listening to a rock station the next song would be AC/DC highway to hell or something like that. So I wasn't sure what was going on, but either way I could swear I could hear God speaking to me on the radio through some of the lyrics. But I wasn't sure what he was trying to tell me. They just made me feel as if he was there and that he cared.
By the end of the two weeks that I had stayed with my grandparents, I was starting to feel pretty close to God, as if he was really with me and cared. But I still was not totally sure at this point. Either way in the morning we were leaving on a faerie to go to Victoria to meet up with my cousin, so I could start my new life, living with her.
My grandparents were taking me on the faerie to my cousins at the end of the 2 weeks. We got up early in the morning and were off to Victoria. I was quite excited because I had not seen my cousin in over a decade, like I said earlier. Through out the week before I had left to B.C., everyone who knew I was going, were telling me about how beautiful Victoria was and how much I was going to love it. To be honest, I wasn't all that impressed with it on first impression. Sure the weather was warmer than I'd been used to in Alberta, but the city seemed kinda run down and dirty to be completely honest.
As we pulled up to my cousins, and now my new house, I felt as if I didn't want to be there at all. This house she was living in was such a piece of junk. It was from around the very early 1900's and it was an old decrepit shack. The inside was so cold because there was very little insulation, and even though the temperature outside was around 15 degrees Celsius, it was still very cold in the house and I always liked warmer rooms. The kitchen was very old and had a classic stove and everything in the house was very old, as a matter of fact. The T.V. in this house didn't have the AV slots for my Playstation 2 that I had brought, becuase like everything else in the house it was super old. All the furniture was used and ugly, and the stereo in the living room looked like it was from the 1970's. And Oh, it was such a great deal for $900 a month! It was worse than the drug house that I'd partied at in Vegreville all the time, and that house was really trashed and crappy, obviously from being partied in 24/7. That will do that to a house. And yet this house was much worse in my eyes physically. I was used to newer modern living in Alberta with my parents, because they were very well off and we lived in a very nice house, back when I was there with them.
However, the even bigger issue was when we first walked through the front door, I looked up and on her walls were trippy, psychedelic posters of mushrooms in neon colours and other trippy images. As I headed through the old crappy kitchen, to the bathroom, I saw on the inside wall of the hall, next to the bathroom, a centerfold posted up from High Times Magazine. For those of you who don't know, High Times Magazine is a magazine for pot heads about marijuana lifestyle. The centerfold in that magazine is a moist, huge, green marijuana plant.
So here I was moving to B.C., into my cousins house to start a new life to get away from drugs, and before even talking to her about it, I knew she was a drug addict, just like me. It was so obvious, and yet my grandparents were completely clueless to this. And I had told my grandparents why I had come out there, and yet they had no clue about my cousin. Even with a poster of a marijuana plant hanging on the wall in plain site. But the truth was that even though I knew staying there was not gonna be a good thing, it had been 3 weeks since my last joint and I was kinda craving some. So I kept my mouth shut and we all visited in the living room. Then we left and went out to pick up some stuff for me. After going around the city to pick up some things for the house with my grandparents, like a bed, a chair, and a electric heater, because I had nothing but some clothes and my Playstation 2 with some games that I had brought from Alberta, my grandparents left to go back to Vancouver. As soon as they left the house I looked over at my cousin and asked, already knowing the answer, "So you must smoke a lot of pot, eh?"
She replied, saying to me, "Oh yeah, but everyone here does." I had heard this from many of the people back in Alberta as well, because many of the people I used with there were from B.C. They would tell me about how B.C. was way worse for drug use than Alberta was. I never thought anything of it at the time, but it seemed as if it was now confirmed by my cousin.
After this we talked about lots of different things about the family, drugs, and partying. I told her about the raves and partying I had done back in Alberta, but I did not tell her why I had moved to B.C. We continued sharing about our lives and what had been going on for us the last while and with our siblings lives as well. Then my cousins roommate, now my new roommate, came home. He was with his buddy who was a drug dealer and he threw a huge bag of pot on the table. I went into my room for a bit and when I came out my cousin had pulled a water-bong out and had loaded it with a blast of marijuana and they'd begun to smoke it. I sat down on the couch that was straight across from the couch my cousin and new roommate were sitting on and there was a coffee table in between us. As I sat down, the one guy, who was my new roommates drug dealing buddy, had finished his hoot and placed the bong on the coffee table in front of me. I sat there and stared at it, completely focused on it intently and sharply. Suddenly a huge war broke out in my mind, and it was just like the old cliche in the movies of the little angel on my one arm and a little devil on my other.
"Don't touch that garbage," the angels voice stated, with much warning. "You know what happens when you get high. You're mind will go into a state that those voices who take control of you will come and do just that. And trust me, you don't want that to happen to you here. You came out here to clean up off that stuff. Don't touch it, or you'll regret it."
And then the little devils voice piped up, very seductively, and said, "Ah, you've been clean for 3 weeks now. Whatever caused that craziness in your mind is long gone out of your system by now. You'll just get a normal pot high again. Plus it's not like it's meth or coke, it's just pot. So go ahead and take a toke. Just don't do the harder stuff. You can start a new life here and just not get into harder drugs. I mean come on, it's just pot, just do it. You know you want to."
After sitting there for a few minutes while this war went on in my mind, I slowly looked up and saw my cousin and the other two staring at me. At that my cousin, very impatiently, asked, "So what's going on? Are you gonna hit that, or not?"
"Yeah, of coarse, I'll take a hit," I replied quite quickly, and at that I grabbed the bong and took a hit. There was only enough pot left in the bong for a single hit.
After I finished blowing out the smoke, my new roommate and his friend said to me and my cousin, "Well we're out. Gonna go hit some trails." Then they grabbed their BMX's and headed out the door.
Then my cousin looked over and said to them, "Yeah I'll meet up with you guys later, but first I gotta take a shower." Then off she went to take a shower. Within 10 seconds of taking this hit, I was now all alone, by myself in the living room of the house.
Sitting there for a bit, the pot began to kick in and I felt alright. "I'm fine," I thought to myself. "Yeah, I haven't smoked this stuff in a few weeks so I'm gonna be fine." But then I began, once again, to feel higher and higher and higher, and once again I could hear a voice becoming louder and louder, centering himself in my mind.
Part 7: Absolute Rock Bottom
"Oh Jason, Jason, Jason," the voice said sternly. "You should have listened to your conscience. Now look what you've done." At that I could hear many other more distant voices around me snarling and laughing at me.
I ran back into my bedroom and collapsed, knees on the floor and face in my arms, huddled across the edge of my bed in prayer. "Please God. This can't be. Please don't let these voices take control of me again," I hastily pleaded, "Not here. This can't be, I've been clean for 3 weeks. My mind shouldn't be doing this anymore. I know I shouldn't have smoked that pot. I'm sorry; I just couldn't seem to help myself. Please you gotta help me."
"You can get up off your knees now," the voice said in a very calming manner.
"Yeah, why's that?" I responded.
"Because you're on your knees praying for God to come and help you," the voice answered, "but I'm right here. I am God, so you don't need to pray anymore, just talk to me, cause I'm right here."
"You're not God," I quickly rebuked back. "You're just trying to trick me into listening to you again. Go away and leave me alone. You always just trick me into listening to you."
"Well," the voice said back to me, "it doesn't really matter if you believe me or not. It's the truth. You sit there crying out for God and I'm right here. Whether you believe me, or you don't, doesn't really matter to me. But I have some things I have to tell you and you're gonna listen, because you called on me. So you will listen, whether you want to or not."
"First off," he continued, "What kind of an idiot are you? You have a drug addiction and where do you decide to move to? B.C. of all places. You're such an idiot. You heard from people back in Alberta it was worse off here for drugs. So why would you think you could run away from your problems? You can't run from this, it's everywhere; you need to face it head on. You can't run from your problems. So sorry, life doesn't work that way."
"And another thing," he continued, kinda making sense to me, "You are such a chameleon. Look at the clothes you're wearing right now." So I looked down and noticed I was wearing a hoodie and some baggy jeans. "Do you realize that you actually came and changed your clothes when you saw the way your cousin and those guys were dressed? All your life you've been like this. Always doing what you think others want from you. Never being yourself, but just trying to fit in." And it was true; I had gone into my room to change my clothes to match the style of clothes that they were wearing when my cousins’ roommate had come home. I had many different styles of clothing and I would wear different clothing dependent upon the group I was hanging out with. I truly was a chameleon. I wanted to fit in with everyone, so I would act like them and like the things they liked, even if I didn't really like those things at all, and do the things they would do, to try and fit in with them. Being accepted by everyone was my goal in life.
The voice continued his revelation to me, "Yeah, you didn't even actually do the hoot on that pipe until your cousin said something. Then you were so quick to impress and show her how it's done. Do you even know who you are? You're nobody! You're just what you think everyone else what's you to be. You don't even know who you are, and I'll tell you something else. There is no way that you can stay here and clean up your life. But because your cousin wants you to stay and not leave, you'll probably stay anyway."
The voice was right and I knew it, even though I was still not very convinced he was God, what he was saying seemed to make a lot of sense. So I responded, "No way am I staying here! I don't care what she thinks. I'm getting out of here." And at that I stormed into the living room to find my cousin who was now finished her shower and was dressed ready to leave.
I looked her straight in the eye and stated in a very crucial way, "Listen! I told you about the parties and the drug life back in Alberta, but I wasn't completely honest with you. I am a huge drug addict and when I smoke dope it doesn't do to me what it does to you. I go crazy and hear voices in my head and they take control of me. In fact I was just talking to one now and I'm really super high right now just from that one hit. My life was in shambles back in Alberta and I moved out here to try and clean up, so I'm sorry but I can't live with you, because you're an addict just like me, and I can't live with an addict and clean up. So I'm sorry that's it."
Surprised by the clarity and seriousness I displayed while communicating that to her, while my mind was in such an insane state at the time, I expected her to understand. But she didn't understand. She looked right back at me and said, "No way, Uh uh, not happenin! You said you'd move in with me and be my roommate. So to bad, you're committed and you're stayin. I don't care what you think about it. That's the way it is."
Just shocked by her response I pleaded with her, "Please Cuz, you gotta understand what I'm saying here. I'll give you 3 months rent. That'll give you tons of time to find a new roommate. I'm truly sorry, but I just can't stay here."
"Nope," she replied back, "No deal. You have to stay. Just don't use drugs. Just stay here and don't do them."
"You don't understand," I responded. "I can't not do them when I'm around them. I'm just too weak. No matter how hard I seem to try, I just always get high. So I'm sorry, but I really can't stay. You have to understand."
Once again she replied in the same manner, "No, I'm tired of arguing with you about this. You're staying and that's the end of this discussion." Then she grabbed her bike and headed out the door, leaving me once again in the house all alone with the voices.
Right after she left the voice piped up once again and said, "And you'll probably stay too, just like I said earlier, because that's what you always do. What everyone else wants of you."
"No way am I staying! I'm outta here!" I stated very abruptly as I went back into my room to pack my things.
But as I was trying to pack the voice very forcefully said, "Not, just yet. I'm not finished what I have to say. And like it or not you're gonna listen to me before you can leave."
"No I'm not, I'm outta here," I declared as I continued to try and pack up my things. At that moment my heart began to pound very hard in my chest, just like the other times, and once again it felt like a hand was grabbing at it. I collapsed on the floor to my knees and pleaded, "OK I'll listen, please just let my heart go."
I felt the hand let go, and my heart began to beat somewhat normal again, as the voice repeated, "Yes, you will listen to what I have to say to you, and then you can go." So I had no choice but to listen to the voice continue his rant.
"OK Jason," the voice continued, "Well it's like I said earlier, I am God and you called on me, so now I am here to respond, so that's why you will listen to me. So here's the thing Jason; I've got some news for ya and I've got some bad news for ya."
"Oh yeah what's that?" I asked.
"Well the news is," the voice responded, "that you've lived a very reckless lifestyle, you've done way too many drugs, and your heart can't take it anymore. So because of this you are gonna die this week. You will have a heart attack and your life will end."
"Ah you're not God," I said, trying to convince myself. "You're just some voice the drugs have made up and what you're telling me isn't real or true."
"Well, like I said earlier," the voice repeated, "it doesn't really matter to me if you believe me or not. Go ahead and keep trying to convince yourself of that. But I'm telling you I am God, and you are gonna die this week. You know, it's funny; you sit there telling yourself that I'm not really God and that what I'm saying is not true, but let’s just stop and take a minute to look at this. So what, do you think all that drug use was good for your body? Do you think meth is just some kind of a joke? That all the warnings about the health effects of it are just for fun? Go ahead feel your chest right now."
So I put my hand on my chest on its left side, over my heart, and noticed how unnatural, irregular, and hard it was beating. It wasn't quite as bad as when it would feel like when the voice was grabbing at it, but it still felt as if it was in pretty bad shape. And the truth was it had been like this for quite a few months prior, ever since the first time I had heard these voices at Stage 13, and I knew it.
So the voice continued, "Do you think that's normal? No, you know that it's not, not even close. And I ask you something else, reach your hand into your pocket and grab out your cigarette package." So I did and as I pulled out the package of smokes he continued, "Look at the cover." I looked down at the front cover of my package, and as clear as day on the warning label it said 'Smoking will kill you' "Do you think they put those warnings on there for fun? Yeah, just one big joke. No of coarse not! They put that kind of stuff on there because those things slowly kill you. And you've smoked how many of those a day since you started? And let me tell you that other garbage that you were using is over 100 times worse than those cigarettes are."
"Yeah, but other people I knew used much more than me and they're fine," I responded to his valid statement.
"Yeah, but what you don't realize is that you went harder than any of them. Everyone exaggerates their drug use, but you really truly went hard. Just stop and think about it for a minute."
So I stopped and remembered times being with dealers, who I'd be with while on a pick up in the city in my car, and I would get a line ready to do. I could remember one time where one of them looked over at me and very abruptly said, "What the heck are you doing? Are you nuts? What are you trying to do? Kill yourself or something! Don't do lines that big, or you might OD. Here just do smaller hits, like this, more often," and she made a smaller line for myself. But the reality was that I always did huge lines, even bigger than the one I was going to do that time, and although I obliged her at the time, I never listened to the advice when I would use normally. I realized at that moment, that if even dealers thought I was crazy in the amount I was doing, I must have truly gone quite hard.
"So, like I already said," the voice continued ranting, "you can try and convince yourself that I'm not God and that what I'm telling you isn't true. But when you stop and look at the evidence, you know that what I'm saying is true." Indeed, looking at these things, I was much more convinced that it was very possible that what this voice had been telling me could very well be true, and I began to feel a little uneasy.
"But you know what?" he continued, "It's really not that big of a deal, everyone in this life is gonna die. It's just a part of this life. All your friends are gonna die, your brothers and sister are gonna die, and your parents are gonna die. It's just that you're gonna die young. It's really no big deal. In fact, you know what, you should be happy about it."
"Happy, yeah right, why's that?" I wondrously inquired.
"Because let's face it," he responded "you've wanted to die for quite awhile now, but you were just to chicken to commit suicide. So you just did it more slowly with drugs. But hey, look on the bright side, you're finally gonna get what you've always wanted. You've wanted death for awhile now and now you're finally gonna get it. So be happy." At that I realized that what he was saying was true. I really did want to die, and I was to chicken to commit suicide. That's why I didn't care when I was using drugs about overdosing on them. I didn't realize it until this point, but what the voice was telling me was very true.
"So anyway," he continued, "like I said, it's really no big deal, everyone is gonna die. However I told you I had some news and some bad news. So that was the news, now it's time for the bad news."
"Oh yeah," I asked, "What’s the bad news?"
He responded very sternly, "Well the bad news is that you've lived a terrible life, you're a terrible person, and you've completely wasted this life I've gifted you with, and because of these things, when you die, you're going to go to Hell. But I guess that shouldn't worry you at all, because you don't even believe that place even exists. So I guess you have nothing to worry about."
Once again, I thought trying to convince myself, "You're not really God. What you're telling me isn't true. This is all just a drug trip. Yeah that's it, it's not real. You're not real."
At that he responded, similar to as he had already done, "Well go ahead and tell yourself that, but let’s just stop, once again, and take a look at your life." And at that he began to bring up every immoral, rotten, dishonest, no good thing I had ever done in my life. "You've lived your life with no love and respect for me. You committed adultery with one of your best friend’s girlfriends. You get with girls and have sex with them and then dump them right afterwards to move on to the next. You've cheated on some of your girlfriends. You've stolen thousands of dollars off your parents, at their business. You also have no respect or honour for your parents and you have no respect for yourself, or your body. You've slowly committed suicide using deadly substances and are now this week gonna die, and when you do it will be considered committing murder to yourself." He just kept going and the list went on and on and on.
Shattered inside, I tried to respond, "Yeah but what about giving smokes and money to help some of the people I know. You have to admit that there was some good in my life. I was always a very giving person, doesn't that count for something." It was true that I had been quite giving with all of my drugs, smokes, and money. If you were into drugs, as a matter of fact, I was one of the best friends you could have, because I'd always share my drugs with everyone. And if anyone wanted a smoke, I'd always give one to them. I always considered myself a very giving person and figured that had to count for something.
"Ha, ha, ha," the voice chuckled and responded, "Oh PLEASE! You're joking me, right? You actually believe that you're a giving person. Let me ask you this Jason; why were you so giving? Was it out of your pure and good heart to help out these people? Let me answer for you. No it wasn't! It was so that they'd like you. You pretty much just bought all of your friends. All you've ever done that you thought was good; you only ever did for yourself. Just stop and think about it. That's always been your main goal in life, to get everyone to like you. Everything you've ever done, you've only done for yourself. So that's quite the joke argument. 'I'm very giving' he says. Ha, that's a good one."
After his response I was quite crushed and knew he was right. Everything I had ever done was only for myself and to try and get what I wanted. Yet there had to be something I could say. That's when it hit me and I asked, "Well what about Jesus Christ? Didn't he die for my sins or something?"
"Jesus Christ," the voice responded in a very sadistic tone, "Humph! What a joke! How dare you even mention that name to me. Jesus Christ! Do you really think that some guy who died thousands of years ago could save you from all the stuff you've done? Oh please! Get real! You're responsible for your own deeds in this life. Some guy from thousands of years ago has nothing to do with all the stuff you've done. You alone are responsible. Jesus Christ! What a joke."
At this point I had very little understanding of Jesus, so I just let it go at that and accepted that it was a crazy idea to think some guy from thousands of years ago could save me from all the stuff I had done. After all I was the one who had chosen to live the way I did, and I was responsible for it.
"But overall, the biggest reason of why you're going to Hell when you die is simple," the voice remarked, changing the subject to about Hell again. "You know Jason, your parents don't believe in, or respect me either, so they're both going to Hell when they die as well."
At that I fell to the floor, on my knees, in crushing inner pain and deep tears crying out, "Oh NO! God is real and so is Hell. And because my parents don't believe, they're gonna go to Hell when they die." I was so upset about realizing this, because although I was angry with my parents, I loved them deeply. After all, they are my parents and I can't help but love them, even if I was angry with them at the same time.
"Yeah, but you've lived a terrible life and you're also gonna go to Hell," the voice remarked to me while I was still in tears on the floor. As soon as he said that, the tears stopped and the crushing pain was gone. "You see that, right there," he continued, "You'll cry for your parents souls, but yet when I said 'you're also gonna go to Hell', no more pain or tears. You don't even love yourself. You know that Hell is where you deserve to go and where you belong. So like I've already said, you can try and convince yourself all you want that I'm not God and that what I'm saying isn't true, but just look into your own heart and you will know that what I'm saying is true. You've condemned your own self to Hell, so to Hell, is where you are going."
I was completely crushed after the voice had finished saying that and I collapsed into my chair, having visions of Hell and demons in a large fiery stadium, with red pitch forks, lifting them into the air and bringing them down again, cheering that they had won another soul. I could hear them all around me. And all I could think about was how God and Hell were real and that so many people I knew didn't believe or follow him, and that they'd all one day go to Hell just like me. Then all I could think about was all of the people I truly loved; my family and my real close friends from high school, who I had neglected, and how much I wanted to tell them how much I loved them and how sorry I was for any pain I had caused to them. After sitting and sulking about these things for awhile I realized that even though I knew I deserved to go to Hell, I still didn't want to go there.
"I know I deserve to go to Hell," I inquired to the voice, "but there's gotta be something I can do to not have to go there?"
"Well I don't know," the voice responded quite smugly, "I mean you haven't even read the whole bible yet."
"Well what if I did?" I inquired quite excitedly, "What if I read the whole bible? Would you not send me to Hell if I did?"
"Ah I don't know," he responded back. "I guess if you read the whole bible from start to finish, I'd consider not sending you to Hell." And at that I was off. I picked up the bible and started on the first page of Genesis, sitting in the chair my grandparents and I had just picked up earlier. Now obviously the bible is an extremely large book and I, at the time, was not a fast reader at all. As I got half way through the first page, I tilted the book up in front of my eyes and noticed how thick it was.
"Wow!" I thought, "This is gonna take me awhile," as I looked over at the clock and realized 10 minutes had passed since I started reading it.
"Don't forget," the voice finally piped up after being quiet for a bit, "You're gonna die this week."
After pondering for a bit about what he had just said. I asked him, "Well if I just keep reading it non-stop, how long do you think it will take me to finish the whole thing?"
"Oh probably about a year," he smugly responded.
"But you said I'm gonna die this week," I stated back to him.
"Well I guess that's your problem," he laughingly said back to me. So I threw the bible to the ground knowing there was no way I was going to be able to complete the task on time. After this I gave up on trying to find a way out of what the voice had convinced me of.
Once again all I could think about was the people I truly loved in my life and how much I wanted to see them before I died. So I decided that I would somehow try to get back to Alberta, so I could make my amends and say my last words. But when I went throughout the house searching for a phone, I could not find one anywhere in the house for some reason. So then I figured I'd pack my things and just leave to find a cab or something. But when I would try to pack my things something would feel as if it were grabbing at my heart and it would, once again, begin to pound like a jackhammer.
"Please, you've said what you wanted," I remarked to the voice, "Now just let me go. I just want to leave. Please just let me pack my things and go."
"Why do you even need your things?" the voice asked. "You're gonna be dead before the end of this week. Why do you need any of this stuff? It's all meaningless now. Just leave it and go. Dead men don't need anything."
What he said, just like the whole time he had been speaking to me, seemed to make sense. So I grabbed my jacket and headed out the door onto the streets of Victoria in search of a cab, still completely high and whacked out from the one hit I had taken earlier.
There I was, walking down the streets of Victoria, completely high and out of my mind, so it didn't take long before I didn't know where I was in the city. I didn't know where my cousins house was, in fact I didn't know where anything was. As I walked block to block eagerly searching for a pay phone to call a cab, I could now hear many more voices around me whispering, mocking, and laughing at me; constantly reminding me of how terrible of person I am. After walking around for a long while, hearing only these more distant voices, I noticed that the main centered voice, who claimed to be God had not spoken since I had left the house, so I asked, "God are you still there?"
Another voice, one of the voices who was around me, mocking me, replied, "I'm sorry, God's not here right now. He was needed somewhere else in the world. Would you like me to take a message for him?" At that I could hear many voices in my head from all around me burst out laughing, as if it were some big joke or something.
I was just confused and replied, "No, that's alright I'll talk to him when he gets back I guess." And they all howled and laughed hysterically at my response.
I wondered to myself, "How can God be busy somewhere else? And why is that so funny to all these voices in my head?" I just couldn't understand. Who were these other voices and why was this so funny to them and where did they come from? In my other drug trips there was only one voice, but now there were many of them. Only the difference was that the main voice was centered in my mind and these other voices were more circular around my mind. About 5 minutes later I asked them curiously, "Um, so is God back yet?"
Another loud voice now piped up, and he was centered in my mind, laughing hysterically at me, "Ha,ha, ha, God! You think I'm God." Then I could hear him remark to the other voices, “He thinks I'm God." Then he turned his response back to me, "Sorry buddy, there's no God here in Hell. You know back at that house in that room; you died and now your soul is wandering aimlessly around in the first level of Hell. And there's no God in Hell. There's only me, and my name is Lucifer and your my little b***h for all eternity. Your soul now belongs to me." And at that he laughed completely evil and diabolically at me.
I stopped for a minute and looked around at the city. Then I looked down at my body and touched my arm, which was still there and I could still feel it. I thought to myself, "This is crazy. I can't be dead. I can still feel my body. And this is just a physical city all around me. You must be lying, I can't be dead. It just makes no sense."
"How would you know what it's like to be dead?" he replied, his tone very harsh, "You little maggot. You're pathetic. Trying to convince yourself of something you don't understand. But oh, soon you will. This is just the first level of Hell, where you will wait for the end of the world and the final judgment. Then you will go to the deeper Hell, where your soul is mine for eternity. All this level of Hell is, where you are right now, is a place that you don't want to be, so you search for a way out, but you'll NEVER find it. You are dead and soon you will realize this, once you realize you can't find a way out of this place." Then the other voices continued to mock and laugh at my misfortune; constantly reminding me of the evils I had committed and hurts I had caused to people.
At first I didn't believe the voice, who called himself Lucifer, but as I continued my search on the streets for a pay phone, I began to notice something. It didn't seem to matter how long I walked for, every block looked exactly like the one I was on before it. I was on a fairly busy road in a residential area. I would look straight down the sidewalk off to the horizon, and the street would go straight all the way to the horizon in both directions, as far as my eyes could see. Another thing I noticed was that the sun in the sky was on the horizon, and just about to set. There were cars parked on each side of the street as well and many cars driving each way on the street itself. The blocks I was walking were grid style and had about 5 apartments, each about 3-5 stories tall, on each side of the road stretched across the lots. And every block was like this. It didn't matter how many blocks I walked, the streets always fit this description. No gas stations, no grocery stores, no businesses, no malls, and no phone booths. Plus it didn't matter how long I walked for, and I walked for what felt like many, many hours, the sun stood still in the sky and would not set. It just didn't seem possible. How could the sun not set after that amount of time being on the horizon? And how could the streets all look exactly the same?
After walking the streets for hours and nothing changing, I was really beginning to believe what the voice had told me, to be true. About 90/100 percent convinced at this point, and climbing. Maybe I really was dead and in the first level of Hell. It just seemed impossible what was happening, even if I was really high and out of my mind. I still was partly in touch with reality, and in reality the streets were not changing and the sun was not moving.
After walking for awhile longer, Lucifer, as he called himself, once again spoke to me. "You're so pathetic," he said, "I almost feel pity for you. So here's what I'm going to do. I'll tell you what. If you can cry for your own soul I'll let you leave this place." (Looking back now, I believe he said this because he partly could foresee what was coming.) After he mentioned his offer to me, I tried to remember any of the good things I had done in my life. But for every seemingly good thing I could think of, the voices around me would just keep reminding me of the terrible person I was and the evils I had committed, or flip it around showing me my selfishness in it. No matter how hard I tried to, I could not cry for my own soul.
After walking around for what felt like a huge amount of time; I'm not fully sure how long I actually walked for, I just know it felt like an eon, I came to the point where I was at 99.9/100 percent convinced that I really was in Hell. It was right before the point that I was completely convinced that what the voice had convinced me of was really true, that the block was different. The block I was now on, at this point, had a hill up to the mid way point of the block. As soon as I hit the peak of the hill, in the middle of the block, the sun dropped below the horizon and utter darkness surrounded me....
However, there was a light on the other side of the street, at the bottom of the hill, at the end of the block from where I was walking. There I saw a phone booth on the corner of the street intersection at a gas station. I thought, "Oh thank God," and quickly made my way up the block, across the street to the phone booth that was there. As I approached the phone booth, it was more of a half booth really, no enclosed area, just the phone on a stand and there was a light above the phone illuminating it. It was so bright that it was as if the phone seemed to be jumping out of reality itself. It was just so completely lit up and crystal clear, and everywhere else around me was shadowed in darkness. However there was no phone book at it, so who was I to call?
Part 8: The Revelation of God
There I was standing at this illuminated phone, with no phone book to look up the number for a cab, and no idea where I was within the city of Victoria, still completely high, with darkness shrouded all around me. Who was I to call? I reached down into my pockets and pulled one thing out of each. In my one pocket I had happened to put my wallet before I left the house, so I had my bank card and credit card with me. The phone I was at was a newer phone and had a slot to input my credit card to phone long distance. Out of my other pocket, I pulled out a pay-as-you-go cell phone that I had, that had been disconnected for quite awhile at that point, but it had a phone book in it with some of the peoples numbers that I knew back in Alberta.
I scrolled through the list of numbers wondering who I should call. As I went through the list of numbers one person at a time, I would think to myself "Drug dealer, person I used with, gang member, criminal, another drug dealer," and so on, and so on. Eventually I came across a person number who was not a person I had used with. It was my friend Jeremy's number. He had just given it to me before I left for Victoria.
Jeremy was my best friend in high school. I'd laughed with him and cried with him. I had shared deeper feelings with him, more than anyone else I had ever known. He was one of the friends I had neglected my relationship with when I got into drugs. He was also one of the friends I had thought about at the Our Lady Peace concert and at the house I was at earlier that day when I was thinking about all the people I wanted to see that I truly loved. In fact at the time, he was probably the person who throughout my life, I truly loved more than anyone else. He also went to the Pentecostal church in Vegreville, but no longer attended church. He did however express his belief to me, many times, about the existence of God. And he was the one friend I had who attended that church, who at least tried to live up to some of the principals that went along with it. So I decided to call his number.
His sister answered the phone and as soon as she did, I burst out into tears. I very sobbingly asked, "Is Jeremy there?"
She informed me that he wasn't and that he was at work. Hearing the distress in my voice she asked, "Who is this and what's wrong?"
"This is Jason," I replied, still quite upset and with much distress. We had also known each other a bit from high school, because she and I had run on the track team together. She was in the grade above mine.
She replied back in a very caring tone, "Oh hey Jason, you don't sound too good. What's going on?
"Well Jen, do you believe in God?" I asked back. She informed me that she did, and I very hastily went into an explanation of the situation.
"You have to help me," I crucially exclaimed, so hastily that all my word were drawn into one sentence, "I'm in Victoria and I came here to clean up because I have a drug problem, but when I got here I ended up doing a hoot off a pipe and I've been praying and trying to clean up and a voice who claimed he was God came to me and told me I was going to die and that I am a terrible person and judged me for all the things I've done wrong and that I'm going to go to Hell and I'm scared and I have to get back there and get baptized or something, because even though I know I deserve to go there, I don't want to and..."
As I, in a panicked tone, ranted, Jen forced her way in and interrupted me, exclaiming, "Hold on, hold on, hold on a second Jason. Let me get this straight; you think that God came to you and told you that you're a terrible person and that you're gonna die and go to Hell?"
I replied, "Yeah."
"Well let me tell you something Jason," she continued, "I go to church and I know God, and God would never tell you all the stuff you just told me. God loves you so much Jason and he would never tell you you're going to Hell. And all those drugs that you have been using, those certainly are not a doorway to God, but they are definitely a doorway for the devil to get into your mind, and only he would tell you all that stuff you just told me. Those things are not signs from God, but this phone call you just made is."
As Jen stated that to me, revelation filled my mind and it felt as if an invisible hand reached into my head, grabbed the voices, and threw them way off into the distance. The Holy Spirit descended upon me and a deep sense of peace filled my entire being. At that moment God's very presence was upon me and I knew he was real. All the doubt was removed in that instant. I felt complete acceptance from him and complete unconditional love. Greater love than I'd ever felt before from anyone, or for anyone, in my life. So great, in fact, that there are no words in our language to describe it, because they all fall way to short.
It was a lifetime of revelation in the matter of a millisecond. Not only did I know at that moment that God was real and that he unconditionally loved me, but I also knew why Jesus Christ was the way, and why he had come to earth to die on a cross. It was because he knew I was gonna sin and rebel against God. Even before I was born, he knew that. He came and died for me, because he loved me and wanted to show me just how much I meant to him. Even when I hated him, and although I had claimed Atheism, in reality I had a concept of God existing, I think we all do, but if he did exist I hated him for creating me, because I hated my life and myself. Yet he always loved me, even when I was his enemy, and that was why he came and died, because he loved me and took the punishment of my sins upon himself, so that I wouldn't have to go to Hell, but instead to Heaven to be reconciled to him. I knew I was completely forgiven.
Even more than that, I knew my life had been changed forever and that everything I had gone through before this was to bring me to this point, where I was completely broken, ready to completely surrender to God and his will for my life. I knew I was going to be OK. And realizing how much God had forgiven me, forgiveness flowed into my heart towards anyone that I had held something against. My heart was released and set free from the pain that I had held onto for so long. All my life, I wanted to be accepted and now I had realized that I was accepted by the creator of the entire cosmos. I could speak of the revelation I had at that millisecond for hours, but I will continue with the story, or it would take me many posts to go into that one thing alone.
So I replied to Jen, "Yeah, you're right. God wouldn't say those things to me. And he does love me. And he's answering my prayers right now at this moment."
"I know," she replied, kind of freaked out a bit, "It's weird how I know that, but I just do. So what are you going to do now?"
"I don't know," I replied, "I was gonna try to come back to Alberta, cause I just want to see all my friends and family and tell them how much I love them. I was gonna call a cab, but there's no phone book and I don't know where I am. But I was gonna try to get one, so I could go to the airport and try to get a flight back."
"That sounds like a good idea," she commented back, "I think you'll need all the help and support from your friends and family, the people who truly love you, to get through this addiction."
"Yeah I agree," I said back, "But how am I gonna get back there? Like I said there's no phone book and I don't know where I am."
"Well are you outside a gas station?" she asked, just knowing without me saying anything about it. I informed her that I was and she told me to go in and ask the attendant to call a cab for me, then to come back and call her back after he had. So I went into the gas station and asked the guy working to call me a cab and he obliged. So I went back out to the payphone and called Jen back.
"OK, he called one. It's on the way," I stated to Jen.
"OK," she said, "Good! Now before he gets there I have a few things I have to tell you."
"Those voices you were telling me about," She asked, "They're not fully gone are they? You can still hear them, but now they're in the distance aren't they." A little shocked, but not really, I informed her that her assertions were correct about the voices. It was strange, although The Holy Spirit had descended upon me and given me revelation and a deep peace had filled me, I was still extremely high and the voices I could still hear way off in the distance just as Jen had asked.
She continued after my affirmation, "Well those voices, they don't want you to come back here. They're gonna try to get back, centered into your head and stop you. But you can't let them! This may be hard for you to do right now Jason, but God needs you to focus. He has something he needs you to do and you need to focus on that, and nothing else. And this is what he needs from you: he needs you to get in the cab when it comes, tell the cab driver to take you to the airport, go to the airport, find a flight to get back here, buy a ticket, get on the plane, and come back home. That's it, nothing more. Now repeat it to me."
After repeating it, she made me repeat another few times and then said, "Good! Now if you stay focused on that thing alone, you WILL make it back here tonight." Right as she finished, the cab pulled up. I informed Jen and she told me to call her back when I got to the airport. So I hung up the phone and hopped into the cab, still very high, and was off to the airport.
As soon as I got into the cab I asked the driver to drive me to the airport. First we had to stop at a bank though so I could grab him some cash. When I opened the door of the cab and got in, I thought that the driver was going to be a Christian, so I looked over and asked him if he believed in God.
He looked over and responded, "Nah, not really. I kinda believe we make our own destiny, ya know what I mean." It seemed kinda humorous at the time to me, because the thing I had just experienced at the phone booth. I used to believe the exact same thing till 5 minutes before I got into the cab. And now here God instantly put someone in my path to share with.
So I, still very high from the one hit I had taken earlier, but now feeling very peaceful, said back to him, "Well, maybe I have a story that might change your mind on that." At that I began to tell the driver my life story. Similar, but even more detailed than the story I've been posting on here. As I shared my life story with the driver, even more revelations of my life began coming to me as I shared. I began to realize how one bad decision I made in my past led to another and that to another and so on. One of the major things I realized as I was going through my story was the fact that my father and his side of my family all reject the existence of God. So many of them are Atheists. Yet almost everyone I knew who had gone to the Pentecostal church in Vegreville, although very few of them go anymore or follow God, almost all of them believed in God. Even both my brothers had friends who went to that church as well, and when I had talked to them, most of them acknowledged the existence of God as well. It became clear to me, at that moment, that the fruit of The Jehovah Witness faith was evident in my dads family showing that there was something wrong with that faith. Indeed many revelations came to me during that car trip about my life and about God.
On an interesting note, while we were driving and I got to the part of my story, of earlier that same day when I had taken the hit, the driver looked over and said to me, "Hold on a second here. Let me get this straight. You're trying to tell me that you only took one hit of marijuana. You don't need to lie to me man."
I responded to him in a defensive tone, "I'm not, I swear, that's all I had."
"Look man," he replied back, "I'm a cab driver, obviously, and this is a pretty heavy party town. I've seen some really messed up people in my time driving here and I've never seen someone as high as you are right now. So maybe you think it was just pot, but I think it must have been something else, or maybe it was laced with something and you didn't know." He did have a point and I realized I really couldn't be sure if there was something mixed in the pot I had smoked. Come to think of it, I couldn't say for sure I knew that about any of the bags I had bought over the years. It all could have been laced for all I knew. But either way it didn't really matter and I continued my story and he continued to listen intently.
As I finished telling my life story, right up until the last word to the cab driver, at that exact moment, we pulled up to the airport entrance. "That is one crazy story," he admitted to me. Then he looked me square in the eyes and continued, "And I’m not really sure what to think of it all. But one thing that I definitely feel is that you really need to get back to Alberta. So I'm gonna come in with you and make sure you're ok."
"But before we go in I need to give you some advice," he continued in a cautioning manner, "When you get in there, you don’t tell anyone what you just told me. You don't talk to anyone, you don't look at anyone, you just sit there and wait patiently for your flight. Because I'll tell you, if you go up to people and start telling them all the stuff you just told me they will realize how high you are and they'll go get security. And there is no way they'll let you get on a plane. Security will come and they’ll probably lock you up or something. However if you sit there quietly by yourself, I think you should be OK and no one should notice."
I looked over at and admitted that what he was saying was true and agreed that they wouldn't let me get on a plane if they new the state of mind I was in. On another note I was also quite astounded at how the driver was looking out for me. I'm really glad that he was. So I took his advice and we got out and went into the airport.
I walked up to the first counter I saw, as I entered through the automatic opening doors, and it was the West Jet counter. I walked up and asked the lady working behind the counter if there were any flights leaving for Edmonton. She quickly looked down at her monitor and replied, "No I'm sorry the last flight to Edmonton left 10 minutes ago. You just missed it."
I was so sure that I was gonna make it back to Edmonton that night though, so I went over to the next counter, the Air Canada one and asked the same thing. The lady there informed me of the same thing and said, "I'm sorry, but the last flight to Edmonton out of this airport was with West Jet. It just left 10 minutes ago. Sorry, but you just missed it." However I was positive that I would somehow make it back to Edmonton that night. So I found a pay phone and called Jen back.
Jen answered the phone and I began to explain the situation to her. "I'm positive that I'm supposed to get back there tonight," I said franticly, "but I just missed the last flight to Edmonton by 10 minutes. What should I do? I'm sure I'm supposed to get back there tonight."
"OK," she responded. "Well, why don't you go see if there's anything that connects to Edmonton or if there is anything remotely close to Edmonton?" I agreed, hung up the phone, and headed back to the Westjet counter and asked the lady behind the counter if there was anything connecting to Edmonton. She informed me that there was not and once again informed me that the last flight out of the airport to Edmonton just left and that I had just missed it.
So I curiously asked, “Well is there anything even remotely close to Edmonton leaving tonight?"
She looked down at her computer screen once again and responded. "Um we have a flight leaving for Calgary in just over an hour. How's that?"
"That's great," I responded thinking in my head that Calgary was fairly close to Edmonton, but still quite a ways away. So before I asked to get a ticket, I went and called Jen back to discuss how I would get to Edmonton from Calgary.
"Do you think your brother would be able to pick my up there?" I asked Jen.
"Um let me call him on my cell and ask him," she responded. I could hear her on the other side of the line talking to him on her cell after she had made the call. "Yeah he can, but it'll take him awhile to get down there, because it is a 3 hour drive. But Russell will also come too"
"That's fine," I said back excidedly, "The flight doesn't leave here for just over an hour and the flight is around 2 hours, so I should arrive around the same time that he arrives. Perfect."
"Yeah I guess so," she remarked. "Well go see if you can get a ticket and come and call me back then." So off back to the counter I floated glad that Jeremy and my other friend Russell were willing to come pick me up in Calgary.
I walked up to the lady once again and asked if there were any seats available for the flight to Calgary. She said, "Just let me check," and proceeded to check her screen and then responded, "Yeah it looks like we can do that for you." So I paid with my credit card and booked the seat. She began printing out the ticket and as it was printing she looked me straight in the eyes and remarked, "Wow you sure are lucky."
"Oh Yeah," I inquired back.
"Yeah," she said in a very caring tone, "This is the last flight leaving out of this place."
Astonished I very joyfully said, "Thank you."
"You're welcome," she said most joyfully herself and she pulled the ticket out of the printer and as she was handing it to me continued, "Have a nice flight home."
Still very astounded I wondered how she knew I was going home. Maybe the cabbie who was still with me had told her, because I never said anything about it to her and yet somehow she just knew. Either way it didn't matter how she knew I had a ticket to get back to Alberta and come home.
After buying the ticket I made my way to the security counter that I had to go through to get into the terminal. This was as far as my new cabbie friend could come so he bided me a good journey, wished me luck, and reminded me not to forget the advice he had given me earlier in the cab.
I thanked him and proceeded through the security counter and they checked me hard. This was only a few months after 9-11, so security at the airport was very tight at the time. I had some nicotine patches in my wallet, because I was trying to quit smoking with little success up to this point. However the point is that nicotine patches have some metal in them and this caused their detector machine to go crazy as my wallet passed through. After showing them the inside of my wallet and the patches and them patting me down all over, they let me pass through into the waiting terminal.
The waiting terminal was one giant glass room with a very high roof and seats lined up all the way up along both sides and rows to walk in between, with gates lining the sides all the way to the other end of the terminal. As I entered the giant room I instantly took note of the music that was playing over their intercom system which was the most peaceful serene instrumental music I had ever, or have ever heard to this day. The only way I could describe it is that it sounded like the music of heaven. It brought a deep feeling of peace and serenity in it melody.
I went and grabbed a seat and began to wait for my flight, which was still over an hour till boarding. As I sat waiting, still extremely high from that one hit I had back at the house, I could hear the voice that had been thrown far from my mind back at the phone booth was now becoming louder and was trying to convince me that I knew people who were also waiting in the terminal. He kept trying to get me to go talk to them, but the words of the cab driver resonated in my mind and I was able to restrain myself from listening to his suggestions. However after sitting for awhile I began to realize how high I still was and I began freaking out a bit thinking someone was surely going to notice. So I made my way over to some phone booths that were over on the right side of the terminal and made some phone calls.
First I called my parents and let them know I was coming back to Alberta, that I loved them both very much, and that everything was going to be OK. After speaking with them for a bit and letting them know the plan to come back I proceeded to call Jen back and started to explain the dilemma.
"I'm starting to freak out a bit here Jen," I said to her, not to paniced, but a bit concerned. "I'm still really high and I'm not sure if I can stay calm. Someone might notice. What should I do?"
"Well," she commented back, "Um I dunno, find some kids or something and just watch them play or something and it'll keep you calm."
I looked around in all directions and there were no kids to be seen so I snapped back at Jen, "There are no kids around here Jen."
"Um OK then," she responded, "Maybe go find a magazine or something with some peaceful images and read it to calm you down."
I looked around once again and saw a small shop back behind me in the terminal that sold magazines, so I said OK, hung up the phone and went over to the magazine rack at the shop." As I looked through the magazines they all stood out as being either about war or sex. Because of 9-11 almost all the magazines had pictures of the two towers falling or Osama Bin Laden. If they didn't have that, then they had some picture of half naked ladies and big headlines about pleasing your sex partner in the sack. Not very peaceful or godly at all. Yet only one magazine on the entire rack stood out to me and it had nothing to do with war or sex. It was a camping magazine and it had nice pictures of beautiful locations for hiking and camping so I bought it and went and sat back down in one of the many rows of chairs the lined each side of the terminal.
I cracked open the camping magazine and began to look at the pictures. Pictures of beautiful natural landscaping and gorgeous mountains filled the pages and I slowly turned from page to page realizing that God had created it all. "Wow, what a magnificent world we live in that God has made for us," I thought to myself. I wondered how I ever denied God existed when all creation screams out his glory. It was so obvious to me now and I could see God in it all.
Eventually I had gone through the entire magazine and had finished looking at the pictures. So I started back at the beginning and began to look through the ads. As I marveled at the ads I realized that almost all the ads in this magazine had something to do with God or gods of some sort. One of the ads was for Snickers bar. It had a picture of the bar half unwrapped in its package with a headline stating, "Surrender to the hunger Gods." I turned the page to another ad for Nike shoes had a list of all the events of the history of The Universe, The Earth, and all since then. It said something like
650,000,000,000 years ago God creates the Universe
350,000,000 years ago God creates The Earth
150,000,000 years ago God creates dinosaurs
35,000 years ago the God causes the ice age to happen
6,000 years ago God creates man
2,1,03 God creates Air Plus ones. The perfect shoe.
Followed beside these captions was a picture of the shoe talked about in front of a mountain.
These ads were quite astounding and I was quite mesmerized that they mostly had to do with God. Because of this I started to think that perhaps God was trying to tell me something through this magazine. Eventually I turned to a page and there was a story that the headline read, "If you want to make it home safely tonight you had better check all your emergency exits." This statement struck me and I began to think God was telling me that perhaps something bad was going to happen and I began having visions of terrorists attacking the airport. I began to become paranoid and agitated and soon my mind was sure an attack could be imminent and that God was warning me through the magazine. So I got up out of my seat and walked around the waiting terminal to see where all the emergency exits were in the terminal.
After walking around the entire room I saw that the closest ones were on the wall to the left of the room. As I sat back down my imagination continued to run wild, at the help of a certain voice now infiltrating my thinking once again. I began to think that the camping magazine meant to head for the distance country side as all the city’s of the world would be nuked and destroyed. Visions of giant mushroom clouds engulfing Edmonton began to fill my thoughts and I became ever so more paranoid. Suddenly I heard a loud noise outside the right of the terminal. It got louder and louder by the second until WAVOOSH something screamed!!! I freaked and thought a bomb was about to go off. Without hesitation I darted for the emergency exit to my left. As I hit the handle on the door, which was a push bar positioned at my waist, an alarm began to go off due the emergency exit being opened up. I continued to hold down the handle for a bit and the door finally propped itself open.
I exited the room and found myself outside on the concrete pad that connected to the runways. As the door closed behind me a realization of what I had just done came into my mind. I quickly got away from the door I had exited from in fear that security would surly be on its way. "Oh no, what have I done," I thought to myself, "I’m screwed," What had I just done? I figured security was surly on their way to see what was going on and that they would recognize how high I was and lock me up or something. Just then I looked down at the magazine in my hand and saw an ad for tiny tools that read "Good things come in small packages, but the best things in life weigh less than two ounces." As I finished reading that I looked over into my other hand and in it was holding my plane ticket. At that I knew I had forgotten what Jen had told me earlier on the phone and that I had lost my focus on getting back to Alberta. It had changed into thinking about Armageddon and survival. But that was not what God had asked me to do earlier in the night. He had simply told me to focus on one thing, getting home, and now I had blown it.
So I began looking for another entry point back into the building. I was sure that I couldn’t go back through the door I had exited from, like I said, for fear of security surly coming to that door to see why the alarm had been triggered. Searching intently for another way back into the building I realized that my efforts were futile and that all the other doors were locked up tight. Then I could hear that still small voice in my heart once again speak and he said, "Just go back in the door you came out of." Although it seemed crazy to me I had no other choice so I walked up to the door and grabbed the handle. The door instantly propped open and I walked through to the inside of the terminal where I had left from. The alarm was now turned off and not one person, as I scanned the entire room, was looking towards the door or me. No security was there and no one seemed to notice that the alarm had just been set off. I went and sat back down in my previous seat in the terminal and began to watch the exit for the surely coming security guards. Only the security never came. After watching the door for about five minutes I heard the gentle voice say to my heart, "I’ve got you covered this time. But don’t let it happen again. Focus on the task at hand. I know you can do this." At that, all I could think about was that God was now just showing off to me. I knew I had walked out that door and I knew the alarm had been set off. It seemed impossible that no one would notice such a thing as an alarm going off in an airport. Especially right after 9-11 when security was very rigid. But blessed am I, because for my God all things are possible.
So I sat in the terminal once again and I saw a mother with her child. A peace once again fell over my mind as I watched the child. This was just what Jen had said earlier on the phone. Now sitting in my chair, with a peace like no other inside of me, I looked at my ticket intently and just began to think of my friends and family back home in Alberta. My mind became focused on what I was supposed to be doing; getting on a plane and getting back home to Edmonton. From that point on, I began repeating to myself, "I have to get back home and see my friends and family. I have to get home to see my friends and family." I repeated this for the rest of my time in the terminal while waiting for my flight which was still about a half hour till boarding.
As the time drew near to my boarding time the voice became louder and more aggressive trying to get back into my mind and get me to listen to him. He tried to make me think I recognized a lady who walked past and said, "Hey you should go talk to her. God has probably put her here to help you." However the cab drivers words rung through my mind warning me not to talk to anyone. So I continued sitting staring at my ticket thinking of how much I loved my friends and family and how much I wanted to come back and see them.
Eventually over the intercom they finally called the flight to Calgary. Flight 730 to Calgary would now begin with its boarding. I walked up and got into the line to board the plane and looked down at my ticket and clearly saw it was said flight 730. I then looked up at the board above the check in desk saw the same number illuminated; Flight 730 - Calgary. As I walked out to board the plane, the voice piped up and was now yelling very loudly into my mind, "NO you’ve read your ticket wrong it’s that plane over there, flight 117. You’ve looked at your ticket wrong." I stared intently at my ticket and saw it said 730, not 117 which was going to Alaska according to the sign in the boarding station next to mine.
So I walked out onto the runway and saw a staircase setup outside leading into the front door of the plane. I went up the steps and onto the plane a flight attendant greeted me and said, "Welcome on flight 730 to Calgary." She then checked my ticket and continued informing me that my seat was just up the isle on the left by the window. "Thank you and enjoy your flight," she finished directing me up the isle.
"Thank you, “I replied. As I walked up the isle I was looking at my ticket to see my seat row and number. ‘Row 7 Seat 6,’ it said. I really had to focus even to simply get in the proper seat, because I was still very high and the voice was continually trying to throw crazy ideas into my mind and get me to listen and follow him again. But now I was strapped in and ready to go. The captain came on the intercom telling us to enjoy our flight with all the usual flight jargon about the length of the flight and stuff like that.
I could hear the voice trying to convince me that I would have to get a parachute and jump off the plane, but I wasn’t going to fall for that again. So I sat back in my seat and tried to relax. I eventually ended up finding a magazine in front of my seat that had an article of a real inspirational story of something terrible that happened to some guy, but how this man had ended up finding his life calling because of it. In the story this man really loved to play hockey and he loved everything about hockey, but he ended up getting into a very bad car crash and ended up losing the use of both his legs. So now he could no longer play hockey. But because he loved hockey so much he ended up, because he couldn't play, writing stories about hockey and he ended up being a very well known Canadian author and finding his life calling. Just a real inspirational story of how something that seems so bad can end up leading to something that is very good.
Eventually we arrived in Calgary and I left the plane and went to the front doors of the airport. A few minutes later my friends Jeremy and Russell pulled up to the door that I was standing at and walked through with a confused look on their faces, embraced me with a hug, and said, "Well let's go." So I left the terminal and got into the car. The second I got into the car and sat down I was stone cold sober. The drug high instantly left as did the voices and all that was left was the high I was feeling from knowing that God was real, that he loved me, and that he had gotten me back home where I knew I was going to be OK. I came back and my new life in knowing Christ had begun. A new life filled with hope, fulfillment, peace, and many more blessings. Praise God both now and forevermore for the loving kindness he has reveiled to me.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Post Script
This was a true story of how I came to have faith in Jesus Christ and believe in God. It was an amazing journey and it changed my life forever. I am so blessed today and love God with all my heart. He is truly amazing and his grace has always got me through whatever I have gone through since coming to him just over 6 years ago now. Please let me know if you have been touched by this story and if you have please pass this web site onto anyone you know that might benefit from reading my story. If you would like to read more about what God is doing in my life currently and my thoughts and views on things, please check out my new blog at
www.jasonpylesnewblogaboutlifeandgod.blogspot.com/
Much peace and God Bless you all.
Sincerely,
Jason P.
www.jasonpylesnewblogaboutlifeandgod.blogspot.com/
Much peace and God Bless you all.
Sincerely,
Jason P.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
