Back in the days when I used to get stoned all the time (it seems like a lifetime away now), I used to suffer from terrible paranoia that left me totally impotent to lift a finger to communicate with, serve or entertain people around me at all. That would just be it; simply two drags on the joint or a single hit from a ‘shottie’ or bong would render me completely useless to anyone (including myself) for at least the next few hours, for I would be totally be involved solely within my own head, with my thoughts slowly racing in the thick of colourful psychedelia, being totally unable to even talk properly with anyone around me. Some people I knew back in those days can look back retrospectively with me now, and upon discussion of who I used to be before God, have even disagreed that I was like this from their point of view; but I can tell you surely that it’s how I felt. I suppose that being a contemplative, quiet non-entity in a room full of chattiness makes people sort of forget you are there, in spite of your physical presence being with them, as they ignoringly just carry on with their conversations without you. They just simply had no idea what was going on within me, because they were expressing themselves in their own sphere of consciousness, and were totally wrapped up in the more interesting action of conversing with others, rather than the introspective in the corner.

This confession of my utter uselessness among my peers was at the same time both the enjoyment and the agony for me of being addicted to marijuana. At times, towards the end of my filthy habit, people would literally be speaking at me, and I would be watching their face intently, them thinking I was hanging on their every word as I grunted a pretend acknowledgement in all the right places (I think); but in honesty, I would be far from listening to them, as not only did it sound like a completely different alien language I couldn’t either speak or understand (yes, they were speaking English), but I would be so mesmerised by the way their lips moved and their eyes were staring at me as they passionately explained something to me, that I simply couldn’t focus on anything else. It was a very strange world that I lived in, and I do not miss it at all! It was even frightening for me at times, for I knew I had crossed a line somewhere, one that was going to be very hard to go back to and find again. It was the lack of control that really scared me, which is in fact something the Holy Spirit has graciously given me back in abundance (self control is one of the fruits of the Spirit, and I’m ever so grateful for it, having been without it many times in my life, as many can attest to).

It would be a fair question for anyone to ask why on earth I continued to smoke pot and experiment with other drugs, when I recognised that I was so messed up in the head like this. Don’t worry, you are not alone; now I’ve enjoyed being sober for so long, I genuinely ask myself the same thing. The answer I’ve come to terms with is two-fold; firstly, simply the feeling of being stoned (when I wasn’t being tormented by paranoia) was a kind of delicious numbing of certain spiritual pains that I had picked up along the way, due to life events like hard break ups, bad drug trips or horrid arguments, and just this deep, nagging sense of ‘lostness’. I confess that I had a very real spiritual emptiness in those days, that needed continual filling with something. This not only drove my incessant weed smoking habit, but also my constant push to study hard to find out what this life is really all about, going deep into hard-to-find (and expensive) esoteric books that I sought out from weird shops in dodgy back alleys, and things like asking tarot cards and deciphering astrological natal charts for the answers I was after, as I introspectively continued to dwell darkly with my own aloneness, usually in a THC fuelled haze of meditation and contemplation.

Having to do normal daily things like earning money had started to become more and more difficult for me in those days, as I was habitually living for the deep of night like a vampire, where evil tends to go more unnoticed, under it’s protective shroud of darkness. Sadly, I was really starting to lose my grip on normal reality at this lowest point of the addiction, mainly because of getting so deeply involved in the occult. I had begun training myself to let go of the conditioned western way I was brought up, and was instead attempting (successfully) to see things from an eastern mystical viewpoint. Because of this, I have to say that towards the end of my life as it was without the teaching and guidance from Jesus, I had begun to earnestly toy with the Buddhist idea that everything I was perceiving with my senses was actually all just ‘in my head’, and that my ‘higher self’/’god’ was breaking into this ‘illusion of physical existence’ to remind me that I’m really the solipsist (google it!), and that everything revolves actually around my consciousness(!), and that I can stop the dreaded reincarnation cycle of samsara by becoming ‘enlightened’ of my spiritual state, if I continued to reject what most people (who were ‘illusions’ of my higher consciousness) considered reality, and therefore fight the existence of desire and physical need with asceticism (I had got deathly thin by then, although I wasn’t nearly as ascetic as I thought I was; I had a picture of a skin and bones Buddha in a lotus position that I aspired to, yet was nowhere near – praise the Lord for His mercy!). 
That I was under a ‘strong delusion’ is rather an understatement, but to be fair, this train of thinking is where new age teaching leads you, if you follow it to its logical end.

The second part of the two fold answer to why I continued to smoke pot, is that I am and always have been a spiritual person. So what? I hear you say. Well, every time I would smoke, without fail, spiritual things happened to me – good, bad and ugly. Listening to music was an incredible experience for me on drugs. For example, in a kind of stirred up ‘rapture’, I would literally feel the emotion of the singer crooning his ghostly melodies, or maybe wrap myself in the riddle of heart-felt lyrics that identified with my own pain, or just simply losing myself into the guitar riffs or driving bass lines, feeding on it like manna from heaven as I ‘broke on through to the other side’. Sometimes I would feel like and creatively imagine that the band were actually in the room with me, and as I fed on their vibes, they were playing out of a kind of ‘boredom with life’ that I also identified with, as we all wanted to go into everlasting ecstasy, yet were being held back by something unexplainable. Other times, I would feel like the ‘sun’ was coming (little darling), and I would excitingly be anticipating something that was spiritually truly wonderful, just around the next corner of moments, as I was perpetually waiting to see the elusive light reveal itself to me. Sometimes when smoking heavily, I would be in a creative mood, and whilst listening to Jimi Hendrix or someone similarly psychedelic, I would automatically write a dark poem from somewhere unknown, deep within my soul, full of strange prophetic imagery and esoteric wisdom; or perhaps I would smoke and draw a prophetic picture of some kind, weirding people out when they came into my room after I had finished and saw it on the wall, making it a spring board conversation point to talk about the deep stuff I was learning at the time.

Still, I couldn’t get away with it much longer; weed was totally destroying me, and I was too involved in it to see my way out of it. It had become a normal thing to go to work simply just to buy a little bit of food, pay my rent and then spend the rest on weed and (sometimes) beer. I would save up to go to festivals, where I would try to let go of all my inhibitions and dance the entire night in a shamanic way, feeding on the strong vibes of the music, having the pleasure of not having to talk to anyone, yet be around people who seemed to be on my wavelength. I say this genuinely (and perhaps offensively to some): what an awful life I lead! And deep down, I knew it, even then. It had now prevented me (who had at one point been quite a sociable man) from being the person I actually wanted to be, which was a giver. With these crazy, esoterically mystical thoughts draining the true life out of me, I had reached the zenith of selfishness, and to a normal person it seemed I was on the no return path to self destruction.

Let me now talk about the actual, positive message of this blog that I wanted to bring to you (I hope I haven’t swamped you with my madness!). Yes, there was a point to me telling you all of that, other than revealing the wickedness of my soul and laying myself vulnerably bare, for your scrutiny.

12.5 years later, I’m a totally different person.

There will be other times through these blogs where I discuss the way Christ broke me out of both my fleshly addictions and my wicked spiritual selfishness. There’s no denying that it was a very hard and humiliating road, and it took a very long time for a sapling of faith to grow from the seed that had been planted carefully in my heart by Him at that life changing psy-trance festival in 2005.

From what others have told me, people who know me now see someone confident in his opinions, who is now unafraid to converse over any topic; someone who seems alert, and switched on to what is happening around him, and who enjoys listening to people closely before giving my own view. Because I feel I can now also see myself better from the outside, according to who I now ‘attempt to be’, I believe that people can see someone who loves to be generous, who loves to entertain and host and take the central life of a party, if need be; someone who takes great pleasure in making people feel comfortable in their surroundings, but who may well have the confidence to challenge them spiritually and create a positive ‘uncomfortableness’, according to their (non-existent?) relationship with God; someone who can hopefully talk to others on any level; someone who genuinely cares and is ready to listen and who tries to help in any way he can.

There are many gifts of the Spirit, but I like to think that the Lord graced me with something I had never had before I knew Him; that is, hospitality. Look it up in 1 Corinthians! It’s a genuine gift from Him, and I believe He has given me it, for I can now do things I could never do before. I remember on several occasions in my school years, being paralysed with fear when my stoned friends would ask me to go up to my parent’s house (I lived separate from the main house as I grew up in my teens) and make them cheese on toast or something. Weed literally crippled me in that way, as I would be tormented with paranoia and anxiety and unable to do it. I was also a complete skin-flint, always blagging money from others and always being very frugal with what I had, mainly so I could afford to get more weed for myself, or get hammered at the weekend. Now, I care not for filthy lucre, as the Lord has shown me how to use it properly and to trust Him for its arrival into my account (I am admittedly still a work in progress, however). I am sometimes still careful with money, but not at the expense of being hospitable and generous, and I now revel in that, whereas before I couldn’t even think of being like that. I have a new lease of life with it, and I praise the Lord for it.

Sometimes my old nature tries to creep back in and taint my new nature with its corruption; like for example, that time recently when I rudely took my flatmate’s washing out of the machine to do my own, without putting his stuff in the dryer and instead just leaving it on the floor for him to find later; unthinkingly selfish, and I regret it. But in spite of slips like that, generally I’ve become WAY better than I was, and the only one who I can thank for it is Christ.

I’m a changing, if not changed man, and I want everyone to know it. I care not for my own reputation any more (not that I had a good one before), for that is worth little to me, unless I’m somehow discrediting Jesus and disgracing His name; yet I would rather glorify Him with a humiliating testimony of my sins and failures like this, that proclaims His transformation power in the lives of others, as well as in my own.

If you are a doubter and you want to see a genuine miracle, let me show you my own redeemed life over the next course of time; that is what my blogging is going to be about, after all.