Shortly after 7:30 one morning a half a dozen years ago,* I
entered the well-furnished research studio of a medical research
foundation in California conducting experiments with the powerful,
newly discovered psychedelic drug LSD-25. I had prepared for my
$500 session for several weeks by reading the accounts of the
experiences of others before me who had had the all-day medically
supervised, mind-expanding experience. Present with me for my
session was a young male psychologist and a female medical doctor
whom I had met earlier during psychological tests and counseling
interviews. The session room in the clinic was attractively furnished---a
large hi-fi at one end, carpets, couches, and comfortable chairs,
beautiful iridescent curtains, religious paintings and works of
art tastefully arranged. The curtains had been closed and the
lights dimmed to a soft glow.
A small, jewel-studded silver chalice was brought to me a little
before 8:00 a.m. The water inside the chalice contained 500 micrograms
of Sandoz Laboratories acid, plus a large, equally effective dose
of a related hallucinogen, mescaline. I was somewhat fearful and
apprehensive, to say the least, but felt at home in the comfortable
setting of the clinic. I hoped that the all-day session would
help me to know and understand myself more completely, to get
to the root of deeper emotional problems and, at the same time,
to have an all-encompassing religious experience. My curiosity
as a scientist, I suppose, also played a major part in motivating
me towards this research "trip." Within 10 or 20 minutes
after taking the psychedelic agents, I began to notice a wonderful,
dawning sense of euphoria. The music from the hi-fi expanded to
a new kind of "living sound" more beautiful than any
music I'd ever heard before. I could hear all of the percussive
noises of the instruments, the scraping of the bow on the violins,
the mechanical noises of the other instruments, the breathing
and air noises as the vocalists sang, and within the space of
a few minutes, the orchestra had transported itself from the loudspeaker
and now seemed to be totally inside my being somewhere. I was
delighted, amazed, and carried away with the sheer majesty and
beauty of these sounds which were liquid and tinged with colored
lights. I wondered indeed why it is that the ears of man are normally
so hard of hearing.
Looking at the objects around the room, I now perceived that the
ordinarily mild colors had become vivid and intense, and that
the solid objects in the room were haloed with sparkling diamonds-a
mystical crystalline glow which was both beautiful and enchanting.
Closing my eyes I found I could make up my own interior home movies
and fantasies. Vivid colors and swirling lights flowed endlessly
before my eyes and I seemed to be traveling through a vast kingdom
of inner space, a world as fascinating as that of Alice in Wonderland.
Time became strangely elastic and there was a strong sense of
the familiar and the eternal. There was a blending together of
sight, sound, taste, and touch. I became gradually aware that
the middle part of my body was missing, and soon after, my legs
and arms and head and shoulders disappeared also. And then, there
I was, without a body altogether. At the same time I could look
"down inside" the place where "I" had been
and I seemed to see there "in the spirit" cathedrals,
hallways, tunnels, and corridors, gleaming crystalline worlds,
some dark, some light, all deep and mysterious-the vast world
of inner space opened before my spirit eyes. Outwardly, it seemed
as if the walls of the room were now alive, quivering, trembling,
throbbing with energy. I thought I was in a living universe which
was just an extension of "myself." Indeed I could not
tell where my own self stopped and the walls of the room began.
I had no difficulty turning the psychologist into a devil and
the doctor into a witch-I could hallucinate freely the most beautiful
or grotesque fantasies, so convincing I thought I was actually
transforming the world and somehow could play the role of God.
All men, I thought, were waves on a great sea of consciousness.
I understood the sense of cosmic consciousness described by Eastern
mystics.
About mid-morning I was gripped with a sense of fear. I fought
to control myself, which only made matters worse. Suddenly, all
the circuits in my brain went wild, running madly out of control
like the oscillations in an amplifier with positive feedback.
I was caught up into whole universes of insanity. Suddenly everything
was hideous, bizarre, tinny, cheap, plastic, metallic, threatening,
ugly, hellish. I was desperately frightened. It seemed the universe
turned inside and out repeatedly. I was born and reborn and reborn
again, but it all was clearly a return to the past and to forgotten
childhood goblins and nightmares. I was deeply afraid I'd never
return to the real world of real people. These psychotic worlds
of my own construction were lonely worlds, there was no one there
but me, "myself." I thought how lonely hell must be
for the person who says no to love. In the afternoon I looked
at photographs of friends and found they glowed and animated and
"talked" to me. A closed rose bud was handed to me.
I found that by "loving" the rose bud it would unfold
and open before my eyes, but that if I projected "hostile"
feelings towards the rose, it closed and rejected me. This part
of the experience I knew was no hallucination because the open
rose bud was given to me at the end of the session and I was able
to take it home with me that night. It seemed to me the universe,
man as well as nature, had a built-in ability to respond to love.
I was shocked to see what an unloving, hideous man I'd been, destroying
so much that was beautiful in God's world by my pride, selfishness,
and hate.
In the afternoon of my all-day session, I began to be confused.
Confusion marks the aftermath of a drug experience, in spite of
the beauty and delight of the earlier phases. I was deeply disoriented,
wondered who I was, and felt that I'd never be the same. I now
knew major changes in my personality would follow. I suspected,
for the first time, I'd been the victim of some terrible cosmic
lie and had been seduced into a very damaging experience.
In the late afternoon I was taken home, but spent a restless night
unable to sleep while the walls of my house shivered and groaned
and sparkling lights illuminated the room around me. A flash of
ball lightning leapt from a wall socket, paintings on the wall
danced a macabre dance-all the world was still unreal and dreamlike.
I felt very lost in a teeming jungle of spiritual unrealities.
In the four weeks which followed I began to find my one LSD trip
would indeed make permanent changes in my life. Many of the flashbacks
were more severe in some ways than the experience itself. I began
to lose interest in my job and to live increasingly in a haunting,
magical, charming world of dreams and delusions. Wild ideas popped
into my mind---"Take your clothes off and run down the freeway,
"Jump off the roof and learn how to fly-you've always wanted
to fly," or "Go look at the sun." One morning I
obeyed the impulse to look at the sun and so, burned a hole in
my retina. The same afternoon I looked out at the oak tree outside
my patio and observed that it was growing upside-down with the
roots up in the air and the leaves down in the soil. I thought
it was strange I'd never noticed that before. Then I wondered
if perhaps the earth might not be flat and that the illusion of
roundness was only because our eyeballs were curved. I convinced
myself all these events were normal, many insights seemed deeply
spiritual although I learned later they should properly be called
demonic.
In the weeks which followed that single LSD experience I was deeply
confused, had very little emotional stability, and had lost a
great interest in living in the world of people, persons, and
society and social structure. In great fear and anxiety I fled
to my church for help. There my pastor brought me back by prayer
into a living and vital relationship with Jesus Christ, the Lord.
He helped me to see that a person can be spiritually lost, wandering
in a spiritual morass, just as a person can be lost in a jungle
or in the mountains. There is, he said, a material world, and
a spiritual. I had been lost far from God in the demonic realm.
Two weeks' rest, constant prayer and daily Bible study made all
the difference in the world in bringing me back to my senses.
For the next six months I was careful to study the Bible and to
have long talks with God and to pay attention closely to His instructions.
But it was probably a year before I recovered my full emotional
stability and was once again motivated, excited, and energized
about life. Only gradually did I regain a sense of purpose and
identity as a human being. The spiritual pain was at times very
great and I was aware that God's therapy meant radical readjustments
in my unconscious. I appreciate the healing love of God more than
words can tell.
In spite of extensive research, no one knows exactly what LSD
does in the brain at the present time. 500 millionths of a gram
of LSD is a very minute quantity as far as pharmacology is concerned.
The drug itself disappears from the blood stream within a few
minutes after ingestion, but apparently the drug has a catalyzing
effect, stimulating the firing rate of the synapses at the nerve
endings and bringing into service unused areas of the brain so
that the mind is flooded with a wide variety of sensory data and
becomes overwhelmed with sensations from the ears, eyes, taste
buds, and other organs. In addition, the threshold to the unconscious
mind is lowered, so that memory information previously repressed
is brought to the surface. This explains the drug user's ability
to hallucinate, to remember the past, and to dream in the daytime,
as it were. Similar effects can be produced by sensory-deprivation,
i.e., sitting in a totally dark, quiet room for several days.
Fasting or yogi exercises in some cases bring similar results.
In the Bible, the use of drugs can be connected with a seducing
woman, a personification of evil known as "the great harlot."
A connection can be established, I believe, between the seducing,
tempting devices of the great harlot and the fruit of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil in the Book of Genesis. The
Bible says the woman Eve was deceived by the tempter who came
as a shining one, as an angel of great light to deceive her (Genesis
2:15-17; 3:1- 7; I Timothy 2:13,14). She ate of the forbidden
fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which "opened
her eyes" and helped her to understand and perceive the world
in a different way. She brought this forbidden fruit to her husband
and he, too, ate of it and was plunged likewise into darkness
and deception. Adam's response should have been obedience to God
and the observance of the important Biblical principle of faith.
The Bible says, "Without faith it is impossible to please
God." Faith means believing what God has declared to be true
in the scriptures and then acting upon the Bible whether or not
emotions or experiences are in gear. All temptation to sin, then,
comes from the fallen element in our lives. James says, "Every
man is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin and sin when
it is full grown brings forth death" James 1:13-15.
In the New Testament the widespread use of drugs can he directly
connected with the breakdown of society, with the increasing number
of divorces and the communication barriers between teenagers and
parents, and especially with the lack of warm, fatherly love in
our society. When a nation or society becomes spiritually bankrupt,
the crime rate rises, sexual immorality increases, and drug use
becomes more extensive (Nahum 3:4). Because many adults today
are not spiritually deep or sensitive to God, young people are
presented with very little else other than the mediocrity of living
in the Establishment. The harlot who seduces the young with her
drugs, charms, and enchantments is, in the Bible, associated with
the rejection of the authority of God in the home and family unit.
There is much that is appealing and exciting in the adventure
of a drug experience. Yet the end result is disaster, chaos, confusion,
and very often, neurosis or psychosis, and sometimes the permanent
crippling or damaging of the mind. Although medicine has not yet
established conclusively either the genetic or brain damage from
the use of LSD, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually
drug experiences are extremely dangerous and harmful. In addition
to the emotional damage to the psyche, drug experiences can open
the mind spiritually to seducing and deceiving spirits. A person
who persistently uses psychedelic drugs, even marijuana, can become
demon possessed, and tragically imprisoned by the forces of darkness
and evil, often without realizing consciously what is happening.
In the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, for example,
there are now witches, warlocks, and sorcerers who take their
astrology, spiritism, and metaphysics seriously (see Isaiah 47).
Jesus spoke of the devil as "the father of liars and a murderer
from the beginning." The aim of Satan is to destroy human
beings whom God loves and for whom Jesus Christ died and gave
Himself. He warps, distorts, confuses, and destroys the mind,
emotions, and will whenever possible. He is called in the scriptures
"the god of this world" and "the prince of the
power of the air."
In John 14:6 Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and
the life. No one comes to the Father but by me." In the modern
vernacular, we might quote Jesus as saying, "I am the trip."
A "trip" with Jesus Christ is a permanent trip. It is
orderly, controlled by His Holy Spirit, and yet exciting, adventuresome,
and fulfilling without all the chaos, frustration, and loneliness
which characterizes a drug experience. It is quite correct to
describe a typical drug experience as an ego trip, as a self-centered
experience. In contrast, God is self- giving love. Drug experiences
lead to a distorted view of the world which is called pantheism.
A pantheist believes that everyone is God, that God is everything,
therefore there is in pantheism no distinction between good and
evil. If I were to kill you, this would be God killing God and
there is no "wrong" to this to a pantheist. According
to the pantheist, all of our lives are just waves on a sea of
consciousness. But this view of life is not consistent with the
Bible. In the Bible, God is always shown to be holy, loving, just,
and transcendent-that is, higher and greater than the world which
He has created. He longs for us to be in partnership with Him
and a partnership between man and God is possible only when men
are truly born again (John 3) and receive Jesus Christ into their
hearts by faith (John 1:12).
While many churches today are not communicating the abundant,
full, rich, and exciting life which Jesus Christ offers, this
life is available directly and personally to any individual from
God. Anyone seeking an alternative to drugs should check out the
claims of Jesus of Nazareth and avail himself of the real exciting
life which drugs counterfeit. New Testament Christianity is something
which is to be shared in small groups meeting together to love,
pray, and study the Bible in the presence of Jesus Christ Himself.
Christians are definitely not called to take ego-trips with God,
but to live responsibly in society in close relationships with
one another. The use of drugs in the Bible can be studied by looking
up references to the word "sorcery." In the New Testament
the word translated "sorcery" is, in Greek, "pharmakeia"
which means "the mystical enchantments and charms of drugs."
Sorcery is one of the works of the flesh in Galatians, chapter
5. That is, the misuse of drugs is, like premarital sex or murder
or drunkenness, a symptom of man's estrangement and alienation
from God. The Bible says, "All have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God." So then the cure to the problem of
drugs is not entirely a question of passing laws and regulations
against the use of drugs or persuading people to stop taking drugs,
though laws are valuable in society.
Nor does religion alone solve the problem of man's alienation
from God. The many religions of the world are man's best efforts
to find God. In fact, the very word "religion" comes
from the Latin "re" and "legio" meaning "to
bind back again." In rituals and ceremonies of the world
we have man's best attempts to find the ground of his being and
to seek his Creator.
In sharp contrast, the God of the Bible has come down to find
man, in the person of Jesus Christ. He fulfills a man within the
context of his culture, family, and community. Jesus said, "The
son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost."
When He died on the cross for you and me, Jesus Christ identified
Himself fully with every individual member of the human race.
In compassion, tenderness, sensitivity, and human concern, He
gave his life in exchange for ours. The Bible says, "He who
was without sin was made to be sin for us so that we might become
the righteousness of God in him." The New Testament says,
"There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the
man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all." Jesus
said, "No one knows the Father except the Son and whoever
the Son chooses to reveal himself to." He goes on to say,
"Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am
gentle and lowly at heart and you will find rest for your souls."
It is therefore important to receive Jesus Christ by a personal
decision and choice of the will. "Behold, I stand at the
door and knock," Jesus said, "if any man opens the door
I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me" (Revelation
3:20). Receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Master begins the Christian
experience. But this initial commitment to God must be characterized
by continuing steps of faith on the part of every convert. Christians
need one another and every child of God should seek the companionship
and fellowship of other Christians and find a good, New Testament
church where he can worship and be taught the scriptures.
It is very important to learn to talk to God about all one's problems
in prayer and to bring Him into every area of our lives, especially
into the mind, emotions, and daily life. Christians find they
must soak, steep, and saturate themselves in the spiritual food
of the Word of God if they are to live above stress, anxiety and
defeat in the world. Jesus said, "If you continue in my word,
you will be my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth
will make you free." The Psalmist records, "Thy word
have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee."
God told Joshua "No man shall be able to stand before you
all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with
you. I will not fail you nor forsake you. Be strong and of good
courage for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which
I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very
courageous, being careful to do according to all the law which
Moses, my servant, commanded you. Turn not from it to the right
hand nor to the left, that you may have good success wherever
you go. This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth,
but you shall meditate on it day and night that you may be careful
to do according to all that is written in it for then you shall
make your way prosperous and then you shall have good success.
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Be not
frightened, neither be dismayed for the Lord your God is with
you wherever you go."
God does come into our lives permanently to stay with us. But
He wants us to obey Him and to follow Him, to know the scriptures
thoroughly so that we understand what He is like and what He is
doing in history. He encourages us not to rely upon our feelings
and emotions, which are never a good barometer of spiritual life,
but to understand that faith means acting and believing upon what
the scriptures declare to be true in spite of circumstances and
pressures from the world. A glorious and permanent future awaits
all those who belong to Jesus Christ but the root of spiritual
problems behind the chimerical allure of the drug scene leads
to chaos, emptiness, death, and destruction (Proverbs 7:27). Jesus
Christ will prove Himself strong, adequate, and satisfying to
every one who entrusts their lives into His hands. He is the most
qualified of all men who have ever lived to be both Your Trip
and your Guide. Why accept a substitute?
* (in early 1963)
Addendum
The following account summarizes the experiences of a long-term Christian friend of mine:
Years ago, when I was a reckless young man, I was able to obtain LSD from a Swiss laboratory. I think it was the Sandoz company but I am not certain. Through a friend, I traded a half of a kilo of Mexican marijuana for what was probably the first black market LSD available in San Francisco. Stanford Research Institute (SRI) had been experimenting with various kinds of consciousness altering drugs for a couple of years but they did not allow outsiders to participate. Actually I arrogantly thought I could handle any drug experience on my own. I had been taking Peyote about once a week for more than two years. I felt my experience with the cactus prepared me for using LSD. I had also experimented with all sorts of other psychedelic drugs and had read many articles written by other astronauts of the innerspaces. Besides, I didn't want to be part of SRI's research. I wanted to take LSD in a setting of my own choosing rather than in circumstances like a laboratory rat might endure.
The Sandoz representative was so pleased with the marijuana that he not only traded me a quantity of LSD capsules but also gave me a small supply of liquid LSD. Both came in labeled sterile vials. I thought there was a measure of safety in knowing what dose I was taking. What I did not anticipate was how remarkably different LSD was from other drugs.
During my years of searching I had gained a rule of thumb to judge the drug experiences that other travelers told me about. If one was glad the substance was wearing off then it probably wasn't a very good thing to try. However, if one felt a gentle sadness that it was over, then it was something I might try. Most of the time, I found this to be a good navigational tool.
Anyone who takes LSD will know at once that it is very different than any other therapeutic agent. It took about a half an hour to slowly notice its usual onset. However, LSD is remarkably unpredictable. The effects are both scary and beautiful, things happen both instantaneously and take forever. Time is out of joint. Sometimes I immediately accelerated to what seemed like the speed of light. LSD might reach our receptor sites through the cell walls rather than through the blood stream. The effect can be so rapid that there simply isn't time for the substance to reach the brain through one's circulatory system.
On some occasions, it seemed to come on very slowly at other times, time itself seems to disappear or have no meaning.
The experience can begin with the sound around you accelerating to a scary, extremely high but not unpleasant pitch. Or music may sound v-e-r-y s-l-o-w and its pitch altered. It is odd to feel so very frightened and yet so good at the same time. Sometimes my body would disappear from my concerns and all that remained was what I would call the essential 'Me.' I felt clear headed and not at all intoxicated, once the walls melted away and around me were translucent plains of color that moved through me as I moved through them. I stayed there forever because I had no control over what was happening. After an eternity or two I began to experience a gentle sadness as it began to wear off. There is a lot more I could write about me and LSD but this should be enough to assure you that I know a little about this drug. The most lasting effect was that I came away from my experiments outside of time with a new outlook on spiritual matters and a growing concern about my life and death.
Like you, I experienced mood changes but they were not disconnected from my life. My conscious seemed to have gotten very sensitive and the mess my life was in was really bothering me a lot more than it did before I took the drug. Back in those days I had an eastern sort idea of the "self. " I thought that somewhere in me was the true "me," a glowing, beautiful being who lived in the castle of my "self." What I found instead was a rat scurrying through the dungeon of my soul. The Holy Spirit showed me the poverty of my soul too. But as He revealed my sinfulness to me, He wiped away the tears of my sorrow. LSD can be brutal.
Please allow me to give you a hard won word of caution. We are easily deceived and there really is a spiritual realm. However, not all spirits are good. I have learned from the Bible that Christians should test the spirits. The Apostle John wrote, "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world." (1 John 4:2-3).
The evil ones are called the accusers of the brethren because they hold our faults and sins before our noses and tell us God will never accept us. They are lying spirits, your new self is without sin. You will not be able to see your new self except as it is reflected back to you in the Word of God, the Bible. The Bible says I am a new creature, God is transforming from me from the glory that I am and was newly born in, into the even more glorious person I'm becoming. Zowie!
I have gone into what ever place it is that psychedelic substances open up both with and without the protection of this simple test. It is most enlightening to test the spirits. If you ever take LSD again and I hope you don't, ask some of those entities you encounter if they can acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus. Ask this simple question, 'Can you say, "Jesus is Lord?"' You will be very surprised by the results, I certainly was.
A few months before one of my LSD experiences (there were many), I began to read the New Testament and fell in love with Jesus. I recognized right away that His morals were very differently than mine. My family wasn't religious, they didn't go to any kind of church. My father believed that a man ought to mind his own business and considered religion to be one of the subjects one should keep to one's self. Reading the Gospels was my first encounter with Jesus. I had no intention of ever going to church. Eventually, I saw my need for the companionship of other Christians, so my wife and I started going to a nearby church. It was very disappointing and nothing at all like what I had read in the Bible. Those were sad days.
Eventually we found a church we loved. At this church they teach the Bible as a part of the worship of God. On Sundays they meet together and sing a few songs, make a few announcements and spend the rest of the time learning what is actually written in a particular book of the Bible. Their rule of thumb is to learn and believe what the original Apostles believed. The people are in the process of discovering their own spiritual gifts so they can minister to each other until every person becomes mature in Christ. The church has no membership, there is nothing to join and when we first came, they welcomed us as equals, not as junior Christians. (added June 12, 2001).
One Reader's Comment: When I fully consider all that happened to me with LSD I have to say it was not all good. Taking the drug may have caused interesting colours or thoughts and dreams but none of it really contributed to a better life. In the sixties and seventies many of my friends were taking drugs and looking back I can think of no real positive or happy time that was had with them that could not have been even better without them. If I am honest it destroyed relationships, affected work and a few of my friends died of drugs. The problem is that mild drugs usually lead to other hard drugs. A relatively harmless smoke of pot can lead to harder experimentation. When I consider my life today I can say I am much more stable and creative with no drugs or alcohol. As an artist I know that it is possible to free the mind in creative play without drugs. It would be impossible I think to paint on alcohol or drugs. Present day culture is largely in the west ugly, aggressive and negative. In music and art we hear and see awful and evil things. Most of this art has been created by some relationship with mind altering drugs or the worlds they have opened up. Black magic, witches, crime celebrated, violence a pastime, other dimensions and all the unreal and unproductive clutter of perversion.Yes it is devilish. This imprinting from modern culture on the minds of children and youth has created the violence, apathy and alienation we are experiencing today. We must say no to drugs in our own lives. We must urge young people to stop the use of drugs and do all we can to halt the big business behind drugs. We are living in a "failed culture" which feeds off drugs. I hope I have this time explained my whole position on the drug issue. Drugs may have been useful to a few but they are also destructive and the increasing use of drugs in our culture will bring unhappiness and disaster. I am now spending more of my time in Asia due to the failed culture of the UK which is full of drugs and drinking. In Asia you can see that less drugs and milder media has not affected the youth as yet. (5/05/08)
A Postscript from an Old Friend, January 2010
I'm a member of Lambert's support team. He occasionally forwards a message to us for 2nd opinions or just some input from a different viewpoint. We're all active and retired professionals, pastors, teachers, counselors, a chemist, a linguist...etc.
A couple of us went through the hippy daze of LSD and all the associated philosophies that surrounded it. I am one, and I can tell you that God had to save me from a lot of confusion. He had to completely redo my brain so that I could think again. I credit reading the Bible and the healing work of the Holy Spirit for pulling me out of the miry clay and a life of complete pain. I am now a published linguist and a university professor, a far cry from the totally lost dude I was--plus, I was in what they called "acid" rock band back in the day, went to the Rolling Stones concert in Altamont... But, you would be seriously misled if you thought that those were good times. They weren't. They were accompanied by intense guilt and confusion.
I'm sure you know from Lambert's article that psychedelics can permanently influence your thinking from the first trip. Ecstacy is by far the worst, though. The different types of heroin and the opiates are physically addicting, and even marijuana can cause far-reaching problems. I imagine there are true medicinal applications of marijuana, especially for terminally ill cancer patients, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that it is not the innocuous substitute for alcohol that culture promotes. Just look at cultures that have adopted it and condoned its use. Would you like to live in India or in Colombia? The feeling you get, however, is a clear substitute for the kind of happiness and joy that people get naturally from a walk with Jesus. There is no substitute for the Real Thing, and no matter how logical some of these lies may seem, there is no substitute for living life according to God's truth. He made laws; when you break them, you pay a price.
As far as getting closer to God, goes, LSD causes a temporary psychosis. It alters all your senses so that sounds become blue, and colors become beings. It totally takes control of your consciousness and it can last for days. The hallucinations don't usually last that long, but even that can vary widely. It might be a little like going through the DTs (delirium tremors) associated with alcoholism. Fears become incredibly large, but so do other emotions. But the key thing is how vulnerable you become to thoughts, and, yes, spiritual things. However, you have NO discernment. You could be inviting demons into your thoughts.
In the 60s and 70s, lots of folks dropped acid while meditating on Buddha or the many gods of Hinduism. This is a very serious topic, and if you'd like to go there, I would be more than happy to explain. I've done some serious work in comparative religions, and I'm not just trying to scare you with some kind of biased report of other "religions." Jesus himself said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father except through me." So, every other religion simply starts out by calling Jesus a liar. Or, they create a fictious Jesus that fits a completely nonbiblical view--a space Jesus like in the Book of Urantia. The lies have a long history, and they are persistent. They come around and around. Believe me, they are attractive, and if you've read your Bible, you know that Satan and his agents appear as angels of light. They ensnare you with tempations that are beautiful to look at and feel, sensual temptations (of the flesh). But, as the Bible says, "There is a way that seems right to a man, the end of which is death and destruction." Read the first three chapters of Proverbs, and you'll get the principle.
The truly sad and unfortunate part of this history of mine is that we laugh about how stupid we were. But, if you are as intelligent as you seem, you should know that you don't have to stick your finger in a light socket to know that it will hurt. Drugs are extraordinarily unpredictable. You could try it one time, with the idea that you just want to see what it's like. And, ten years from now, you wake up with AIDS in a hospice somewhere. IT IS NOT WORTH IT. I am extremely fortunate that Jesus intervened in my life. I had given up, and it was suicide or Jesus. Jesus made the choice so clear that even a blockhead like me could see it. I will be eternally grateful.
E-mail me with questions or whatever, if you'd like. --Fred Field (fredfield@earthlink.net)
Fred, wow thank you so much. I know exactly what you mean when you say suicide or Jesus, I just crossed that threshold. Just in a matter of a few days God has changed everything about my life. I had smoked marijuana for over a year, I loved God before I started smoking it and I just wanted to understand why marijuana was in this world and if God had created it and if I could really know Him through it, its only recently that God reminded me of the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, that yes God did create everything, but some fruits He does not want us to consume. In the beginning smoking marijuana was really nice, I would worship Him in my room while high and at that time I thought it made my life so much better, but after a few months or so I lost hold of what was really important, HIM. But I never stopped loving Him deep in my heart but after months and months it was no longer me getting high and worshipping Him, it was just me getting high until I had dug this huge hole that I never thought I'd get out of and I was like this estranged son to my Heavenly Father. Then just maybe a week ago I just started praying very honestly, and telling Him about my feelings and fears, I was feeling so guilty for smoking pot because I knew He wanted me to stop, that He wanted so much more for me and for those around me, but I just couldn't change my life on my own, I tried, but I couldn't, I needed His help, I kept going back and back to my old habits. I kept getting signs to repent and finally I couldn't wait for a day that I was "perfect" because thats what I would do, if I ate horrible one day I would smoke too and drink, why not right? after all in my mind that would be the last day I would do those things, so why not go all out. (which is a horrible way to live life by the way) Finally, I just was so desperate I would just talk to Him and I just asked Him to change everything and to save me even when I was high. The other night I tried Ecstacy and I put my ipod on and was worshipping and its so unorthodox, I know it is, but it proves the love of God, He baptized me in his Holy Spirit that night and I started speaking in tongues, something I've wanted for years and years, but it never happened, and now I'm still speaking in tongues and everything, wow, everything is different. And the message I got from that is why wait? Why wait to come to the Lord? Let Him change us and wash our feet, even in our sin, even in my sin, He came and met me and picked me up and wiped me off and said you are mine, mine, mine, ALL MINE! so yes please send me another email, I am very interested in what you have to say. Bless you! (in the name of Jesus :) ) --Jonathan
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