Monday, September 17, 2007 at 12:12am
God and LSD
Column: Woman at the Well
There is a ritual among reformed drug users. We come together from time to time and share our stories. Not just the tragic absurdities that helped us find our way into recovery. We tell the fun stories, the wild stories. Among ourselves we admit that there was a reason we used.
We are ashamed to admit it most of the time. We know that drugs have so many dangerous side effects, that LSD, in particular, creates an induced form of schizophrenia from which many people never recover.
But the stories reveal, sometimes, that God can use even a dangerous drug like LSD to draw us forward on our journey. In the '60s many of us were drawn to psychedelics precisely because of these stories of spiritual revelation that our friends were telling.
My second and last experiment with LSD gave me one of those stories to tell.
It was the Fourth of July, 1969, and I was on a date with the only guy I ever dated for his car. He drove a gold Jaguar XKE. I don't remember his name. He took me to a party at his best friend's house. We dropped acid.
The friend's wife had just come home that day from the hospital with a brand-new baby, and the house was teaming with relatives come to see the family newcomer. When the mother discovered that her husband had taken LSD that morning, she was understandably outraged. She locked herself in her bedroom and refused to come out.
The family didn't know what was going on. The husband naturally was having a "bad trip," and my friend was babysitting him. That left me in the living room with confused family, rowdy neighborhood children, sparklers in the yard, considerable chaos everywhere.
Something stronger than the drugs in me took over. I comforted family and neighbors alike. I was able to rise above the drugs in my body for the entire afternoon until my friend took me home and I went into my bedroom to crash.
Alone on the twin bed in my room I had a vision.
My Grandma Hill was there, so real and alive that it was several days before I was able to fully remember that she had been dead for three years. She had come with a circle of women. There were 12 of them. They were all wise and beautiful and independent. Their clothes depicted many cultures, many epochs. They gathered around me to tell me I was one of them. I had a purpose beyond my daily floundering. I needed to find my strength and follow my deeper calling. They made me feel valued, recognized, important.
The experience was so powerful and so real that it was difficult to discount it as just another drug-induced delusion. I had been called to something I did not understand. It would be many years before I found a direction for that calling. But it was only one month later that my life took yet another dramatic turn. I was born again!
(To be continued.)
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Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham
— — —
ReligionAndSpirituality.com is a big tent for all expressions
of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.
All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are
not necessarily shared by ReligionAndSpirituality.com.
We are ashamed to admit it most of the time. We know that drugs have so many dangerous side effects, that LSD, in particular, creates an induced form of schizophrenia from which many people never recover.
But the stories reveal, sometimes, that God can use even a dangerous drug like LSD to draw us forward on our journey. In the '60s many of us were drawn to psychedelics precisely because of these stories of spiritual revelation that our friends were telling.
My second and last experiment with LSD gave me one of those stories to tell.
It was the Fourth of July, 1969, and I was on a date with the only guy I ever dated for his car. He drove a gold Jaguar XKE. I don't remember his name. He took me to a party at his best friend's house. We dropped acid.
The friend's wife had just come home that day from the hospital with a brand-new baby, and the house was teaming with relatives come to see the family newcomer. When the mother discovered that her husband had taken LSD that morning, she was understandably outraged. She locked herself in her bedroom and refused to come out.
The family didn't know what was going on. The husband naturally was having a "bad trip," and my friend was babysitting him. That left me in the living room with confused family, rowdy neighborhood children, sparklers in the yard, considerable chaos everywhere.
Something stronger than the drugs in me took over. I comforted family and neighbors alike. I was able to rise above the drugs in my body for the entire afternoon until my friend took me home and I went into my bedroom to crash.
Alone on the twin bed in my room I had a vision.
My Grandma Hill was there, so real and alive that it was several days before I was able to fully remember that she had been dead for three years. She had come with a circle of women. There were 12 of them. They were all wise and beautiful and independent. Their clothes depicted many cultures, many epochs. They gathered around me to tell me I was one of them. I had a purpose beyond my daily floundering. I needed to find my strength and follow my deeper calling. They made me feel valued, recognized, important.
The experience was so powerful and so real that it was difficult to discount it as just another drug-induced delusion. I had been called to something I did not understand. It would be many years before I found a direction for that calling. But it was only one month later that my life took yet another dramatic turn. I was born again!
(To be continued.)
— — —
Rev. Kristi Denham is pastor of the Congregational Church of Belmont, California (United Church of Christ). Her email address is {email RevKristi@aol.com}RevKristi@aol.com{/email}. © copyright 2007 by Kristi Denham
ReligionAndSpirituality.com is a big tent for all expressions
of faith and spirituality, neither excluding nor favoring any.
All opinions expressed belong to the writer alone, and are
not necessarily shared by ReligionAndSpirituality.com.