scottishbastard

Well, the last few years I've adopted a sort of non-denominational, alternate form of Christian doctrine. I see the bible as a mix of misinterpretations, bias, and metaphors. But within these texts lie some very real truths. The one I want to talk about here is the idea of the Devil and Hell.

In my opinion hell is not a place you can be forever unless you choose to be there. I don't believe it's a part of the afterlife, but a part of human existence. For example, there's two Bad Religion songs "How could hell be any worse?" and "Fuck armageddon - This is hell". I guess that's sort of what I think about it. Look at all the serial killers, starvation, genocide, infantacide, negative eugenics, greed, murder, rape etc. Do you truly believe that anywhere else could be any worse than this? Especially the common depiction of hell. You know...Fire, brimstone, sulphur, worms, torture etc. I couldn't imagine anything worse than the shit that happens here (i.e. Andrea Yates, 9/11, The Holocaust, American Idol etc.).

And as for the devil/satan/lucifer/the dragon/the serpent/the dark angel etc. I truly believe that the devil is not a seperate entity, but is within us in the same way that god is supposidley within us. Haven't you seen other people who seemed "possessed"? Or haven't you ever felt that something you did was downright evil? I know that when I was going through certain aspects of bipolar disorder I believed I WAS the devil.

I started this thread because of a story I remember from a few months ago. In my opinion it was my face to face encounter with Satan itself. So here it is:

I had just quit heroin/benzos/cocaine and was doing pretty well, but my girlfriend was still into it. My mom who had also minorly abused opiates in the past had just gotten a large vicodin prescription. So one night I had a dream where I was living in some sort of converted garage and a friend called me and said he had a friend that was coming into town. This kid shows up and he sort of looked like Macully Culkin (which is weird enough as it is). He pulls out a big box and says "I'm selling peanut m&m's for cheap man. Wanna buy some?" and I was like "No, that's okay".
Then all of a sudden I was outside talking to my mom who was in a car, and I told her I had a little bit of crack and she asked me to teach her how to smoke it. So I reluctantly showed her how to smoke it off of tinfoil.
Then I was back in the garage with a few friends and this Macully Culkin type weirdo. He then starts to ask me if I can hook him up with a dealer and he would smoke me out (with cocaine). I was tempted but said "I can't.". He then asked me one more time, and yet again I was very tempted. But I said "I can't man. I'm sober". And so he stands up and puts on a black poncho with those "day of the dead" skulls on it. Then says "Aaalright" in a hesitant/arrogant kind of way. Then he puts on a black cowboy hat, tips it down so it's partially covering his eyes and says "bye then" and slowly walks out the door sort of looking at me and half smiling.
I woke up scared as fuck. I never wake up scared from dreams, but this one was different than anything I'd had before. It was more than lucid, it was prophetic. I told my girlfriend right then "I just met the devil".

So a few months go's by and I had gotten back on heroin and benzos (no coke though). My girlfriend had some kind of overdose (we think?) and wound up in the hospital in ICU for two weeks. I was scared to death, and felt extremely guilty. Negative energy was surrounding me.
After a couple days in the hospital she came out of her coma and I spent the night there at the hospital. But she kept having seizures and some kind of asthma attack. In the morning she had one more and a team of doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, lab people etc. rushed in the room and decided to put her back into an induced coma.
They said "Now would be a good time for you to go home, get some sleep, eat, get a fix, whatever you need to do, You won't be able to see her anyways".

This sounded very bad to me. I believed that she may die any moment and they didn't want me in the way. Bewildered, I left the hospital and sat out front. I started chain smoking cigarettes, and tried to collect the horrible thoughts and feelings that were eminating from myself and the situation. Guilt, fear, sadness, anxiety all consumed me. Right then a pacific islander looking dude wearing a hospital gown, with a face full of acne and spiked bleached hair came up and asked for a cigarette.
He asked "what are you here for?" and I told him my girlfriend overdosed, and that we were heroin addicts etc.
He said "Do you guys like to get high and fuck? Does that shit make you horny?".
I was totally caught off guard. I was in a moment of hell on earth, and this disgusting thing was asking horribly inappropriate questions (we were at a catholic hospital!).
He said "I'm a tweeker. I like it cause it makes you horny." and "I like to do tweek then get fucked in the ass...Most girls don't like that, but I do...I like getting fucked in the ass with big dicks, Do you have a big dick? I bet you do. You're all tall and skinny. Skinny guys always have big dicks" etc. etc. etc.
Firstly, I was disgusted and shocked by what this mutant was saying, but most importantly he said he was a SHE...I still have no idea if it was or not...But anyways...
He/She starts asking if I wanna go fuck somewhere. And I was like "No, I love my girlfriend." and he/she seemed to sort of understand.
Then a nurse came up and said "So and so...Are you talking about penises again? Don't make me strap you down to the bed again!" and he/she was like "It's okay, I'd like that". And the nurse took it back to it's cage.

As soon as it walked away I got the same cold feeling in my heart that I had right after my dream months before. I realized "This is the same entity that visited me in my dreams". I couldn't explain why I thought this. But I got the same feeling that I had from the "person" in my dream. And I had never had this feeling before, except in that dream.


Another thing was when I was going through a manic phase between the first time I quit (october 08 - when I had the dream) and the last time I quit (March 09) I believed that the devil had either taken me over, or that I was the devil. Soon after I started to see patterns in a sort of John Forbes Nash kind of way. Everything seemed connected. I believed that god had a sort of "ticker" constantly feeding information into my head. I began to connect christian doctrine, zen buddhism, anarchism, animal rights, the 100th monkey theory, the nash equilibrium, quantum physics etc.
In the middle of this my girlfriend's overdose happened and my second encounter with "the devil".

I have since been mentally stable and sober (still smokin' weed though!)...My girlfriend somehow came out of the coma and no one really knows what was wrong. They attributed it to an overdose of soma, xanax, and tylenol 3 but I suspect it was a bloodclotting problem since #1 She had a high tolerance to all those pills and didn't take that many of each and #2 She randomly formed two black eyes that wouldnt go away for weeks shortly before the incident.
But either way, I haven't had such an encounter since.

These two encounters scared the hell out of me. I know that between mental illness and drug addiction there is lots of room to argue that my mind was playing tricks on me, but I'm fairly coherent with my thoughts, even in the middle of mania/psychosis and I truly believe that these were contacts with divine/anti-divine entities.

These experiences also solidified my belief in some sort of higher power.

Just thought this story may be interesting...?:conf used:

__________________


Yeah but you're going to do what you wanna do
No matter what I ask of you
You think you hold the high hand
I've got my doubts
I come from Chino where the asphalt sprouts
.....

And even if I have to go to Claremont
Well I guess I'll just have to go to Claremont
Let me go
Let me lie low

Yeah but you're going to do what you wanna do
No matter what I ask of you
And you send your dark messengers to tempt me
I come from Chino so all your threats are empty

- the mountain goats