William Traylor
I’m here to tell my story of how Jesus delivered me from almost 40 years of drugs, lust/porn, cigarette smoking & self-destruction. I began to take drugs, watch porn & smoke cigarettes at the age of 14, I’m 52 now. I was surrounded by these things and exposed to them by my own family although I won’t say it was intentional, that is how it happened and I’m not here to pass judgment because we are all exposed to these things in life one way or another. It seemed cool and I felt like I was part of the in crowd at least with the drugs and smoking.
These things quickly became strongholds in my life and I couldn’t imagine life without them. Little did I know that these things would absolutely destroy my life, little by little, day after day, year after year I was losing myself & strength & ability to see reality clearly. The disturbing part about it was that I didn’t even realize it. I felt normal, like everybody else. But I found meth pretty early on, in fact, the same year I quickly became an addict. It was fun, chopping up lines and the camaraderie I felt, but soon I was doing it all alone and staying up for days, becoming emaciated and grey in complexion. Smoking pot and pretty much doing any drug I could get my hands on became the norm for the next 4 decades. I eventually gave up the meth but replaced it with things that didn’t seem so bad.
I always thought of myself as a “spiritual” person as I became fascinated with new-age and the occult. I read as much of that stuff as I could get my hands on for over 20 years. My drug use continued thru my 20s and 30s and I never really realized how fast life passes by. In my 30’s I started to use drugs to fuel my spiritual experiences. I had many experiences on mushrooms & DMT and the drugs and new age ideologies cultivated a feeling of oneness with the “universe” intermixed with some really hellish trips which I could not figure out why if I was becoming more enlightened. It got so insane that I actually believed I was God and that I tricked myself that I was a human. Of course, I never got any insight into how I actually created the universe and everything in it or connected this idea to any strand of reality but that was what these experiences were leading me to believe along with all the new-age material I was devouring.
I started to study UFOs and really started to go off the rails as I believed they were coming to save us from all the evils of the world and were contacting us to tell us we were all one and that we were Gods. But there were a couple of stories of people having abduction experiences and were absolutely terrified and called out to Jesus and the experience immediately stopped for them. Also, a highly respected UFO researcher/Scholar who was not Christian believed that these experiences were demonic in nature. Then by God’s grace, I was able to notice that these experiences correlated to the first story in the Bible about Satan deceiving humans about being Gods themselves. Another insight was, why would aliens from other dimensions or far-off planets happen to be delivering the exact same messages as the new-agers? Things were starting to fall apart at this point. I began to see many lies about this stuff. And when digging deep into Madam Blavatsky’s books (the founder of the new age) from the 1800s, she was saying her god was Lucifer. Also if Christianity was a myth why did people hate it so much, myself included?
Then I came across The Giants written about in many occult books and that it was written about very briefly in the Bible. Finally by God’s amazing grace I began to read the Bible albeit for all the wrong reasons but I was. Slowly but surely the whole giant story became totally irrelevant as Jesus became the focus. After a few years of reading about Jesus, I began to believe in him. I was still doing drugs, smoking pot, looking at porn, and lusting after women. My love for Jesus grew more and more but I was still sinning. Then a miracle started appearing in my life. The Holy Spirit began to convict me. I started to feel so guilty about how I was living. I remember many nights laying awake high on cocaine feeling absolutely horrible about myself and longing for God’s comfort and to feel some sort of home and real connection to wholesomeness. I began to feel so alone and looked back at how I had chased after all the wrong things in life. I never valued a family or marriage before but now, and I saw what an utter fool I had been all my life. I had nothing to show for my life. This was like waking up in hell, waking up at 50 years of age and having nothing to show for it. No family of my own, to be alone, to be penniless. It is a horrible horrible feeling.
At this point, I wanted to stop it all but had zero self-control to stop myself from doing these things. I had almost 40 years of ingrained habits to deal with. The guilt, shame, and conviction continued by the Holy Spirit and it became unbearable as Jesus’s words about getting into Heaven/not getting into Heaven rang in my heart. I was living in hell NOW and the thought of hell which I had already experienced in a way on my many drug trips was something I couldn’t bear to imagine eternally. Then God gave me a vision of my life living in obedience to him and the light began to shine in my heart, I finally had something to live for. At this point, the desire to do anything drug-wise, lust/porn, alcohol, wasting time watching tv fell away like a dead branch. All glory to Jesus/God because I was incapable of stopping myself and was suicidal. It was all God’s work which is even more mind-blowing to me. I couldn’t save myself, it was all Jesus’s grace.
I am still dealing with the wreckage of my life but am learning that I am a new person in Jesus and his wisdom and sacrifice are something so great and beyond my comprehension, to think of the horrors he suffered so that I could be saved and not be an arrogant, foolish enemy to the God of the Most High is something that brings me to tears whenever I think about it. Oh, how blessed am I to have a Bible that I can pick up and read and have guidance on how I should live my life from now on. Thank You Jesus and God bless anyone who reads this.