The Michael Knowles Show - Michael & Shocking Psychedelic Stories: "The Light Beings Held Me Down" | Joshua Zatkoff

Episode Date: April 15, 2023

A former Psychedelic user and drug addict shares his shocking experiences seeing beyond the veil.  Joshua Zatkoff addresses the many questions circulating around DMT, magic mushrooms, and other popularized drugs and shares how his life was changed forever after he found Jesus.  Click here to join the member exclusive portion of my show: https://utm.io/ueSEl - - -  DailyWire+: Become a DailyWire+ member to gain access to movies, shows, documentaries, and more: https://bit.ly/3jJQBQ7  Pre-order your Jeremy's Chocolate here: https://bit.ly/3EQeVag Shop all Jeremy’s Razors products here: https://bit.ly/3xuFD43  Get your Michael Knowles merch here: https://bit.ly/3X6tlKY   - - -  Socials: Follow on Twitter: https://bit.ly/3RwKpq6  Follow on Instagram: https://bit.ly/3BqZLXA  Follow on Facebook: https://bit.ly/3eEmwyg  Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3L273Ek Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold, I'm juicy. Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me, and baby, I'm a whole meal.

And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley 362326, participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. Pss, it's mushrooms with Maddie Matheson.

Let me tell you the secret of how to look like you know what you're doing. Use mushrooms, toss them in eggs, noodles, boom, it's delicious, it's not magic, it's mushrooms. Hit up mushroomcounsel.com and get cooking. I started getting into DMT where I was having encounters with light beings. What did you think the light beings work? With acid and mushrooms, you don't typically, at least I never had visuals. With the DMT, this was like full. on, like you're seeing a whole world just crack open in front of you.

What would they tell you? These three beings come in my room, and another one came in and it was dragging my body. And they told me, if you don't stop doing heroin, this is you. As society continues to get crazier and crazier, one theory I have to explain some of the craziness is that everybody is on drugs. Everybody is on prescription drugs, psychiatric drugs, the legalization of marijuana, Specifically, hallucinogenic drugs. Hallucinogenic drug use has increased dramatically in recent years.

LSD use is up something like 400% over the last 20 or so years. Psychedelics more broadly up significantly. And for all of my sins and degeneracy that I've engaged in in my whole life, drugs has never really been one of them. So I decided to bring on an expert on drug use and how to get a good. off of drug use, that would be Josh Zatkoff. Josh, how you doing? Thank you for coming on the show.

Yeah, thank you for having me. Before we started, I said, Josh, how would you like me to introduce you? And you said, I don't know, Josh. You now have really turned your life around. You are an evangelist. You, but you've had a rough past. Homelessness, jail time, and drugs. Correct.

Yeah. So the reason I want to find out about all this is not so that I can scold people and say, just say no, like Nancy Reagan. I guess I do kind of want to do that. But I want to know more about it. I want to know why people are so interested in drugs and specifically in these psychedelic drugs. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely an interesting topic.

And I think it's because people are all in a search for something. You know, we're all searching for the more to life. I think for me, personally, it started off with curiosity. You know, for me, I remember being like 11, 12, and seeing the comedy movies, and, you know, they're smoking weed in there and stuff like that. And so you see that and you're like, I want to try that. It's being glorified. The cool people are doing it. And so for me, it started out just like that.

And then once I was a curious child, so once I had encountered somebody that had access to that, it was natural. for me to want to try it. And so when I did, it gave me a new taste of a different reality. It felt like it was the missing piece to my life that I, you know what I'm saying? Because when I was younger, I started feeling that desolation in my mind or that, you know, that weight of oppression kind of coming on me. And I didn't even know what it was. You know what I mean? I started to feel depressed and stuff before I. You started to feel depressed after you started using drugs or before you started using it? know before. But I didn't have like the language for it. I didn't know that I was depressed. I just

thought I was feeling, you know, sad or something. But it seemed to take like a darker turn as far as like, I don't feel like all my other friends are dealing with this. You know, that's kind of how it started to feel. So it didn't just feel like, you know, 13 year olds are angsty and you're saying, are you saying now, in hindsight, even, what I was dealing with was in fact heavier or just that it felt heavier. Looking back, I know it was heavier. You know, because so like when I, like, as a young kid, even like seven, eight, I would like scratch my face to a bled. Like, I had anger issues. Like, I had all these self-harm, so, you know, like, that stuff was there as a little seven, eight-year-old. You know, and my mom has, has little, you know, writings or whatever diaries she kept for me. And one of the,

one of her entries was saying how, you know, she came home from the babysitters and I was chasing with a butcher knife, you know, like at seven, eight years old. And I think I was, she's like, you were just being silly. But just, yeah, yeah, you know, and so it's like, but that stuff looking back was like, it was there. It was blatantly in front of everybody's face, but like, how do you deal with that? I definitely didn't know it wasn't normal, though, because I'm not living with other kids, you know what I mean? And it's not like I had a bad childhood. I had great parents, great family, all that. Were your parents married? Yeah, yeah. And so what do you attribute that to? Was it mental illness? Was it a spiritual condition? Was it an accident? No, it's definitely mental illness,

but I believe mental illness, most of it, a lot of it is spiritual. That's my take on it. I think a lot of it's spiritual. And so when I look, because it's always producing something negative. For the most part, people that deal with mental illnesses, whatever variety of it, it always, you know, produces something negative. It's never something good or, you know, like, that does something good for the world, it causes chaos and stuff. And so when I smoked weed for the first time, it was like everything fit together and was like, oh, this is what I, this is what I needed. And so it was just, like, right off the bat, it was like, oh, this is what I want to do in my life. And I tried to, you know, that's kind of, that was my first, it was a romance. It was, you know,

it was like love at first sight or something, you know. And so I became obsessed with marijuana because it made me feel like I was a better version of myself. Why marijuana instead of booze? I like tobacco and I like alcohol. And thankfully, I haven't, for all my problems, that has not been one. I've never really felt addicted to those kinds of things. But I like them. You know, I mean, I like a cigar and I like a drink,

whereas I don't really like the old devil's lettuce, which I've smoked on occasion. And that never really grabbed me, but it did grab you. Yeah. No, I think it might just be a personal preference. I didn't like alcohol because I didn't like how it tasted. I think the first time I drank, I was maybe 13, and I remember I had a group of friends. And it was just, it tasted nasty.

And then I was like, man, you know, smoking, it's quick. It's like, you know, within a couple seconds. But drinking, I'm like, I'm sitting here and drink all this stuff and to feel, you know, because I just wanted to feel drunk. Yeah. And so I didn't like it because I never liked feeling like, sloppy and like so obvious. Weed made me feel like it was a more nonchalant kind of thing.

So I think that's why I was just a personal preference. So so far we've covered all the drugs that I have any familiarity with. When I was a kid, I told you, drugs didn't really attract me at all. With one exception, I was curious about LSD and mushrooms and people now today are always talking about ayahuasca and all these. The psychedelics interested me, and I never did them. I kind of had a little bit of a fear of them, because I was told, when you do it, your brain is never the same.

It kind of rewires you. And I thought, well, I don't know, I kind of rely on my brain. So I don't know that I want to rewire it. But I was curious about it. I said, what could I see if I took these drugs? So when did you graduate to those kinds of drugs? So when I got into high school, about 14, you know, I saw the movie, the movie, the,

Doors, Jim Morrison with Val Kilmer. And man, I never felt like I related to somebody so much. Like, when I was watching him, I felt like I was watching the person I wanted to be or something in that movie. So much of me connected with it. And so he was doing peyote and acid and stuff in the movie. And so at some point in high school, I had a friend have acid. And I did it.

And it wasn't like, I didn't take enough, I don't think. Nothing really happened, but I felt kind of just different. but nothing really happened. And then a few months later, or probably the next year, I think, it was like 10th, my sophomore year high school, I had mushrooms. And so the mushrooms, I was sitting in somebody's car, and it was like weed all over again. It was just a whole new reality.

And I spent like three hours, you know, back in the day, it was like the CD players had the little pictures on them, like you could pop them in and out. And for three hours I was just sitting there staring at that. You know, like that, like, it just got me entrenched into this, like, this new reality. And I'm like, look up and I'm with my friend. And it's like, dude, we've been doing this for four hours having the time of our life. It was just, it was just so intense.

I had this experience of just feeling like there was, like the universe was alive. Like, I felt connected to the things that were around me. I felt like I was connected to life in a different way. And I started thinking different. I got more, I guess, deep in my thought. I started just kind of becoming more philosophical and, you know, my approach to just how I was viewing things in my perspective. And so it was like, how is it different in that I go through my daily life? I feel that the world is teeming with life.

I mean, I feel connected. All the things you're describing, I feel that in my ordinary day-to-day life. You describe the sense of going deeper or thinking more philosophically. And I don't, so I don't have experience of the mushrooms, but I think I read a book and I think more philosophically, where I look at a work of art. So what was different about all of that on the mushrooms? I don't know if I could say exactly. It was more of it slowed everything down and made me more. Like, it was like, oh, look at this water.

Like, and you notice every little bubble. It just, like, made you so appreciative of the moment. It pulled me into the moment in such a way where I appreciated things I never appreciated before. And then there was this feeling of just joy. Like, I couldn't stop laughing. I mean, I was laughing the whole time, and I had the time of my life. And so it just, at that point, I was hooked.

Like, it was like, I can't wait to ever do this again. And then what happened was I actually went to a rehab, not like a month after that. I went away for a year in a rehab. And in that rehab, I got into Buddhism. And so when I started to read about Buddhism and Taoism and stuff and started to meditate, I started to notice that the ideology behind it was lining up with the ideology I was kind of having on the mushrooms. So it was like this, you know, there was this dynamic between them that started to kind of cross. Many such cases, by the way.

My friends who have gotten into shrooms and acid and stuff, they have gone down that sort of Buddhist, Taoist, Eastern mystical route. So you end up in the rehab. Was it a family member or something sent you there? Yeah, my parents, because my mom, you know, she, on her side of the family, there was a lot of addiction. My dad's side of the family that had alcoholism.

So they were just being good parents. You know, they see their kid falling down that hole. So they were just trying to help, you know. Right. But the thing is, is I was, you know, I was 15. And when you were 15, you think you know everything. You don't want help. In my mind, I'm like, I'm just smoking weed.

I try to ecstasy pill or something. A couple of things. But in my mind, everyone else I was with was doing the same stuff. So I didn't think it was, you know, absurd or anything. And so when I went to the rehab, I had gotten into Buddhism. And while I was there, I think because I didn't have family and because I didn't have, I'm just with a bunch of kids from all over the country that I don't know,

the place got shut down for child abuse. It's like I'm with, you know, wacko people leading it. And I think I felt like I didn't, I only had myself. It was like the first time my life, it was like, you're on your own kind of thing. You know, that's how it felt was like all you have is yourself to rely on. And so Buddhism kind of, it taught me, I guess, how to kind of be strong within myself. And it taught me the power of like what was within me. And it taught, you know what I mean?

And so I just took to it and I got addicted to it, you know, because I was. I was on ADHD medicine at the time. And so that gives you hyper focus and all that. And so I just, there was nothing else to do. I'm stuck in this place for a year. And so that's all I did. I started meditating and reading books. And you found that there was a commonality

in the perspective on the world. Did you find there was a common effect? Did you get the same sort of high by meditating in this Buddhist manner? I wouldn't say to that extreme or to that extent. But I started meditating and I started having moments where I would get something that would remind me of it. And I'll give you an example.

Like there would be moments where I would feel like I would start kind of vibrating or something. Or I would just feel like this divine connection that reminded me of when I was on the mushroom. So it was like these moments of it. But the difference was like I felt like I had to work for it. So with the mushrooms, like you take this and you stay there. You rest there.

But with the Buddhism, it was like, you're doing this stuff. I'm meditating to get to that place and then try to stay there. So what you're describing sounds generally pleasant. I don't know that it sounds like an ultimate triumph for joy or victory, but at least it sounds kind of pleasant. You're just vibing, you know, feeling with the universe, man. And so how's it go wrong? Oh, man.

Well, so that's kind of a, I mean, that's a long story. We're talking like a decade of journey to find that out. So after the rehab, when I came home, I got my first legal trouble. So when I got in my first legal trouble, I was 16, I got put on probation. I wouldn't stop smoking weed. I'm actually friends with my probation officer to this day, you know, social media and stuff. And so she was really cool towards me, but I kept smoking weed. And I told her, I said, I'm not going to stop.

You know, I said, if you're in lock me, if you're in lock me? And so I was going in and out of juvie. Like, you know, I would fail my urine test, and then I'd go for like 30 days, two weeks, whatever. And then eventually I said, you know what, I gotta find something else. And so one day I was on house arrest with my friend, and he had a painkiller.

And he asked me if I wanted to try it with him. Me and I had never done it before, so I did the painkiller. And it was just, it was like the same thing again. It was like this feeling I never had, the best feeling I ever had in my life. me and him looked at each other and we're like, do you feel that? And so that began basically within six months I was shooting up heroin.

Whoa. So at that point, psychedelics were always there as like a here and there thing. They were something I just enjoyed. But then at one point, I guess probably maybe 10 years into it. I'm trying to do the math in my head of time frames. around 19, like 20 psychedelics were, they were something that I did when I was, I needed heroin to function basically, right? So like the heroin was, that was my addiction. But the psychedelics at that point, they started off in high school. It was like a party thing. It's like you go to the party, you have fun, you laugh, but I knew the spiritual element was there. And so once I got to the place of liking Buddhism and stuff like that, I started taking them to kind of jump into the spiritual aspect of it. So I would take them and so I had nothing but good experiences. You know, like I had nothing but positive things happening as far as I would have this like new, profound wisdom would hit me. I'd have this

understanding of being connected, being one, all of us loving each other. It was like, that's the secret to life, love each other, you know. Is there any, was there any wisdom, perhaps that is the wisdom, but is, is there anything you remember now looking back on it? Ah, yes, here was a bit of wisdom that I gleaned on one of these trips that I wouldn't have known otherwise. Is there anything you can point to and say, ah, that piece of wisdom? Or no, was it just kind of a feeling of wisdom? No, I think it was just more of just a different mindset.

It was like just a different level of consciousness that when I was in that place, everything made sense. So it's like it was almost, and it's like the funny thing about hallucinogens is like a lot of the stuff you forget. It's like you're here and then it like leaves you. And that's why people keep, oh, you need to go, I need to go do another retreat. I need, because it's like, I know it was great and I know I learned a lot. Yeah. I just don't remember anything I learned. Yeah. And you take some of it with you. You'll take like one or two things and then the rest is forgotten. And so that's what it was. It was like, like, an example was like, I always would walk away with this feeling

of like, I need to be a better person. Like, it would crush my ego and crush my pride in the moment. you'd get, you know what I mean? And I would, I'd be like, man, I'm really a bad son. I'm really, you know what I mean? Like, I'm a bad brother. You know what I'm saying? Like, I would have these real, like, I guess, reflective moments. And so because of that, I'm thinking this must be a good thing.

Because it's bringing, I guess, sobriety to my thinking in a way. You know what I mean? It's making me see things different. Whereas other drugs, they feed that selfishness. It's like, that heroin, you don't care about anybody. But on psychedelics, I'd be like, oh, I need to be more mindful of other people. I've been around people who have been on Coke,

and they're the most annoying people on planet Earth. They never shut up. They're talking about the most boring things ever. For some reason, they always are trying to get you to do coke. I've been offered cocaine so many times in my life, and I've never done it. It's not something that's interested me, but I thought, isn't this expensive?

Like, why are you trying to peddle your expensive drug on me? Why are you talking about your work assignment from last Thursday? Nobody cares. Just like, babbling it. Anyway. Anyway, I could see that distinction between a drug that kind of pulls you out of yourself, much as Buddhism does. Buddhism is essentially a denial of the self and a drug that pulls you really into yourself. But so what you're describing, other than your life completely falling

apart while you're doing it, other than that little detail, it sounds like the hallucinogens are fine. Yeah, it seemed that way. And so I thought they were the answer. And so my whole life goal was I just need to trip. Like, I wanted a permissip. That was my goal. You hear these horror stories. There's this story that goes around. Everyone says, I know this guy who thought he was a cup of orange juice. Yeah, right, right. Like, everyone's heard this story and somehow it's like their friend that they heard him from. He thinks he's a banana and he peels himself off. Yeah, and all this stuff. And I honestly, at the time was, I was jealous of that. Like, not that outcome, but the outcome of, like, I could stay in this place. Because, like, again,

I liked who I was in that state. And so it was always like, I just need to go trip one more time, collect the data, and then remember it and stay there. And so the other thing was like, so there was positive things when I started getting into DMT where I was having encounters with light beings. You know what I mean? They're talking to me, they're telling me,

you need to stop doing heroin or you're going to die. They're guiding me in a positive way. But at the same time, I'm getting more into the accord. I'm playing a Ouija board's thinking it's a game. I'm egging on, like the Ouija board move, and I'm telling it, you know, show yourself. You know, I'm egging it on, I'm thinking it's all a joke. I think all this stuff is a joke.

So you're playing with the Ouija board. The Ouija board, the idea is it's not your hands moving the thing around, but it's demons, basically, is moving to... Right. Did it work? So, it's funny because my first encounter with the Ouija board was my mom used to have them, as a prop for, Halloween. No one played with it. It was just when Halloween parties and she'd just have

the Ouija board there, you know, just be a prop, right? And I think one of the first times I remember using it. And it wasn't like I did this like hundreds of times. It was maybe a handful of times, 70 times. And so the first time it worked was I was at a friend's house. It was, I think, like, eighth grade summer or something, ninth grade, eighth grade summer. And there was a group of us at this, this girl's house. And so it was a group, like maybe five or six was playing it. And it starts to move. Now, you know, everyone's first reaction is, is it you? Is it you?

Everyone's, no, no, I swear, no, I promise no. Everyone's deny it. I know it's not me. The thing starts to move. People start getting freaked out. And me again, I'm challenging this stuff. I think it's a joke. Because even though I think, like, oh, it really is moving on its own at this point.

But I'm, like, asking it stupid questions, you know? Like, oh, if you're real, show your face, you know, and stuff like that. And so it starts to move, and people will start getting freaked out. So it was like me, and I think it was like two or three other girls and another guy. They said, and they start to say, one of them said, you have to ask it if you can leave. Like, I heard, you know, you can't just, or leave the door open. You have to ask if you're allowed to leave. So they say, can I leave?

And it goes, yes. Can I leave? Yes. And so next thing I know, it's just me and this one girl. And she says, can I leave? And it says, no. So she goes to trial. And she's like, can I leave?

No. And it goes, no. And she just freaked out and she just like, she just, like, ran off. And I was sitting there and just laughing and. So it wasn't you moving yet. And so you could say, well, maybe it's this girl just wants to, you know, spend more time with you. So I'm going to move it to say no. But she gets very freaked out and then she leaves.

No, it was genuine fear. Like, she was like, oh my gosh, I just say no, no. She just, like, freaked out and she left. So that was like the first time I saw something come from me. And then years later, I played it. Back when I was getting really into the DMT, I had one, and I was with one of my friends. And this guy was, you know, he was a very stoic kind of guy.

He wasn't a type of guy to, like, get scared easily. Like, me and him used to do all types of crazy stuff together. He wasn't the type of guy to, for one, to play into it and two, to get scared about stuff like this. It's just me and him, you know. And we start playing. And like I said, I lived on that battlefield, and so we start asking a thing that starts moving.

I didn't even need to ask. It wasn't him. He knew it wasn't me. He starts moving. So we're asking him multiple questions. And I started asking him like, well, when am I going to die? And it gives me a number. And it says from an overdose, it says 37 from an overdose. And then he asked it. And it gave him a number. And it gave him, it said, I think, like heart failure or something, heart attack or something. To this day, that friend is scared. He called me literally like last year. He said, like he freaked out. I mean, that, like, and this is 2012, 2013. I mean, to this day, he's still afraid of that. He still thinks that's going to happen. Yeah, of course. How old are you?

I'm 30. Are you scared? No, no, because I think the blood broke the curse, so it was. But I think that it would have happened. I think that that was the intention. I think that was the plan for my life, maybe, you know. But he's, I mean, he still thinks that, like, he called me actually like a year ago or something. He said, dude, I only have a year left if that, you know,

like he thinks it's going to happen. Right, because demons can't read your mind. Demons are not God. Demons are not omniscient or anything like that. But they are pretty good observers of behavior. And so based on the behavior that you were exhibiting for a long time, it may have been a perfectly reasonable inference to say, oh, yeah, you'll die at 37 from a drug overdose. Yeah, yeah, 100%. So why are you doing? Because people tell me this. They say, oh, yeah, I'd play with Ouija boards and crystals and weird astrology stuff. But it was all just kind of silly games. And I think, when I want to play a silly game, I play Monopoly. What is it about what drew you to the Ouija board and all the occult stuff? I think just us as humans were drawn to the taboo. I think it's part of our nature. We like that mystery. That's why people like horror movies and stuff. And it's like... And your inhibitions are already a little bit weakened because you're doing all this other great thing. Yeah, yeah, I was already, I liked that, like, kind of that, I liked the demonic type of stuff. I was drawn to the dark stuff, not, you know, not in the sense of, hey, you know, devil with pitchfork and horns.

But the stuff that made people uncomfortable, I wanted to go into the water that everyone else was like, I don't know, that's a little crazy. The secret. Yeah, yeah. And so that was, it was just something I did with, like, friends. I play the Ouija board. I started doing psychics. I started, you know, I went into all that because Buddhism is already kind of branched. I would say those are branches of that.

It's like that whole world kind of comes together. It's the same thinking. And so I started getting more into the occult. And so what was crazy is when I was about 20, 2012, I was doing a lot of psychedelics. I was doing a lot of heroin. I was in probably the worst place I had ever, one of the darkest places in my life.

And so I had this moment of like, I'm having encounters with light beings. Why am I not happy? Why am I still stuck? I can't stop doing heroin. I want to kill myself and I'm thinking I'm enlightened. I would have a trip and for a week I'd be the most enlightened. I think I was Gandhi.

For the next week, I'm Gandhi, everybody. And then a week later, I want to kill myself. And so I'm starting to connect these dots. Like, this doesn't make sense. Like, why am I having these great experiences? But I can't ever bring back the fruit or what I thought was fruit. I can't ever bring it back to my life. And I can't find the power to overcome any of this.

My obstacles. What did you think the light beings were? Did you think it was a figment of your imagination, you know, just a chemical product of the drugs, or did you think they were angels or something? So with acid and mushrooms, you don't typically, at least I never had visuals, where like, oh, I'm seeing this thing just pop up. It's more like the walls will melt. Everything's a lot more vibrant.

But, you know, you could see something and start to look like something else. I had a time where, like, my dog turned green and his tongue was longer. Stuff like that, right? But, like, you know, like, oh, this is reality. It's still a dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's like I knew what was reality. With the DMT, this was like full on, like, you're seeing a whole world just crack open in front of you.

It's like going to Mars or something, right? Like right now this room, you know, just turns into, you know, another realm, right? And it's like, so I'm experienced. So I knew I was hallucin. but I also knew 100% this stuff is real. Whatever is in my room right now, these things are real, and they would be light beings. So they're a human shape, but they are like, they were colors.

One was purple, one was orange, one was red. It's like a flaming light, but in a human shape, body, right? So it's like a silhouette. And then the thing about them is that they would always speak peace. Like, we're here to help you. We're, you know, calm down, relax. We have your, you know, we have your back. And the thing that was interesting, and I didn't pick it up at the time, but looking back, it literally was like, you know when you're swimming in the ocean and you feel like that there's something maybe under you?

It's like, you're enjoying the waves. It's fun, but you kind of like, oh, there might be a shark. That's how it felt. It's like, I kind of don't trust you guys, but I don't have a reason not to. You look pretty. You're giving me good information. Your clothes that is an angel of light. You might say. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's kind of where it was at. But it just never. And they gave you advice in the sense that calm down, it's okay. What would they tell you? So, like, the one DMT experience I had, I had these three beings come in my room. I freaked out.

I started to try to get up off the bed. But there was a bigger one. So if I was laying down, it was like his legs were 10 feet tall. So the other ones I see in front of me dancing around and swirling. This one was like 10 feet tall legs. I couldn't even see the top of the being. But his hand started going over me. And if you've seen Reiki, they go like this.

He was doing Reiki hand movements over me, and he was telling me telepathically, relax, we're here to help you, right? And then a few minutes later, my door opened up by itself, and another one came in and it was dragging my body. So I'm in my body, I'm watching this. My body gets dragged in the room, and they told me, if you don't stop doing heroin, this is you. Because I used to get high in my bathroom.

And so I knew they were saying, like, you're going to overdose in this bathroom if you don't stop. And so that's what I mean. They would tell me, like, you need to be a better person. So what is that? It seems to me there's four options. It could be your subconscious. You knew, even as you're doing a bunch of dope, you know that this is bad for you and it's going to kill you.

So it's your subconscious telling you that, like in a dream, say. Or they're demons. That clothes is angels of light, as it says in the Bible. Or they're angels. or they're just some weird chemical hallucination, totally random, totally unaccounted for, totally meaningless. Which to me seems like the most ridiculous possibility of all. So which of the three is? Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right.

So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll soon. No, instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right.

So I think the interesting thing is that if you talk to anybody that did psychedelics, I think everybody would agree they're all real. It's like everybody, it's not just your subconscious. It's not your imagination, your subconscious. I think there's times people think like your subconscious can create stuff that isn't really there. But those experiences are 100%. It's another dimension. It is the veil is removed.

And I think that's what gets manipulated because of our ignorance. And so, and I'll give you an example. The first time I did the mushrooms, I started to climb up a radio tower. And then I got about 20 feet up. And I saw, oh, what am I doing? I shouldn't be climbing a tower right now.

I started to climb down. That inflicted a thought of fear where I started, for some reason, because I was in the woods, I started thinking about the headless horsemen. And I'm like, oh, the hellless horseman's going to get me. I started to hear, I started to hear horses come, right? So that was an example of me thinking something.

Right, and then it kind of... But I knew, oh, I'm just tripping. You know, like, oh, this isn't real right now. I went back in the car and I was fine. Because you hear that expression a lot. You're like, oh, man, that guy's tripping over there. Yeah. Obviously, where it comes from is, you literally were tripping

and you were imagining something that wasn't there. Yeah, and I was imagining it. And I knew I was. But this was different than what was going on in your room. Way different. But so then my question is, it sounds like they're demons. But they're saying, hey, don't kill yourself, get off the heroin, which seems like good advice. So then it seems like they're angels.

Right, right. So what is it? That's the deception in it. And so I think Romans 6 talks about it says, you're either a slave to sin or the righteousness. It says, look at the fruit of what's coming from this. And so I think that a lot of times we have to look like, what is the fruit that is coming from this? Like, the fruit that was coming from this was not good in any sense for me. Even when they say get off the heroin, that's not good.

Well, I guess because it didn't work. Because it didn't. There was no power there. So it's kind of like, and I always use this illustration of if I'm trying to kidnap somebody, I'm not going to say, you know, hey, I'm here to kill you, kid. Like, come in the car. It's like, here's some candy. Hey, I want to get you down there.

Here's $100. So they don't, if you look at like the state of saying, being the god of this world in a fallen state, fallen angels having, you know, secret knowledge, and, you know what I mean? Principalities and powers. Yeah, and all this stuff, they're not dumb, you know, and so they can give you stuff that looks good, you know? Right.

Yeah. Right. And, yeah, we, I guess our imagination is just limited. We think, oh, those stupid little devils, we're so much smarter than them. Yeah. No, they're pure intelligence. You know, they're probably more intelligent than we are. in many ways. So you're in the room, you're surrounded by demons, basically. And you're saying

they're real. You're aware of the, it's not just something you're imagining. And you see yourself, you see this vision of yourself dying from heroin. And okay, then you wake up from the trip. So, okay, so I wouldn't, but this is before I haven't kind of got all that. This is when I'm around 20 years old, I think around 2012, when this happened. I see this, and I think that they are angels at the time. They were light. They seemed loving. They seemed to have my interest at heart.

So I did think they were angels at the time. And afterwards, I was, like, rocked for, I mean, that will really mess up your view of life for a while. Like, I didn't even know how to look at life the same anymore after that. And I was, but then it's like, oh, I got to do it again. I got to meet them again. whatever it takes, right? Give me some more poison so I can meet those angels again.

Yeah, and, you know, but here's what happened. So about a week or two after that, I'm at my house. I'm sitting there. I'm depressed because I was going through a breakup, and I'm not getting into the whole story, but long story short, I'm sitting there one night. My best friend had died the year before a car accident on his way to meet me. So I felt bad about that.

I was dealing with guilt about that. My life is falling apart in front of my face. I just had a baby that's probably a year and a half old at the time. And it was like everything had was so hopeless. And I'm sitting here doing everything spinning my wheels, trying to connect to these spirit realm and go to the psychic, getting Reiki done, doing all the stuff that I could think of, everything I'd think of.

And I remember one night I just sat there and I had kind of like surpassed, you know what I mean, depression or anger or any emotion. I don't know if it's apathy or what. So you were just despairing at that point. You weren't even angry. You're just, there's no hope. It was just, yeah, like that Pink Floyd song,

comfortably numb. It's like, it just, just nothing. Just, you know, and so I basically said, yeah, I think I'm done. I was sitting on my back porch. I was drinking. And I said, I'm done. I said, yeah, I'm not doing this anymore. I walked in my house and I got a microphone cord.

And then I walked back outside. and I had, I lived on a battle. Oh, you mean I'm done? Like, I'm done. Yeah, I was dead seriously. Like, I'm just done. I don't want to be here anymore. And because you have to think that this, I mean, for years, this was always in the background,

but you don't ever think you'll actually do it. It's kind of like I want to, but I wouldn't actually go through with that. You know what I mean? I was cutting myself. I hated, I hated life. I hated myself. And I didn't even know why. I just, I just felt like I was just chained to something that I didn't want to be a part of.

And it's like you're sitting in the passenger seat of your car. And someone else is driving. That's how it felt for the last, you know, or the previous few years or whatever. And so I said, I'm done. And so I lived on a battlefield, like an actual Civil War battlefield, right? And so that added a whole other element to this, like, spooky stuff going on. Well, nature is but art unknown to the. Yeah.

Yeah. And there was, so there's the, you know, the fences, like Civil War put the tight up. So where I lived, it was like a cliff. It was in my house. and there was a cliff, and then it was like a, there was a little small stream, and then it was like a little creek that broke off, and it was like a 20-foot, something dry, like 20, 22 feet drop, a cliff, and then like two feet of water. And so I tied it to the silver water post, and I tied it around my neck, and I walked to the end, I said, I'm done, and I just stepped

off. And the second that I felt the cord, it tightened, it pulled, and it caught, as soon as as it caught me, I was like, oh, no, what did you do? Like, this was a, this was a mistake. what are you thinking? But it was too late. I knew I really did it. And so next thing, I know, it feels like in a dream state. You know when you're in a dream and you're aware, like a lucid dream. It felt like that, but in the dream, I had no memory of what I did. So in the dream, I'm just wondering, like, why can I breathe? Why am I cold? Why do I feel stuck? I didn't know, had no idea what was going on. And so in the dream, all of a sudden, well, in that state, I see this little light out of the corner of my eye

and start coming towards me. It wasn't a big light. It was just like a little light that grabbed your attention from this black void. It started coming closer to me. And then next thing I know, I felt something loose my neck. Still not knowing what it was. Just, oh, I can breathe again in this dream.

And I grabbed and I got up, and next thing I know, I'm popping my head up out the water. And it all hits me, like what just happened. So I'm sitting there like, I mean, I'm crawling up this hill. I'm soaking up at the middle of like this. December, the middle of wintertime. I'm freezing cold. I'm shivering. I'm crying because I realize what I was dead. You know what I mean? I go in my house. I have bruises all over my neck. My neck's all purple. And I mean, I was a mess. But the thing that happened that night is that I knew that

there was something out there after that. Like something saved me. And the craziest part was that I said, oh, it came on tied from the fence. It couldn't just be the cord snapped? It snapped, right? That's what I'm thinking. I go back out there. It's still tied to the fence. So it was. It was. It was was a microphone cord, it stretched maybe double the length, I guess, because of the, you know, what it was, it stretched. Whatever it was, I knew something saved me. So it didn't snap, it didn't unfurl. No. So it just stretched and was attached to both ends. But even then, I was, I could, I was unconscious. I couldn't, uh, untied. Had it, had it snapped where it was tied around your name?

No, it was, it was, it was just loosed. Like, I'm, I'm unconscious. Just knowing that I couldn't breathe, I didn't know there was something on my neck. I was unconscious. I went out. I saw a light coming towards me. And when it got maybe like 10 feet away from me, it just, I just felt it loose. And so I, and then I popped up. And so then it hit me at that moment, I'm here for a reason. Something cares about me and something is aware of me. And I have no idea what or why. But now I've got to figure out what it is, you know? And I wish I could say like, oh, it's God and everything changed at that moment. It didn't.

It got way darker. It got way worse because there was no language. There was no understanding of what it was. It was just I'll never do that again. That was about all that I had at that time. I'll never do that again, but I'll do all the other stuff I've been doing. Yeah, basically, but not wanting to, you know. And that's the worst thing about it.

no drugs. It's like, it starts out fun. And then you're a slave to it and you can't stop. And it's the most miserable existence because you got, you know, everyone's telling you, just stop. Look at what is doing here. And you can't. Well, you make this great point, which you're not the first to say it, which is that you're either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. And the way that people talk about freedom and liberty today, even on the right, certainly on the left, but even on the right, is really shallow and incoherent because they'll say is freedom is just being able to do as much heroin as you want. That's freedom, baby.

You know, if you want to do heroin, you have the right to go do whatever you want. And as you have just attested, no, you become a slave to it. And you become a slave to it very, very quickly. And it doesn't, that's not an expression of freedom that robs you of your freedom. You know, you're going to be a slave to sin or righteousness. You're going to be a slave to vice or virtue. And so the question is, then what is freedom? And freedom is obviously when you accept the constraints of virtue and goodness.

And Christ says, you know, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Follow me, do what I say, but don't worry, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And the yoke and the burden of heroin and all the light demons, that's not light. that's not light at all. Yeah. But you keep going into it because you say, okay, I'm not going to kill myself anymore,

but I'm still addicted to drugs. I still have been practicing, I've been cultivating these habits for 20 years or whatever, 15 years. And so you're not just going to switch that off overnight or it would be very difficult to do that. Yeah. So then what happens?

So basically, I go down this road for, you know, years, basically. And I'll go to basically the next, couple of years, I'm just getting worse in my hair on addiction. It's becoming, you know, it started out the first few years. It was kind of like, uh, the drugs were always there. I had the jobs that would somewhat support it. So it was like comfortable. Yeah. Then it got real uncomfortable. Then it got miserable. You know, where I'm always sick. I'm always, my whole day is like chasing that. And so when I was 23, 2014, I was going to school for massage therapy. I don't know how that was a miracle in itself that I don't know how I graduated the school but I get

through massage therapy school somehow and three days before I like get my graduation certificate I already had graduated but I'm waiting for the certificate or whatever I basically get hit with a distribution of heroin there was some girl that I was you know kind of friends with I had middleman something to her she overdosed I call the police or the the ambulance to resuscitate her and she you know she ends up surviving but she tells So I get charged with a distribution of heroin. At that point, I had done a little two weeks, 30 days in jail. Well, this was a big serious offense, right?

They're trying to tell me she's dead and all this stuff, telling me I'm looking at a murder charge, all this crazy stuff. I knew they were just saying that. But anyways, I ended up getting the distribution. So 2015, I get sentenced to 18 months in jail. And so in that point, I really smacked, you know, life smacked me in the mouth and really sat me down

because I have a kid at this point, you know, there was no more running. And so at that point I got sat down and I was like, man, I need to change my life. It was the first time my life that I really wanted to change. Or not that I really wanted change, that I was really serious about change. Like, all right, I'll really do what I need to do.

And so in the jail, I had ran into actually an old friend. And he had been there for like five years at that point. And he's talking about Jesus to me. And I'm looking at him, I'm like, something's different. I'm looking at him, I'm like, something's different about him, because I knew him from the streets, you know, I'm like, something is different about the guy. I'm out of life. Unspeakable joy that dwells within him, you know. Yeah, something was different.

Yeah. Yeah. And but he's talking about Jesus, I'm mad at him. I get mad at him. I got mad at him. I said, dude, stop talking about this. Jesus. I said, I want to hear it anymore.

And then I left to another jail. But for some reason, this was another, like, one of those moments in life where I have no idea why. I have no idea why. I don't even know what happened. Just at some point, I started to think Jesus was my God. No, even, I didn't even really believe in him. I just was like, you know what? I tried all the other gods.

Maybe Jesus will be my God. Yeah, heroin didn't work. The Buddha thing didn't work. You know what I love about that? Everybody wants, everybody expects these kinds of stories that would be in a hallmark movie or something. And this was the climax of Act 2. But the way you're telling you, it's like,

Yeah, and then I just realized, yeah, no, he's God. Yeah. Yeah, I just figured out, yeah, that was it. Yeah, but it's so obvious, you know? Yeah, but it was weird because I didn't, there was nothing to do. I don't even think I believed that. Yeah, I think it was like, I'll try this one next. It was, I didn't believe that He was God.

So it was an experiment? Yeah, it was an experiment. I didn't, I just would start talking about Jesus and mention the Bible, but I didn't seek him or anything. I just would, and it was crazy because when I got out, I remember I was, like, making music, and I was listening to, like, some of my old music and I would shout out Jesus had no relationship with him whatsoever. Did not know him at all, but I would be like, yeah, Jesus, whatever, right?

And then the next line, talk about something crazy probably, right? But so what happened, though, is after that, this is when everything started to really change and boil down to it. So I get out in 2016. I'm trying to get my life together. I'm trying to stay up heroin, but I'm still going to the bars. I'm still, you know, I'm getting blackout drunk. And when you're a heroin addict, that's really good.

You're real proud of yourself, you know? It's like, all I'm doing is drinking. So I'm getting my prescription for my Xanax. I'm doing good, but I'm blacking out all the time. But I'm going to church. That was the one thing that changed. I started going to church like, you know, two or three times a month. And nothing happened, though, but I would go.

And it was like, for me, it was just the one day that I could be someone else. You know, it was like I hated to have to be who I was. And I just wanted to like go and pretend to be somebody else. or like, you know, just feel like I can get away from my life or something. So there's this common thread from the beginning of the story through this point, which is you're trying to escape an identity that you don't like and trying to escape time and space, right? This is something that I've heard from friends of mine

who have been addicted to drugs and booze and stuff. And frankly, even I feel, if I have a drink at the bar after work, which is, oh, it's kind of like time slows down. Oh, I'm so stressed, I'm on this tight schedule. Ah, but now time, all the constraints of that work, all that stuff, that's gone for right now. And so you're finding that in all these different ways. And one does find this.

At church, you know, church on Sunday you go, and if the liturgy is proper, then it is different. It's supposed to be different from the world. different from the world. You're in the world a lot of the time. And then the church is a kingdom that is not of this world. Right. Right. Yeah, and that's what it was. It just was like something cool to do that, you know, I did about myself. And so I met this girl that would take me. And so I started doing that. But again, nothing changed my life. As far as,

like, I wasn't doing heroin and that was about it. But I'm doing everything else I was doing, you know what I mean? I'm still sleeping around. I'm still drinking. I'm still doing this and that. And I started getting more into music and I was like, all right, I'm going to do music. That's what I'm going to pursue in life. And so I started doing that. And then I'm building my life back up. I finally get my license back after not having it for a few years. I get a restricted license.

I get a car. And two days after I get the car, I wrecking to a fire truck, get a DUI. I had it for two days, you know. And a fire truck pulled him from me. I hit it. There was no damage, but the cops come. My friend's with me, he's passed out in the passenger seats. They arrest both of us.

I get DUI. I get out. And, you know, I start trying to get back up on my feet. I get, you know, move into a basement. I was living with my dad at the time. And my parents were split up at this time. They split when I was like 17. So I'm living with my dad at the time.

And I'm trying to get my life together. I have a job. I'm doing landscaping. I'm, you know, I'm working, working to get on my feet. And so I, I, I have this stuff that I'm building, and then all of a sudden it was like, and here's the thing about God is that you don't see him working a lot of times in the moment. It's when you look back.

And so I didn't notice any of this. It was, but all of a sudden I started feeling bad about, I was prescribed Suboxone, which is like to get people off heroin and stuff, but I would shoot it up, which you're not supposed to do, you know. But when you're a heroin addict, like, if something's water soluble, you want to do it that way. is better, right? And so I started feeling guilty about that. So again, for me, that's like, why do I feel bad about this?

Why is my conscience speaking to me? Yeah, yeah, it was weird. And then I remember I read, because mind you, I'm going to church still, I started reading the Bible one night. Because I would read the Bible, people would be like, yeah, just read the Bible. And so I'd be, like, flustered, want to get high. And I'd open the Bible and read, like, two lines and be like,

this doesn't help, and I'd chuck it across the world. Like, I was, you know, I would try. And so I'm calling on God. but nothing was happening. Like, I'm like, what is, nothing's working. And so, and I always tell that to people because a lot of times we think God is like, hey, I'm ready for you.

Come on, come do this for me now. Well, that's what the new age people say. I'm going to manifest. Yeah. So I'm in charge. I'm, whatever I want, I'm going to get it if I just, if I just think hard enough. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, that's not, you're not God. That's not how that works. That's why I always tell them, create a tree right now. That's real manifesting, make a tree grow, you know? And, you know, so it's like, So one night I read the Bible. I got home from church, I opened the Bible, and I started reading First Samuel.

And I don't know what happened, but I got pulled into this story. Like, it was the best thing that I had ever read. And I'm reading this stuff like, what? Like, you know, it was war. Which part? It was the whole thing about the Ark of the Covenant and Eli's sons, you know,

tampering with the sacrifices and God's like, I'm taking the Covenant. And you know what I'm saying? Or the Arc of the Covenant. And it was like, yo, this is crazy, you know, this is a crazy story. And what was wild is, it was true.

When I read it, I said, this is real. And I said, this is so cool. And then that was about it. I kept going with my life. Well, I get a new car. This is three weeks after I wrecked the other car. I get a new car. My dad takes me to get a car,

pick this car up. And I'm sitting there. My dad even says, I have a bad feeling about this. Because I don't even really technically have my restricted license at that time. I had the DUI. I'm out of bonding for a DUI.

And I get the car. I have it for 20 minutes. I'm letting it on my way home. I took tags off my dad's van. Put it on. I'm like, I'm going straight home, get tags and all that. So I'm driving it super illegally. Don't have insurance, nothing.

Buy this car, and I'm 20 minutes down the road. And I'm going to switch lanes. I'm out of light to turn left. There's a light to go straight. And I look over my shoulder twice. I'm sober and everything. There's no cars coming. And I go to pull out.

And all of a sudden, this car comes over the hill going like 60 miles an hour and just crushes in my car. Like, I mean, folds it in half, carries me into the middle of the intersection, and then somehow the car turned back straight. And I said, oh, no, I said, I'm out of here. And I started trying to drive away. But then I said, oh, my name's in the title is crushed in the glove box. So I said, I think I should pull over. So I pulled over.

I get arrested for that. Driving on suspended. They charge everything's my fault just because I wasn't licensed. Right, right. It was all on me. So that happened. I get out. You know, my mom feels bad.

She comes to the scene. I'm upset. I'm like, dude, I'm trying my best to get ahead in life. I'm trying not to do heroin. I'm doing my, like, everything's just... So my life is, like, just crumbling around me. And it was, like, everywhere I turned, disaster, mayhem. And so I'm like, and I get home.

And then a week later, I get kicked out of my basement for having, like, someone over or whatever, and the landlord kicks me out. And then they had something hidden in the lease where it was like, they don't even have to give me a notice. And I guess I signed that probably, you know, unknowingly. So it was like, yeah, you got three days and you're out. So now I'm homeless.

So this is like June 2016 or 2017. And so I'd been out for a year now I'm homeless. Everything just kind of hit the fan. At this point, you know, it perfectly worked out where everybody had kind of turned their back on me as far as like friends that were kind of there. All those relationships started falling apart. My parents, they still love me. They were so there for me. But it was like...

They were not buying any more cars. Cars around. You're done, yeah, like you're on your own. And, you know, I respect that. You know, it was due time. So all that is kind of there. And now I'm just there in the woods. And I'm going into this really, like, dark place

of just being comfortably numb again. I'm just like I'm working at Fridays. And, you know, and so here, where everything shifted was about a month into this. I was working at Fridays when this lady came up to me and she said, God said, you need to see them. And I stopped going to church. like three months prior.

This was a lady from church that came up to you? No, a lady that I worked with. She came up to me and she said, God said that you need to see him. And I was like, yeah, I know. I said, how do I get in touch with them? How do I make a meeting? Yeah, let's do this, you know, and I'm ready. But it's hit me something.

I was like, because at this point I believe there's a God. I know the spiritual world is 100% real. There's not a shadow in my mind that that is real. So I really am aware, I'm like, that was really weird. But, you know, but, there's an Italian expression. I think there to far in Mezzo del Maru, between doing, between saying and doing is a whole wide ocean. You can say it, you know, I know intellectually this is true,

but okay, what are you gonna do? Right. Yeah, and that's kind of where I was at. It was like, all right, I'll talk to, go to him, but that was, you know, this has been a year where I'm crying out to him, nothing has really happened yet. Yeah, yeah. And so I go to the AA meeting.

I go to an AA meeting down the street, and I leave the, and go into the chapel, I'm going into the chapel and I said, all right, God, I'm here. What do you want? I sit down and nothing happens. I read the Bible. I just open it and I read this page. Don't think anything of it leave.

A week later, I come back. I do the exact same thing. I don't even know why, though. I'm going to the A meeting because I'm trying to get my life together. But something pulls me into the chapel. Hey, God, I'm here again. What do you want? Open the Bible.

And I get halfway reading through it and I realize, oh, this was the same exact verse I read the last time I was here, Psalm 18. So I'm like, what? That's crazy. So now all of a sudden, something's got my attention. And so now about, let's fast forward maybe like a week. Now everything starts rapidly moving, right? So a week later, I was with some guys in the woods.

They smoked this stuff called K2. It started off as like an incense. And they, you know, they would sell it at the gas stations. Well, it leveled up. And now it's like a whole other thing. It's very, very powerful. It's like the drug is incense? It started off.

It was like an incense. And you would smoke and it would resemble a weed. But I never liked it because it just didn't feel right. You know, it was like, something about it wasn't right. And so basically I would see these guys bug out on it. Like they would be slumped over, be acting crazy. And I was like, there is no way that this does that. And so.

I'm gonna test that for myself. Yeah. Yeah, and that's really what it was. Because I'm in my mind, I said, I do real drugs. You know, like this is, there's no way this does that. And so they told me they said, just take one hit. It's like this stuff's strong. And I said, no, I hit it like three times.

And next thing I know, as soon as I like pass it to someone, at this point I've overdosed on heroin like four or five times. So I know what it feels like to like, you know, there's a split second of just your body registering. Whatever you just did was too much for us. And so next thing I know is I just hear them saying, oh, he's going out and I just feel myself falling to the ground and I start to crawl. And then next thing I know, I'm in a, in a,

dream world, right? And in this dream world, I'm walking down a path. There's demons on my left and demons on my right. And they're basically laughing at me. They're like, they're different sizes. They have these little robes. They have these big grins. But I'm like not really paying attention to them because I'm following another one and had its back to me. And so we're walking down this hall and we get to this big door. And so right before we get to the door, it says one more step, you're almost there. And it turned around. And when it looked at me, it was an ugly demon. And I said, hell no. And I turned around. And when I turned around, I woke up in a pool of sweat. And so I was that one, that was like another hook where it just like, what the heck was that?

That was not normal. What do they look like? They look like little like gremlins, like almost like the, you know, from Lord of the Rings, the little guy that chases the ring, I think. I don't even think I ever watched that movie for real, but I know the little guy. You met the real thing. Yeah, they look kind of like that. The ones I've seen that, they're just ugly. They're like, they're deformed, like, almost like little, like almost like you see in horror movies. Like, that's what they look like.

And some of them will be like three feet tall, some of them would be like six feet tall. You know, like they're different sizes, and they're just, there's ugly, but they all had these big smiles. There's like these, like, ha ha, like these mocking, they're like these mocking spirits or something. And so that happened.

And a week after that, I go to see my grandma with my dad. And so I go to see her and I go out one night. And I come home and I went to the bar. I was drinking and stuff. And I come back and I'm sleeping with my uncle. You know, like he, it was like two couches in a long bed or whatever connected. So I'm sleeping in bed with him, basically. And I'm about to fall asleep. And I start hearing the TV. I'm watching American Pickers. I'm halfway asleep. So I'm awake. And I'll never forget their voice has changed. into demonic voices. So their voices turn into demon voices,

and they start talking about me. And I said, I don't know if, like, have you ever heard of, like, sleep paralysis? Yeah, I had it once, certainly, maybe twice. Yeah. And it's very scary. Right. Because it sounds like you hear demons.

Yeah. And maybe you do. And you lose control of your body. Yeah, you can't move, so you're just there hearing. I forget what, I just heard, like, a weird demon voice, and I was awake, but I couldn't move my body. I thought, the hell is, you know, what is this? And then, you know, 30 seconds later it was over, I could move again.

Yeah. I had to look. I said, what was that? You know, it was a sleep paralysis. It's freaky. And, you know, it's funny, actually, the backtrack real quick, when that first started because I had it a lot, it first started happening when I started doing Buddhism. The first time I started having sleep paralysis was when I started getting deep into Buddhism,

I started having it all the time. And it freaked me out, but it also intrigued me. So it was like this double-edged thing where it's scary. me, but then when it wouldn't happen, I'd kind of be like, no, I want to see what happens if I stay in there and, like, don't fight it. But anyways, that starts happening. So I'm in sleep paralysis. It feels like something's getting in my body.

Like, I'm like this. It's like something's trying to get in my body. And the TV says, his name is Josh. He's from Virginia. We need to destroy them. They're talking about me. I'm hearing it, and I'm feeling something getting to my body. Next thing I know, I'm like finding myself on the floor.

And I guess I was like screaming, crying or something, my dad said. Like, I woke up the whole house, making these moans or whatever. They come downstairs. I'm like, oh, I'm good, I'm good. And I lay back down. Well, when I lay back down, all of a sudden, I'm having something telling me to kill my uncle. In my head, something's telling me kill your uncle. And, you know, obviously there was no reason to think that or want to do that.

So I'm sitting here thinking, like, what? Where is this thought coming from? And while I'm saying no, I'm also simultaneously getting up to do it. So it's like I'm on autopilot getting up, and I find myself standing over my uncle, and someone just telling me, like, just crush his head. Like, just squeeze his head. And I started going like this over his head, and then his eyes popped up, open. And he's like, and he freaked him out, obviously. And he went in the other room, you know, and he went and slept somewhere else. So that was number two. That was like wake up number two as far as like the demons, demonic realm,

right? So now I'm like, dude, demons are really real. Like, there's no doubt about it, and I'm getting kind of freaked out. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deepop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Deepop. Just snap a few photos, and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Deepop where taste recognizes taste.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I come home and it's another couple of weeks past. And so basically I come to this place where I want to go to a rehab. And so I'm in a hotel room one night and I said, I'm going to get high one more time. At this point I think I was clean off heroin for like three months, but I was shooting up like crack and all those types of stuff. And I didn't even like it.

I was just doing anything, like whatever was around, as long as it wasn't. If it doesn't heroin, I would do it. And so- And you think you're going to rehab, so, all right, one more for the road. Yeah, yeah. And that's- So stupid, but everybody thinks that way. It doesn't matter what it is, just like, ah, well, you know, one more for the road.

Tomorrow, that's what I'll clean up. Yeah, and the same thing with getting out of jail. You know that the overdose statistics are, you're 129 times more likely to overdose within two weeks of getting out of jail or like a program. And that's like crazy, you know, times. But that's what a way. It was, it was three months. I was like, I'm gonna get high one more time.

And I remember I was sitting in the bathroom. I mean, at this point, I was pretty broken. You know, like, I was pretty, what am I gonna do? And I started talking to God. I said, you know, Lord, I said, I said, I said the sinner prayer. I said, I did, I went to church. I literally called on you to help me

every time I went to go buy drugs. I begged you to help me and stop me. I said, what else do you want for me? I said, this is all I know. I'm sitting here looking at these drugs. I hate these drugs. This is all I know. What else do you expect for me?

I said, forgive me. And I started saying the Lord's prayer while I was tie my arm and doing all the stuff. I started saying, our Father, who are in heaven, while I was doing it. And I said, forgive me, this is it. That was all I know. And so I subconsciously knew I was going to overdose because I knew I was doing too much. It wasn't intentional, but I was just like, you know what? I hope it happens, but I'm not trying to make it happen.

But if it does, whatever. And so I- That's a really, I think I get what you're talking about, but I couldn't articulate that. That you're saying it's not intentional, but I knew it was too much, and I was doing it anyway. But it wasn't quite intentional, but like it wasn't not intentional either.

Yeah, it was just hopelessness. It's just like whatever happens will be, that kind of thing. Like, you know, and... Even though you know what's going to happen. Yeah. Well, whatever, it's out of my hands, even though I know exactly what's going to happen.

I did, but I also, it's funny because, you get this pride when you get an addiction, there's this pride associated with it where you build up tolerances. Yeah. Like I had overdose, like I said, like four or five times. And, and so you build up this ego with it where you're like, I'll be good. I came back the last time. I'm good. So you get this pride with it. And so that's what it was. It's like, yeah. I think I'm overdosed. I'll be right, though. That's what I thought. So I did it. And I instantly, again, my body goes into a fight mode. Like I set, I stand up and I said,

run, like, just keep your body moving. Because I knew I had, I felt that feeling of, like, that it comes before an overdose. It's very, a split second of knowing. And I ran out the door, and next thing I know, I'm in an ambulance. And so I'm waking up in an ambulance, like, oh, no, again. Because now I'm thinking, my first thought is, I had drugs, or I had a needle, you know, cops.

And so I wake up, you know, they revived me, and the cop says, you know, now you're going to jail. You say, do you want to go to the hospital? No. He said, all right. Then you go on the other place. Yeah. And that was the moment that really everything changed. I go to jail. I'm in a suicide watch. So they take basically the jail experience to make it worse. You know, it's like they take all your clothes. You don't get the regular food. And I'm sitting in there and I basically was like, you know what, going through hell on earth. I mean, and I remember I looked over on my cell wall

and it said cold hell on the wall. I mama fell. My mom's, you know, crying. She's like, you almost died again. Everything's hitting me. It was like for the first time my life, all my choices smacked me in the face in a different way. Like, I always knew I was just screwing up. But this time it was like, God put everything just in a pile right in front of me.

And I'm in this room going through literally withdrawals from multiple things and just having to sit there and look at it and knowing there's nothing. Like, you can't go anywhere for five days. And all I said was, God have mercy, God have mercy. I said the Lord's Prayer over and over. That's all I could do. And I said, if you help me, I said, I'll be a good boy.

It's all I want to be a good boy. I said, Lord, I won't go to the bar anymore. I don't even want a girlfriend. I just want to be good. That was how I was done. And I get out and I go to the, they transfer me to the little pod. And I sit there for like three days and I remember it. Because in a jail pod, people do nothing.

It's like people just sit there and talk about terrible things, play cards or watch TV. That's all that they're doing. It's like the most miserable way to spend. your time, you know, and I said... George Bernard Show said that hell is the place where you have nothing to do all day but amuse yourself. I guess we'll play cards now. I guess we'll talk about crime now.

I don't do whatever. Yeah. That's what it was. And I sat there and I said, I'm not doing this again. I just, because I had just did the 18 months, like 11 months prior. I said, oh, no. I said, I'm not. And I know in my mind, I brought back another felony.

I'm already on probation. I've eight years over my head. I said, I'm not doing this again. And in my mind, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm probably to be here like five years. I said, I'm done. They're going to toast me. I'm done.

My life is over. I said, well, I'm not sitting in this pod. I'm going to join a program, something. So there was this program called the Mindorm, which it stands for men in a new direction. And it's in the Prince William County Jail that I don't know where else it is. So I hear about this. It's a faith-based program in the jail.

And so I go to it. And I remember, like, everyone's like, dude, don't go there. They got rules. You can't cuss there. You have to wake up. like all this stuff, right? I'm like, I don't care. I'm not sitting here with you guys.

Are you not there? Okay, cool. Then I'm going. So I walk in. And the funny thing is there was a friend of mine that was there. And I was supposed to move in with him like two weeks later. And he disappeared. He got locked up.

And so I walk and I'm assigned to his bunk. I'm like, we moved in together one way or another, you know? And so I was there. And after a week, I almost left because it was like you had to wake up at six. And in jail, you don't want to be. be awake all day. You know what I mean? Like you want to sleep as late as you can.

And so all this is happening. And I'm about to leave. But then one day, it was probably the second week. I'm thinking about leaving. Something spoke to me in my heart again. It was like this thought of, why don't you just try? It was just a thought that wasn't my thought, but it was so loud. Like kind of like it silenced everything.

I said, why don't you just try for once? And I kind of thought about it. And I was like, you know what? Where else am I going to go? I said, when these speakers come in, I might as well listen. By God, I'd read the Bible at this time of the day. I might as well read it. What else you're going to do?

Exactly. And so I started doing that. And it was like a week went by. Next thing I knew I wanted to read the Bible for fun. So when it was free time and everyone was watching TV, I'd be reading the Bible. And then I would start praying. Mind you, I'm going through withdrawal still because Suboxone witcherals take like a month. I'm not sleeping.

I think I'm doing, if I'm lucky, three years in prison. And I'm somehow, I'm starting to be happier than I ever had been in my life. So it's just like this contradiction going on, but I'm feeling more alive every day. All of a sudden, people would come up to me and they'd be like, dude, what happened to you? You're different. One guy came up to me and he said, dude, every time I'm having a bad day, he said, when I look at you, he said, I feel hope. Because I just started having this joy. And I didn't know what was happening to me.

I'd look at myself with me and be like, what's happening to you? because I just felt like I was changing. And I didn't connect the dots still. I still didn't connect the dot because there was no moment. It was like, oh, you know, burning bush. It was just I would read the word, I'd pray. And all of a sudden I would be in conversations and they'd be talking about drugs and I'd be like,

this is a stupid conversation. I'd go to read my Bible. And that was like the first thing I started noticing about two weeks after that. I would start praying. I'd be like in prayer, worshiping Jesus, whatever. and it would just feel like a love bomb would fall on me of like, it reminded me of how I felt when I was on mushrooms,

except it was a hundred times more pure. Like that, like uncontrollable laughter and just joy I felt on mushrooms, it made that look like creek water compared to Desani or something. You know what I mean? It was like, I thought that was joy, you know? And I would have to do mushrooms to have that joy, but that wasn't even real joy. That was like artificial joy. I was laughing.

I thought it was joy. but I was getting like covered in this just love. And I mean, it was, it freaked me out because I literally felt like I was high almost. Like it was like I was high on life and like I was just, I'd be laughing. I had joy. All I want to do was read my Bible and pray. And it just, I mean, it just took off really. Like it just, it, I was there for two months in this cocoon of Jesus and all that's all I wanted to do.

It was like everything in my life made sense like I started knowing like, like, I started knowing, like, you have a purpose. Just everything came together. And so basically what happened, though, is my lawyer was like, you're looking at like a year. Or I mean, he said, you're just staying here. Your low end is 18 months. You're probably looking at like two years or so. Like I was 18 months to three years or something. It was the guidelines. Yeah. So he said, get comfortable. And I didn't care. I am comfortable. I was. I really was. And I remember my mom came and she said, you know, I didn't get a bond. I said, praise God. I said, you know, like I said, mom, I met Jesus. He's real, you know? And so I was, like, dead serious in this, like, I was fully in love. I met

them, you know, like, it was like every time I would call in his name, I would just, it was, and I'm not going to lie. Like, I used it like a drug. Like, while I was there, that first, like, month, I really would like, I'd be like, oh, I need to pray to Jesus so I could feel this this joy, right? And that's how it was. And so I was just getting just changed, like, radically. And I remember one night I prayed and I said, Lord, I said, if you get me out of here, I said, I'll pray for every person I see. I said, I'll do whatever you want me to do. I said, I'm 100% in.

And I said, you don't owe me anything. Like, I made this bed. I get it, you know, but that'd be cool, right? I said, it'd be cool, Lord, if you get me a Christian halfway house so I can bond out so I can look good for court at least. You know, I'll still do the time, but I'll look better in their eyes. So, like, a week later, my lawyer comes in. He's like, hey, I got a ticket out of here for you.

I got this Christian halfway house. He said, he said, you get a bed-to-bed train. It's a six-month program. If you complete it, you know, the judge would probably work with you. And so I did that. And in that time, it was like my relationship with God just took a whole new, like a whole, it just kept growing. And I remember knowing like, if I don't stick to this with everything I have, I'm going

to go back to what I was doing. And so I was in another state. I didn't tell you I was home. And so yeah, I mean, and then a year later, I go to court. the judge basically was like, look, there's no point of locking up again. My PO loved me, so she's writing good reviews. It's like, I'm in a halfway house. You know, like I have my job.

Everything is. And so that's the... So then you come to the end of that. And is that it? Is that happily ever after? You don't do drugs. You don't, you know, commit crimes or anything. I guess your crimes were all drug-related, so it's not like you were going and burglarizing.

Yeah. house is raining. But is that it? That's the end of the story? No, no. No, no. That's the, you know, that's, so, okay, so I'm in this, like, evangelism mode, right? So I go, because I have that addictive, like, personality, I'm all in for this Jesus stuff. Well, I'll tell you, too, I don't have a particularly addictive personality. When I, I was an atheist for 10 years, I reverted in my early 20s, and after a kind of slow process of, for believing that God exists and then, you know, that the Bible is real, Christ is who he says he is. And when it clicked, though, I had that same feeling of, what do I do now? Do I just have to,

I just need to tell everybody. I need to, whatever I am doing, I need, doesn't matter. I need to just go. And I think this happens to all converts and reverts or many of them. A friend of mine converted, had this very numinous experience where he said, I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I said, describe it for me. He's like, I can't describe it for you, buddy. But I'll tell you this, when it happened to me, I was just totally bowled over. And my first prayer was, Lord, please don't make me a Jesus freak. He said, please don't. But you just feel, and it's funny in that, you've got the zeal of a convert, so all you want to do is go out and talk about it. But you are probably rather immature in your faith at this point because it's so new.

And so in a way, you're the best person to go evangelize, but in a way you're like the worst person to go evangelizing because you just don't, you just haven't been doing it. You know, it's not in your muscle memory exactly yet. And so, and if you have an addictive personality, I'm sure it's that times 10. Yeah. No, that's basically what it was. I was addicted to reading my Bible. I was addicted to praying and worshiping.

And I was addicted to telling people about Jesus. That's exactly what it was. And so that went on, though, for a while. That was my life to the point where, I mean, honestly, there was a point where that first year, I worked as little as possible at a labor finders. You know what I mean? At a temp agency, meaning like $50 a day,

just enough to pay rent for my halfway house, and I would spend all my free time going and praying for people and evangelizing. I treated it like a job. And so I'd spend my whole day praying, and then I'd go pray for people, come home, pray, go out. And I did that for a while. And then so basically what happened was,

I got married a little over a year after getting saved. The girl that was taking me in church ended up being my wife. It's convenient. Yeah. So that, like, invited another level of, like, just life responsibility. And so then I had to kind of change how I was moving. And then I'd say a year after that, it was like I started reassessing everything. And basically what I mean by that is I started to not.

not feel that like Jesus high every time I prayed. I started to not get those, you know, I always joke around and say the best intercessors of a newborn again believer because it's like when I first got saved, every prayer was getting answered. Like boom, boom, boom. And it was nice and then it got to the point where it was like I had a weight, no, is or whatever.

Yeah, I explained that to myself. Because there was, when I reverted in those early years, you know, it's weird. It's really weird how palpable it all is, how just real it is all the time. And now looking back on it, these things still happen. Everything is rich in meaning and the world is teeming in miracles. But I look back on it and I think, oh, I guess I just really needed that. I sometimes think it's God saying, hey, you stupid idiot.

Why don't you get it? And then after a certain amount of time, you don't need that as much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the process of maturing, right? It's like, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's what it was, was like I was used to God being so on me, kind of, and then it started to feel a lot more distant.

It started to feel a lot more like faith. And so I started to basically just really get real analytical. I started to, I got out of that childlike faith of just believing and just being. And I started to watch a lot of like atheists talk about stuff. I started to, just, I was just questioning, like, because it was like, basically, I got to this point where I was like, all right, I know Jesus is real. I said, how can I, like, I feel like I'm starting to get arrogant. Like, you know, because I'm telling people, I'm out here preaching Jesus. I'm telling people they need to repent of sins.

I'm being that guy. And I believe it. I, you know, I believe it for me. But I'd say, how do I know it's only for me? What if there was other ways for other people? Like, you know, how, like, am I? The idea of the technical term is indifferenceism. What if all religion?

are pretty much the same man, you know, and you worship this part of the elephant, and I worship this, whatever, you know, that was a very popular idea. It's extremely wrong, but it is a very popular idea. So you're exploring this and you're saying, well, you know, maybe what I'm doing is just one thing among many that we could do.

Yeah, that's all. And it was more of like, Jesus is the truth, the way of life, but what if there's more to what's been presented? Hmm. You know, like, what if there's more to this than just what I've been finding? church. You know, I was... Do you mean more in that other religions are true, or do you mean more in that Christianity

is about more than this? Christianity is about more than this. Yeah, so it was kind of like, maybe there's more to this than what we think. And I started looking into more like early church and started just look, just research everything. I mean, I put my faith up on the altar kind of and just was like just trying to, it was almost like I was trying to crush my faith, you know, in an honest way of like, look, God, this is where I'm at. And then I started to get, I guess, bitter. That's what really started to happen was I started to get bitter

because I was praying for people when I was doing God's work, I thought. And I started to get prideful and feel like, well, look God, I'm doing this, this, this. And it wasn't like, you're not doing something for me. It was, why aren't you helping them? Like, that's kind of how I started to feel because, you know, I come from addiction.

So I was trying to help other addicts. I'm trying to help. And it was like, you know, I was trying to lead them to Jesus. And it wasn't working the way I thought it should. And so I started getting prideful. I started thinking I was God's boss almost. And that's kind of, because I said, you know, I'm like,

well, I've been doing this for two years. I don't know what's really coming of it. My life has changed, but I said, I want to see other people's lives change too. Or I don't feel, you know, it's like I don't feel like I could really be confident in this if it's not producing fruit for other people. And so I found this, in my research one day, I found this article about this,

mystic group that would basically took mushrooms as a form of basically connecting to God. Like, it was normal, and that's what the Bible referred to as manna. So it was this rabbit hole I was saying. They said that manna was mushrooms. Was shrooms. Wow. They said it popped up every morning, like. Yeah.

When I read that passage about the manna, it doesn't exactly resemble shrooms to me. But that's very funny that they're saying this, because with mushrooms in particular, but all of it, the empty acid, all the psychedelic stuff. There is this weird culture where if you see a heroin addict on the street, you say, oh, there's a junkie, there's another bum, hope he doesn't kill himself. But then someone says, oh, I do shrooms all the time. You say, wow, you must be so spiritual, wow. And it's just like, you're both poisoning yourselves.

That is the aesthetic of it, though, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, for me, it was like I still had these memories. of the positive from it. So I still at that point, I hadn't connected the dots

to this was part of the problem. In my mind, I was the problem because I was on drugs, so now I'm starting to think that seed is planted. Right. That was a prefiguring of your true enlightenment,

which is actually in this relationship with your savior. Yeah. And it basically just started, and I didn't do anything with it for a while. It started to kind of just brew under the surface. And I said,

you know what, Josh? I said, maybe because you're on heroin or all this other stuff, what if now that you're clean, you haven't done hard drugs in a few years? Maybe now you can take mushrooms. It's natural. I'm not talking about acid.

I'm talking about mushrooms because they're natural. And now you can probably connect with Jesus in a better way. You know, this relationship isn't as supernatural as it was in the beginning. Yeah, you're losing. Your tolerance is growing, let's say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not feeling that high. Yeah.

And so I said, maybe mushrooms will do the trick. And not only for that, but also maybe I can get some answers for other people because I'm encountering this question all the time about people doing psychedelics and seeing it be a thing. I said, you know, God, my heart is to like, I put my heart before God. I've like, look, like, this is where I'm at. I said, I kind of feel like doing it. And, you know, I said, worst case scenario, I find out it's not good. And, you know, I don't do it anymore. Yeah.

Well, the thing about it is that, you know, and I say, I. I say this as humble as possible. Like, when I say I was in it, I mean, like, I really was sold out. I was living right. I wasn't, like, a Christian that was dabbling in sin and the world and going to church. I mean, I literally was, my life was dedicated to this. Like, that's all I thought about. It's all I did.

And, you know, like, I didn't have a life. That was my life. And so, like, and so it wasn't like, oh, I was already slipping away or something. And so basically months passed. And so one night I'd go to my friend's house and we're going to make music. And while, you know, he's loading up the beat and everything. And this was a friend of mine that it was like the one of like two friends that I had that, the old friends that I didn't completely cut off.

But it wasn't, you know, it was more just like I would make music with them. I still loved them. So it's like I'd keep my distance, but show up. And so anyways, he dumps out this backpack of chocolate mushrooms right over the bed, right in front of me. And he basically was like, here. You know what I mean? Here, try one.

You know what I mean? And now the thoughts of what I was thinking in the last few months pop up. And so I said, you know what, Josh? I said, I'm tired of it. Internally, I'm like, you know what? I'm tired of being fear with this. I just want to face this. I don't like the fear that.

Like there's this fear of I shouldn't do this. And I didn't like that, you know? Like I said, you know, I don't like fear. I'm going to confront this. I'm going to take it. I said, it's now or never. I'm not going to sit here and think about it anymore. I was tired of processing it in my mind.

I just wanted to try it. I said, you know. People get so sick of the anxiety and the hemming and hawing and the moral conscience telling you no, no, no, that you think, well, here's one way I can shut up that moral conscience. I'm just going to do it. And then I won't have that anxiety of anticipation anymore. Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably what it was.

It was like, you know what, if you're going to do it tonight, it's just going to bother you. So I did it. And I ate, it was an eighth of mushrooms. And just for context, like, that was the normal dose that I would take. That was like a normal go-to dose. It's definitely on the higher end as far as like when you're looking at microdosing and stuff, it's a lot lower than that. But I had taken much larger doses, too.

I had taken, you know, double. Of everything. Yeah, yeah. And so to me, it was like this is kind of mild, right? That's how I'm thinking. And so I take it and it starts off good the first 20 minutes. I'm just getting in my vibe and, you know, and just listening to the music. And it's all good vibes and good thoughts.

and I'm happy and this gonna be good. And then at one point my friend says, hey, these guys want to go to the bar? Do you want to come? I said, no, I said, what is he? I just, what is eight? I don't wanna go to the bar. And so he said, well, I'm gonna go.

You can stay here if you want, is that cool? I said, all right, I guess. I'm stuck here now, you know, kind of thing. And so he leaves. And this stuff, it takes like probably 30 minutes to kick in. So in the meantime, you start kind of feeling your stomach will start to turn. There's like this pre almost,

anxiety kind of thing, like you feel it kind of starting to creep up on you. And so I already had to feel that. So I said, we're about to go into this. And so my friend, he walks out the door. The second he walked out the door, it was like that feeling of sleep paralysis, the feeling of like demons and evil, walks in the room. It was like this transfer. Like he left. And it was, the first thing I noticed was if I feel like I just got set up unknowingly. I feel like my friend just set me up and he was used as a vessel and had no idea, completely not in his mind. knowing what he was doing. But I just got set up here. Which you did.

100%. And that was so clear. You know what I mean? I was like, I was like, wow, I just got set up. And so he walks out and evil just walks in. Mind you, I have had demonic encounters as a Christian at this point just based off doing God's work and having demons come and attack me and stuff. I had cast out demons and all that kind of stuff. So I know this presence. I'm still like 100% sober-minded.

like I'm 100% in my rational mind. I feel it tangibly come in the room. I said, oh, I know that presence. And so I said, oh, no, this isn't good. And so, but I'm like, all right, I know how mushrooms work. I'm going to stay positive. Keep my mind right. This, you know, if I feed into this or it's going to get worse, I start ignoring it.

I said, I'm good. And I go into the bathroom. And I'm talking, I'm cheering. I'm giving myself a pep talk in the mirror. And I said, I said, Josh, I said, you took mushrooms. I said, all right. you're gonna be okay. I said, you can't die. And the second I said, you can't die, I heard a voice speak in my heart, the same way I always have heard God speak to me, cross-check everything.

It says, who says I can't take your life whenever I want? Who says, like, and it wasn't in a way of, of, like, anger. It was a checking of my pride. Like, who says I just can't stop your heart whenever I want? Like, what do you mean you can't die? I could just do it now, right? Like, for no reason. You could just drop, right? So it was like, oh, I could die. You know? this could be it. And so then I started being like, oh, wow, this isn't good. I started feeling like, all right, I need to start repenting. So I started praying. And it was like as soon as I started to pray and started to ask God to help me, it just, I felt like I just was getting just, like a dark cloud was just coming around me. I could tangibly feel it. I could feel like closing in

on me. And I'm like, but I'm still in this like state of like, it's going to be okay, you're good. And I'm like, you know what, Jesus, forgive me. you know how we think like oh i messed up oh lord forgive me and we're good yeah yeah so it's like forgiveness doesn't equate to consequence so it's like right the consequences were still there and then i realized oh no i opened this door right i know better i'm not a baby i'm you know a young child and god i knew better and so now it's all hitting me like oh what did you do like this is and you just open this door this is and you're gonna be stuck in this place because now i know i already have my spiritual eyes open sober minded in the

So now that I'm spiritually awake and not dead in sin, now when I actually open that veil, it's not going to be clear. It's going to know what it is now. And so I started praying and I'm just feeling like death encompassed me. And that's what talks about in Psalm 18. Death encompassed me, you know. And that's what it feels like. And I'm, I call my wife and I said, she was out with friends at dinner. I said, you need to come get me. She had no idea what I was doing. I didn't even, I wasn't planning this, right? I can't imagine she would have approved. Yeah, no, she doesn't know.

And it's starting to get worse as before, like, leading up to when she got there, it started to feel like something was pulling, like, started to feel like my spirit was wanting to go somewhere. I can't explain it. It's like, it felt like the light was flickering within, like, it was like someone was pooling me somewhere. And so it was like, by the time she gets there, I'm in the, I'm not able to really function at this point. I couldn't breathe well. And so she's trying to talk. Like, she thinks

this is just normal Josh coming in the car. Like, hey, why have anyone? And I said, I can't talk and I said, just pray. I said, just pray for me. I didn't even have time to explain to her what was going on. By this point, I was, I couldn't breathe. It was, and she's even like, she's like, what's wrong? Like, because I'm like, I'm gasping for breath. And I'm feeling my body, like, go go in and out. It's like, I'm here talking to you. And the next thing you know, it's like, boom, snapped into like a dream room. It's like in and out, like in and out of consciousness. And then, but it would be a black void.

So we're going through this whole car ride and every now and then I'll try to like tell her like, just I can't talk about you know, I'm like, over like 30 minutes I gave her the story. Like, oh, I took mushrooms, all right, you know. And so I get home, by the time I get home, it was just full, like it was just fully on. I run into my room, I lay on the floor.

And at this point, I'm just getting pulled. Like I just, I'm feeling my soul just get pulled out. body. And so I'm in this dark, like, void. And next thing I know, I start, there starts to be like sight coming to it, because it's just abyss of blackness. And so I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I realize I'm in this giant hand. So I'm in this hand, and then I see demons right in front of me. And it's all the same demons I've seen in that one overdose. It's like, like, I don't know if they were the exact same ones, but they looked the same. It was the same Same breed. Same breed, yeah. Except this time, there was like taller ones. It was like they were the ones in charge. Like they were, they were higher ranking ones. So I'm in this hand. And now I'm in another reality. And now fears like what is going on. Where am I? What is? The first thing that hits you is you're helpless. That's the, I think the first thing that really got me, even before this happened, like up to this point, it's knowing like, who are you going to call? Like, what are you going to do? You're going to do? You're going to do?

What do? You know, it's not like when you're a kid, you call your mom to help you and, you know, like, there's nothing you can do. The hospital can't help you. This is a, you know what I mean? Like, this is, there's nothing you can do right now. So you're just helpless. So I'm in this, you know, I'm in this hand and I'm seeing these demons. And so the one stands up. And then I'm looking at like my attention. Once that one stands up, I, like, my attention diverts. And now it was like this, this light tower. It was like this thing, if it was just tilted up and just lights just with no walls, but you could see just a big light beam tower kind of thing with different colors. And I knew that was like the kingdom of heaven. And then I knew that I was in outer darkness of some sort. I was in this in-between place. And so now this demon's stepping forward, and he's presenting a case to this tower. And he said, we're tired of this kid.

He keeps coming into our kingdom, taking. people out and then he came back and ate off our table. And it hit me right then there. You're an evangelist. You're winning souls for Jesus all the time. You really are coming into, you know, and I would go into, you know, wherever, inner cities, wherever, any neighborhood and just preach Jesus, talk about Jesus, get people safe, you know what I mean? But you could bring a thousand people into the church and you could wind up in the bad place. Uh-huh. 100%. What a phrase. he keeps taking souls out of here, but then he comes and eats from our table. Peter Craft, the theologian philosopher, he says that abortion is the demonic inversion

of the Eucharist. The Eucharist, the priest holds up the consecrated host and says, recites the word of our Lord, says, this is my body, which will be given up for you. And what abortion does is uses the same words to a diabolically opposite end, which is, this is my body. This is my body. I won't save, I'll kill for my body. Wow. And even this idea of the Eucharist is manna from heaven. That's what you're seeing, the figure of the Eucharist in the manna that comes down and saves the Israelites, gives them bread to eat.

And we now have this in the Holy Communion. And as you said earlier, this idea that, no, man, you know, what if the mushrooms are the act? That's kind of like the manor. But the demons are telling you in this trip, they're saying, that's our food from our table that he's eating. 100%. And that was, I mean, like, that was the crux of the whole thing for me. Because at that point, the thing about the Spirit realm is you don't need a lot of words to get a lot of revelation. And nothing is spoken.

This is all telepathically, it's just known. In the spirit, nothing is hidden. All things, nothing is hidden from the light, right? So in the spirit, everything is just, it's out on the open. You don't have money to hide behind. You don't have a facade. You don't have, everything that you try to ignore is there, whether you like it or not, and it's seen. And so it was that moment of being naked before everything.

of me being a hypocrite in that moment, me backsliding me, whatever I was, everything was there. Oops. You know? Oops. And now it was a matter of, I'm in this hand that I can't just get out of this.

All right, see you like later, guys, you know, it was, this is serious. This was, I was in the courts of heaven. I mean, it was literally, they were presenting a case against me to God. And so I'm sitting there. Now I'm freaking out in the sense that I already was feeling my body what was going on, it felt like everything was shriveling up. You know,

it's like you could feel your organs drying up. Fear becomes a jacket, like a living thing that comes around you. Just despair. I mean, every negative, like emotion feeling you could think of is there and then it's heightened. And I felt like a slug if you pour salt on it. I felt my life literally just getting pulled out of me shriveling up while I'm in this hand. I feel my breath just getting pulled out. I mean, and mind you, in real time, you feel like you're connected to your physical body. So I'm still like 5, 10% aware of what's happening in my body.

And every, you know, 10, 15, my wife's freaking out, you know, and during this time, she's freaking out. She doesn't know what to do. She thinks, should I call hospitals? What should I do? But I know what's going on. So I'm telling her, just pray for me. Just keep praying.

Like that, I was like, just pray. And then I'd get pulled back into it, and I'd be in this reality. And so... Because you're not in physical danger of death, any more than any of us is at any given moment. If you were on heroin or something, you would have been in physical danger of death. But as you said consciously, you said,

these are mushrooms. Mushrooms at this dose, they're not going to kill you. God tells you, well, I can stop your heart whenever I want. Right. But that's different. It's not the mushroom. So, you know, if your wife had said, hey, you're high on heroin or something,

and you said, well, don't call the doctors. She probably would have just called the doctors anyway. Right, right. But what you're saying is, no, my danger right now, though I feel it physically, the danger that I'm in right now is a spiritual danger. For sure. And, I mean, to be honest, to this day,

I don't know how, like, if it was just spiritually that I would have died? Like, it felt physical. That's the thing. Physically, my body was not functioning. Like, it felt physical. And the reason I say that is because people get this idea that, like, like I said, like, oh, you can't die from this, you can die from that.

There's, you know, this spiritual realm is what is really deciding the physical realm. So it's like, that was a major infraction. Yeah. The technical language for this is that the matter is just like the stuff that's in the spiritual realm is the form. the substance, like our soul is the substantial form of our body. And so people try to really neatly separate these two things, but that's not really how it works. You are your soul, you are your body. Those things are together inseparably, for now, in this world. And so to try to say, well, no, that's just happening to my spirit. It has no effect on my body. Or this

just happening to my body. What are you talking about? You're both. So that's like one of the greatest mysteries I'm getting to right now. But that's, I mean, that's the mystery of it all, or not even really the mystery. That's the truth behind it. Is that that's like the spirit world is happening right now while we're sitting here talking. So that's what the first thing it showed me was my body is literally laying there. My soul is literally in the spirit realm. So this is happening right now.

So when you see people physically going through something, you don't know what is happening in the spiritually a lot of times. So anyways, this is happening. So I'm feeling this whole thing going on in my body. I'm literally losing breath. I'm crying out for God to have mercy. But I'm thinking at this point, like, God heard me by now. Like, either he forgives me or he doesn't.

So I'm kind of like I started to give up because it was exhausting me. It was physically like it was giving me, like it was taking all my strength to speak to say, God have mercy, forgive me. I just felt the longer I was in this hand, the more life was getting pulled out of me. and at one point I started to give up. I said, you know what, Jesus, forgive me. I made a big mistake. I'm a sinner.

I believe in you for my salvation. I said, I'm letting go. Like, I'm going to give up. I'm done fighting this thing right now. And so I started to relax. And I started to, but I'm still going through turmoil. But I started to think about my wife was pregnant at the time. I have another kid.

I started to think about that. And I said, no, I can't. I said, God. I said, you know what? It's not about me. I said, my kid needs me. And so that hit me. That was the next thing that happened was, oh, these people need me. So I said, God, just saved me for them, you know. And so at that moment, I started to feel almost a slight, like, pressure release. And then I started to notice that at the top of the tower, like, it was, like, I couldn't look at it. I knew, you know, it's the glory of God was up there. I couldn't go look at it. I knew it was there. But I could see the rest of the tower. And I could see that the source of that tower was at the top of it that was giving life to the rest of it. And all of a sudden, breath started coming.

Like, I could see, like, a little, like, breath would hit me. And then I'd feel it hit me. And then in that moment, I said, every breath that I get is, he's literally giving it to me. He's aware that he's giving it to me, consciously giving it to me. And it was like I would get the breath, and I would make it last because it was like, there was space in between.

It wasn't like I could just, like, we could breathe now, just as freely as we want, I couldn't breathe freely. I was breathing according to, like, him. And it's a beautiful metaphor. And of course, as we're speaking here, there's really no such thing as a metaphor or literal. I mean, what we're saying is these, these two things intersect, physical and the metaphysical. And that you say, you couldn't breathe, and then God gives you that breath. And this is the image of, that's, that is what the Holy Spirit is, I mean, the bond of love between the father and the son and this procession of breath, which is...

Psalm 33. That's what it literally says. It says he spoke everything into existence. And then it says his breath made man breathe, like, and gave the being the hosts. I'm now witnessing this. You've received the Holy Spirit crisis, right? Breathe something. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And that's... So now I'm sitting with that. But it's like I start to get hope. Because I didn't have hope at that point. Like, I was just kind of just, I didn't know what to think.

It was just, I was just in pain and confusion, but also, like, just discomfort. So now I start to feel like maybe there's hope now. And so now the breath starts coming more fluidly, and I'm starting to, like, kind of ease up. And then all of a sudden, it was like this cloud of witness. kind of came around me, right? And the Bible talks about that. So these saints start coming out, and I knew they were praying for me.

I just started to feel energy, love come from them. And as they began to pray for me, I started to feel more alive. And then all of a sudden, it was like a shadow of a cross came out, out the top of the tower. It was like a cross came out, and it was like the source of the top,

his attention turned to it. And it was this, because like I said, everything's telepathically, like it's all connected. Like you know what everything is kind of feeling and thinking in a sense. So it's like I could feel God's attention turn to the cross and remember. And then all of a sudden I look over and out of the tower, Jesus starts walking out. I see this man come walking towards me out into the center of this abyss.

He puts his arm around me. He looks at everything. All the demons, he looks, he puts his arm around me. He said, this one's mine. belongs to me. And as soon as he touched me, I went back to my body and began going through deliverance. Because Jesus can't, Jesus can't touch you. And so everything that I had just allowed into my life, I literally was puking, like I never had a painful vomit like that. I was puking my guts out, filling up garbage bags, little shopping bags. Which is common. I mean, this is people,

maybe not as intensely as what you're describing, but people always talk about this really, spiritual experience of ayahuasca, they all vomit a bunch. You think, that doesn't seem so beautiful. And even the beauty of that image, though, where Christ walks out and touches you, and you're back in the body, which is, it's an incarnational faith. The pivot of history is the incarnation,

the second person of the Trinity, Son of God, into flesh. And he was incarnate of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and becomes man. The fact that God, the sun, becomes man, is this height, this perfection of the unity of physical and metaphysical. You think, no, the body actually does matter. We actually are these things. And you see this in the sacraments that he gives us.

So this is, this bread is my body. How do you make sense of it? It only makes sense in an incarnational faith. So the second he touches you, oh, yeah, there's the body again. Oh, right. Oh, there I am. That's you gave me a piece of it. Because the funny thing about this story is there's so, so much that I'm still peace.

Probably the rest of my life I'll be piecing together parts of it. And so I go through deliverance. I collapse. I puked my guts out. I think it's over because I collapse. I feel kind of that release of like it's going to be okay. And I collapse. But now when I collapse on the floor, I go back.

But this time I'm in that tower. And when I'm in the tower, now I'm in the tower. Now I'm in the light. I know the darkness is behind me. I'm looking at Jesus face to face. And it's like hit, you don't see everything else. It's like everything else fades away, like a cinematic, you know, in your iPhone.

All I could see was his eyes. And his eyes were like almost like the earth. Like they were multiple colors. It wasn't just like, oh, they're blue or brown. It was like, there were shades of green. There was shades of blue. It was just like, they magnetically like pull you into him. And then it also simultaneously pulls itself

to you. It's like this, like this. So everything's just fading away. And it's just, he's staring in my eyes. He smiles at me. So he's smiling at me as if he's happy to see me. I'm thinking about what just happened. But he's looking at me as if, like, he was happy to see me. And he said, maybe we shouldn't do that again. And he smiled at me. Like, I love you. And so in that moment, Oh, man. It's like, what do you do with that? In the moment, I'm receiving that, but I'm still stuck in what happened in the past. But I'm also, now scripture is flooding my mind.

I'm thinking about Psalm 73, for whom do I have in heaven but besides you? Who do I decide on earth? Like, literally, Jesus is all we have in heaven. Like, it's because of him. It's him alone. Like, we have nothing else on our side. There's nothing else. Or, like, he's it.

And so that's hitting me. Like, oh, you're the one that came from me. No one else. There was no one else that could have came for me. It was you. The saints are praying for you. Right. But he comes for you. Yeah. But it's through him. So it was like, yeah. So that's all hitting me. And so he like starts like walking with me. But I started to notice because I'm looking around and it wasn't like I was seeing everything as clear as I'm seeing this room. It was almost like there was a sheet over it. So everything was kind of veiled, but I could see it. So I could make out, oh, this is this kind of color.

Oh, there's a being there. So I'm seeing light beings kind of. And I'm seeing that there's stuff around. There's life around. But I'm sensing that things like that these like angels or these these saints, whatever they were, were kind of disappointed in me. Not mad at me, but it was kind of just like, you knew better, Josh, like kind of thing. Like, you know, it wasn't a shaming way.

It was just like. It's just what it is. It just is what it was. It was just kind of like that's wild. I guess it shouldn't be wild that you describe it that way, because this is the scene in Dante's divine comedy, in paradise. Something I'm always struck by when I love the poem. And when Dante gets up to heaven, he has wonderful conversations with these people, one of his ancestors, saints, and the object of his love, well, the ultimate object of his love is God, but he is sort of channeling it through this beloved Beatrice. And Beatrice

sends Virgil down on this mission to go pull Dante out of his midlife crisis and the wayward way and pull him down through the pits of hell, up through purgatory, up into heaven. But she's not nice to him. The first thing she says to him when she sees him at the end of purgatory going into heaven, she says, he's crying because Virgil goes away. And his Virgil's a pagan, can't go to heaven. And she says, stop crying. Don't piongri an encore.

Don't piongriere encore. cut it out, we gotta go. And then she goes up, and she's fairly steely-faced in heaven. And she's looking at God. And he can see in the reflection of her eyes. That's how he's looking at her eyes, and he's seeing God reflected there. But she's not saying, oh, hey, buddy, good to see you. Oh, atta boy.

She's saying, no, reality is what reality is. And I'm not going to pray for you, but I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. And that's what I think. Like, we get sometimes this idea that, like, angels in heaven and Jesus, it's like this teddy bear, like, oh, you know, like, and it's like, they're serious. Jesus was about his father's business. This is, like, a serious God's about his will being done. So it's like, this isn't a game, you know?

It's like, why are we referred to as armies and sports players and, you know, like, and soldiers? Church militant. Right. And so that was very clear to me. And so with that, I couldn't accept it. Like, shame just hit me all of a sudden, and I took off. It's like I took off. Where I was at, there was levels to it.

There was different dimensions of glory. Where he brought me was a higher one. I knew there was one or two above me, and I knew there was at least three or four under me. So when I looked down, I said, I'm going to the lowest part of heaven I can find. As low as I can to stay here. Good strategy.

Good advice and good strategy. Yeah, so I took off. I mean, like, you think it and you just travel. You go. You're there. So next thing, I'm at the ground, and I'm on my knees, and I'm just worshiping. I didn't want to look at anything.

I said, God, don't make me speak ever again. I'm not worthy to speak. I said, all I want to do is worship. I said, just let me worship. And so that was, like, the next thing that 100% hit me of, you're giving me this breath. The only thing that I should do with it is give it back to you in a way that pleases you. So it's like, I don't really want to, like, just let me worship.

That's the only heart response to what's going on right now and to where I'm realizing where I'm at, I'm not, I shouldn't be here. But then Jesus came down and he comforted me. It was like this just moment of let it go. Like just you're here, embrace it. So I started to ascend back with him. And then it was like I switched. I wasn't with him anymore.

I was in this, almost this bubble of like, just like colors was like flying by me. And it was like downloads were just flooding through me. I felt like I was hooked up to a machine. You see people like hooked up those machines are like, uh, like, that's what I felt like. I felt like I was hooked up to this machine, and every question I had was just flooding through me to the point where I said, stop, you're going to kill me.

It was like, it was like God's love and his wrath, his grace, and everything was all mixed in one almost. It was like this, you're being too good to me. I don't deserve it. It was like all, and everything I want to know is coming to me. Everything I could ever think about in my life and wanting to understand is coming to me. getting all the, it's just flooding me. It's just hitting all simultaneously.

In the matter of minutes, it's like, down, download, download, down, everything made sense. And I literally was crying out to stop. I said, stop, show me this, stop showing me this. It's gonna kill me, it's gonna kill me, it's gonna kill me. And then next thing I know, I just, I just started, it started like lightning up,

and then I'm back in my body. And it was just like, it's over. Like, but I didn't really want it to be, you know, like over now. Because now I'm like, it was like, all right. Well, you see the same experience that you're describing when God's face passes by in Genesis. Don't look directly.

You can't look. You will die. If you look directly at the face of God, you can look at the back of his head, but the sense that you'll be overwhelmed because you're finite. Yeah. And so you can't comprehend God.

It is not, that's not going to work. Yeah. If he were totally comprehensible by you, he wouldn't be God, and you wouldn't be you. Right. No, I mean, it reminded me of like when Paul said, there's things I've seen, I can't tell you. Yeah. It's like. And I see through a veil half darkly.

Yeah, yeah. You're describing this veil, right? It was too much for my natural body contained. And you know what? You reminded me of something when you're talking about Dante's Afrinno. And I haven't talked about this really yet, but what was, because I was baptized Russian Orthodox, which is, I think, very similar to Catholic faith. And somebody asked me, they're like,

have you heard of the toll houses? And when I started looking at the toll houses, I was like, I really feel like that's what I experienced. You know, and I, so I didn't get this still after, but it's similar to like purgatory. And that's what, so I've been looking at... The toll houses are. You won't get out until you pay the very last farthing, that sort of thing?

That's kind of how it felt. I mean, I don't know. I just, when I read about what Toll Houses are, I'm like, that's definitely what it seemed like I was going through. That's definitely what it felt like because there was a period of hell. It was a form of hell, not the fullness of it. Even the description that you have of the trial, you know, the shrine, we're all in trials. That's what, Jesus is led by the spirit into the desert to be tested by into a trial, you know, leave me not into a trial, leave you not to temptation, deliver me from evil.

So you come to, your wife is there. Then what? Has the story end? It's the story's still going on. And she's freaked out. Basically, like, she doesn't really know what to think. And, you know, my wife didn't grow up in that world. So she doesn't see this.

She doesn't, you know, she's just taking my word for her to just, like, calm down, relax, it's going to be okay, pray, whatever. So she's just kind of like, oh, I'm glad it's over. I mean, what do you really say after that? You know, it's not like there was a. a significant, like, reaction. She was just freaked out. She's like, that was scared.

You know, until the day, like, when this thing comes up, she's like, yeah, that was scared. You know, and she'll say that. And then I laid in bed, and I was scared to move. You know, for the rest of the night, I stayed awake saying, hallelujah, hallelujah. You know, and for the next three days, I didn't want to talk. I was scared to talk.

I mean, that's what the fear of God will do. I mean, the fear of God got so deeply drilled into me and not, I'm scared of God. the acknowledgement of his holiness. Wonder and awe, right. Servile fear is different than holy. The holy fear is that. Exactly.

And so that was the main takeaway from it. Like, God really is that holy. And that's so, like, that ties into this whole, you're your own God, you're your own divine. It's like. That's what it, all my friends who have gotten sucked into this stuff, whether we're talking about chemical or just, spiritual or usually it's some kind of combination of the two. And it always seems to come down to

you're your own God and you can do whatever you want. You've got the power and you, you, you, you, you're like, if it's about you, you, you, you're probably not on the right path, man. Yeah, I agree. I think that, and that's the, I think, the big, like, difference to me is that God wants to create with us, and Jesus is the center of everything. These whole movements, they take everything that God intended for us to have, and not everything, but some things,

and they just kick Jesus out of it. So, you know, and it reminds me of that parable where the guys said, I'm going to send my helper to the vineyard to get my fruit. They beat him up, beat him up, I'll send my son. They said, oh, we'll kill him so we can inherit what belongs to him. That's literally what Satan has done. He's perverted everything that God has, took it for himself,

and then made people afraid of certain things that God had created for people, and he kicked Jesus out of it. So it's like, you know, everything's gotten perverted. It loves it. The image of the cross is the axle on which the world turns, on which the universe turns. You know, that's just, that's where it all turns around. And you can deny that, but if you deny that,

you're going to find yourself increasingly incoherent. And you can, you can try to make a God of yourself. That's the primal temptation in the Garden of Eden, as you shall be as gods. But you're not going to end up as a God. You're going to end up destroyed physically and spiritually. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not going to work out. No, it's not. So, yeah. I mean, that's the... And that's that. That's that. Yeah, that's that story. So... Gosh, it's an amazing story. Yeah.

I was going to say that's a hell of a story, but a lot of it was a hell of a story. Yeah. But it's got a happy ending. It ends like a comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It ends good. Doesn't it all? Doesn't it all have a happy ending?

I hope for most of us, you know. I think it, but I think that's what I gather. The happy ending might not be guaranteed. We're just talking right now during Lent and the Easter exclamation. that people make is, oh, happy fault. In the Garden of Eden, the sin that destroyed perfection. Oh, happy fault, the one for us so great, so glorious, a redeemer. That's what you say on Easter, you say, oh, all right, look at that.

There was all this terrible stuff that happened, but God can turn that even for good. And then we, all we have to do is cooperate with God's grace. See, it should be this easy part. Yeah, yeah. Even time and time again, five overdoses. Yeah, that's what I was saying. I know I'm just a vessel of mercy. That's the point this has brought me to.

I know that I'm only here because of God and God alone. I know that I'm only here because of God and God alone. You know, I'm aware of that, you know. And so now really the only thing I could do is try to just submit to his will and his grace as much as I can, you know, and stay in that lane. So, thank you for coming in, Josh. Of course. Thank you for having. Where can people find you?

So I have an Instagram, Joshua underscore Kingdom Priest, and I have a TikTok, the same thing. And I have a YouTube, just my name, Joshua Zatkoff. I'm Michael Knowles. We'll see you next time. Right here. Not loving your AT&T or T Mobile Bill. Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot. Good news.

Bring your AT&T or T Mobile Bill to Verizon and we'll give you a better deal. from that unfortunate phone bill and get to Verizon. Run, ride, canoe. Whatever it takes, we'll be here. Bring your AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network. A better deal. No surprises.

That's Verizon. Best Network based on Route Metrics, Best Overall Mobile Network Performance U.S. Second Half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person who gave me the deal. Additional Terms Conditions and Restrictions apply. How many discounts does USAA Auto Insurance offer?

Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount? New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts.

Restrictions apply.