I had promised myself that I was DONE smoking weed forever. And I was done smoking! At least…until the very next weekend…  I’m sure many people in that world can relate to that vicious cycle. So, the next weekend I was at one of my favorite spots down by the lake with some of my buddies.   “Hey, we’re gonna go smoke, do you want to come?”  I told them, “yeah, I’ll go with you but I’m not smoking anymore.”  Walking back into the woods with them I remember this big tree that cut right across the path, it was the perfect place for us to sit.  The bowl got passed from one person to the next and when it came to me I said, “No.” One of my friends said, “Bro…what’s one hit gonna do?”   I thought to myself, ‘well that’s logic!’…I had been smoking weed every day for a while now so I figured what’s one hit from a silly bowl of some trashy weed gonna do to me? It will barely even give me a buzz! …So I thought… I took a hit and passed it. Then I walked out of the woods and back to my car.

As I sat in my car, I didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what was happening but I felt something was coming, something Dark. I felt as if I had opened up something in a realm unseen by taking a hit of that weed. “What is happening to me?” It was at that moment that darkness washed over my body like I have never felt It was like a pool that I had just plunged into. I was launched into a spiral of darkness. I felt like I had once again left reality. “How could this be happening?!” I asked myself. “I just took ONE hit! What the heck is happening to me?!”

As I sat there alone, EVERY ounce of fear, the type of fear I had experienced the weekend prior was back. It truly was sheer terror. It was at this moment that I realized…it wasn’t the weed. Whatever was happening was spiritual and not of this world. There was no calming myself down.  I couldn’t shake this overwhelming sense of fear!  I couldn’t explain this away with “Hey when the high comes down you will be ok, because I wasn’t high!!”  There was nothing I could say to myself to comfort my thoughts!  Every moment of the nightmare from the last week was back.  I began to think that maybe all of those things I had been shown and whispered into my brain were right!   God isn’t real!   Sheer panic surged through me and all I could think was, ‘what am I gonna do??? What am I gonna do????’

I decided to do what I had done before and I went to bed that night hoping that once I woke, everything would be ok.   But in the morning all of the fear, uncertainty and despair were still there…everything! I was in a prison of darkness and didn’t know how to get out.  I didn’t know what to do.  I was going crazy.  I could barely function. I needed help.  I needed someone to help me!

I had to do something.  I didn’t care how drastic! I had to do SOMETHING! So, that morning, on October 6th of 2007 I sat down with my good Christian parents, who raised me in church, taking me every Sunday, Sunday night and Wednesday.   I told them EVERYTHING that I had been doing and how unbelievably terrified I was and about this horrible fear that I couldn’t shake.

You know, I was very, very good at what I did.  I always had my eye drops, to keep the redness out of them, I always had an extra shirt to wear and I always wore cologne. But my Mom knew that something was going on with her baby boy.  Every day when I arrived home, she would come into my room and take my dirty laundry.   She would grab my shirt and hold it up to her face to see if she could smell anything, but she never could.   I was too good at what I did.
I remember sitting there in the living room confessing all that I had been doing.  My wonderful Mother started crying and I didn’t care. My thoughts were swirling around in my head, ‘I don’t care if you cry, I don’t care if you are hurt by this; I just need some HELP right now!’  My Dad was very disappointed in me and said, “You really have ruined your witness.”

‘Are you kidding me?’ I thought.  ‘I don’t have a witness, the only people who think I’m a Christian is you guys!’  The people at school, my friends all knew I had been raised in a Christian family but hey, “you know Zach doesn’t live like a Christian.”  I never said it to my Dad, but I wanted so badly to tell him, ‘I didn’t ruin anything Dad; I’m trying to get right, right now!’  I tried the best I could to explain what I was feeling.  It was a mystery to them.  They had never experienced or dealt with anything like this.  I felt like a freak.

That feeling of sheer terror would not leave me.  It did not leave me, and I am not exaggerating, for probably 2 to 3 months.  Every morning, this big, 300 pound, seventeen year old boy would wake up crying; hoping that on THIS morning, the horrible feeling would be gone.  But it never was.  And I would literally say every single day, “I have no idea if you are real God.  I have NO idea what’s real. I’m just going to give you a shot okay? BUT, if I don’t feel anything I’m OUT.  I’m done with you! I’m done with everything!”  That’s what I tell my friends, even to this day.  “Hey, just give Him a shot.”

I have always been an intense person.  I’ve always been the leader in every group.  I was always spearheading things. If we’re doing it, I’m leading it.  And if we are doing it, we are going BIG.  Go Big or Go Home!

I heard once that our greatest strengths are the roots of our greatest weaknesses.  That is very true for me because I am one extreme or the other. If I’m good I’m doing really good, If I’m being a man of God I’m being a REAL man of God.  But if I mess up I don’t mess up a little bit, I mess up a lot a bit.  I’m one way or the other.  I’m an extremist.  If I’m going to do something, I might as well go all in.  And that’s what I did with the Lord.

Remember:

Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with ALL your heart. [emphasis mine]. There are no guarantees for 99%!

Every morning during these long weeks, I would wake up, I would cry and I’d read my bible.  I would take my bible to school and read all day. I would take it home and read until I went to bed! There was so much fear that I literally felt like if I wasn’t reading my bible that I would die. My heart would just stop beating and the fear would win. I would have all this insane questioning in my heart.  I questioned our existence. What is real?  What is right?  I had such crazy thoughts, but the only person I felt I could talk about these weird questions, without feeling like a freak, was my Mom and Dad; even though they had no answers.  During this time, there was NOBODY that could comfort me because nobody had understood the things that I had seen. But still, to try to calm my anguish, every day, sometimes several times a day, I would text my Mom during school.
“Mom, are you still praying for me??”

To Be Continued next week:  The last installment of “All Fun and Games, Until the Darkness Begins” part 4