Happiness Beyond Comprehension

I have had some very extraordinary experiences in my life and would like to share a few of them. I am a twenty seven year old guy and in my opinion have had a very interesting life to say the least. I was a great athlete growing up. Baseball was my sport. My dream was to play professional.

After high school I received a scholarship to play at the college level. Everything was going great but for some reason I felt the need to experiment with drugs. At the age of 17 the first drug that I tried was marijuana, and shortly after that I took acid. I really enjoyed the high that they produced but was curious to try harder drugs.

Then, I found cocaine or maybe it found me. I loved it. When I entered college I would say I started to pass the phase of recreational drug use, but continued to chase my dream of playing professional baseball. Things started to get bad with cocaine and I had a couple overdoses which really scared me, but apparently not enough to quit cold turkey. Basically, I was a cocaine addict.

Meanwhile I continued to excel in baseball and was drafted by a major league baseball team. To make a long story short, I had a career ending injury which crushed me. Once I realized that my dream of making it to the major leagues was over, I didn't care about anything and began to fall deep into drug addiction.

After my third or fourth overdose, I decided to go to rehab. After leaving treatment I managed to stay off of cocaine for a few months only to relapse and sink deeper than before. At about the age of 24, I had an experience in which I believe was the devil. I had a vision. I remember lying down in bed and closing my eyes and an image of a wheel appeared in my head. The wheel was spinning and there were voices saying "undeniable, unbelievable" over and over. After about 2 or 3 minutes an image appeared in the wheel. It looked like writing on a stone. There were quite a bit of words but all I could make out was the number 28. I took it to mean that I was going to die at the age of 28 most likely of a drug overdose. This vision haunted me and really screwed my head up.

I started to attend 12 step meetings but for some reason it wasn't clicking for me like it was for other addicts there. Then in june of 2006 I had a relapse and was driving around snorting cocaine and overdosed at the wheel. I awoke totally disoriented with an oxygen mask on my face and was surrounded by cops and paramedics. I went to jail that night for possession of cocaine.

After returning to my job and confessing to my boss what had happened I was reassigned to grounds crew. The following day I had a profound experience with God. I remember walking around in a field picking up trash and just totally beating myself up mentally. I had just absolutely terrible thoughts. It started with me telling myself how at one time I was a pro baseball player and now a trash picker. Then the thoughts progressed to utter despair. Remembering my vision from which I think was the devil, I told myself that nothing is going to save me from cocaine and that I'm going to die. I had given up on life but the thought of death horrified me. I had no faith and had a lot of doubt if there was a God and a Heaven.

At the peak of these terrible thoughts something inside me instinctively cried out to a God I wasn't sure existed, and He answered. I cannot explain this experience fully in words but I will do my best. Through some sort of supernatural telepathy He told me that He was watching me. There was overwhelming peace and happiness, and instantly all of my problems seemed so trivial. It was like some of the stories that I have read in the bible. I couldn't believe it, it was totally surreal.

After this experience my obsession to use cocaine was removed. I went back to my 12 step meetings and continued to have similar experiences with God, and I want to share one more in this story.

I was praying in bed and was in a trance-like state when God spoke to me in a way which so high and beyond what I'm used to; very shocking. Its hard to describe but it was kind of like an out of body experience. I was totally aware of my spirit. He told me how special I was and that there was a Heaven. I was just absolutely hysterical. Most people aren't aware of how lucky we all are to have been born.

Since then, I am a sober, born again Christian and spread the message to drug addicts, alcoholics, and whoever cares to listen that there is hope.