"A Nightmarish Odyssey: My Epic Encounter with a Demonic Spirit"

[My chilling encounter with a demonic-force]

In ancient Greek, "Pharmacy" - Pharmacia- is directly translated to sorcery. In today's terms pharmacy is exclusively associated with drugs. Also in today's terms, sorcery is associated with witchcraft and evil. Now, in no way am I saying that the next time your doctor prescribes you 800 mg of ibuprofen you're going to be face to face with the devil. However I do believe whole heatedly that when one uses drugs such as methamphetamine and heroin, the cloak which separates the spirit-world from the non-spirit world is lifted. In other words, in my opinion, when someone opens themself up to that level of exposure it has the potential to invite a certain level of evil into their life. No, I didn't read this from a book manuscript or religious text- I lived it first hand. If you believe in foreshadowing and or metaphorical insinuations, this one's for you.

[N. Lamar] heading south towards [Parmer Lane] in Austin TX, a stretch of 8 miles I walked in the dead of night, ultimately trying to reach a gym which I would frequently steal from, in order to support my $200/day IV heroin and Meth habit

At this point in my journey through homelessness I'd been on the streets for the better part of four months. I had a raging intravenous heroin and methamphetamine habit, one which got quite expensive. On any normal given day, I would shoot 2 G of heroin and a gram of meth, which as a street dwelling junkie I was quite proud of. Heroin was $80 a gram, methamphetamine $40 a gram, I'll let you do the math. Due to this I needed a way to fund my habit. So, I got a job as a night stocker at the local HEB. Yeah and OJ Simpson is innocent(the glove didn't fit bro). Obviously I'm being facetious. I resorted to "hustling" as a way to fund my habit. In layman's terms, that means committing felonies on a daily basis. At the time I found a very lucrative hustle, picking locks. There was a gym which I would frequent that had personal lockers which were very susceptible to lock picking. I thought to myself how has no one figured this out yet, then I realized oh yeah most people aren't degenerate drug addicts. The only problem was this gym was located in Pflugerville, a good 10 MI from my "home base". Now, if you've ever been dopesick, you probably know there is nothing you wouldn't do in the moment to get you're fix, at least that rang true for me. Sensing my dopamine receptors screaming out in agony, like a high maintenance Karen whining because the barista put two pumps of foam instead of one in her latte, I decide I had one choice- to sit down suck it up and pray. Facetious. I channeled my inner Forrest Gump and before I knew it- "I was running!"

Now, I've always been an athlete. I'm talking about only Caucasian on the basketball court athlete. However, when I was taking fools to church on the hardwood, I wasn't an intravenous drug addict who slept two nights a week and barely ate. Thus, it made it very difficult to run a half-marathon on any given night at 2:00 a.m given my current state. But I figured, hey, I got to take a chance, Columbus did. It's amazing what the addicted brain will tell us we need and will justify what we have to have, regardless of consequences.

[Tech Ridge Shopping Center] IH-35 frontage road near Parmer Lane in Austin, TX where I took a pit-stop in order to shoot-up more methamphetamine while on my journey towards the gym I was ultimately trying to steal from.

So, I was off. I ran from Anderson Lane and Lamar all the way up to Parmer Lane and Lamar. From there, I walked the frontage road of I-35 towards Pflugerville. Somewhere along the way I realized I still had a shot of meth in my pocket, so I poured it out thinking no I don't need this. Extra facetious. I made a pit stop, boarded the train to tweakerville and took a ride. Almost instantly my friend John, another homeless junkie appeared out of nowhere. "Spence! Come on bro I got something to show you," John excitedly said. "Dude I thought u were locked up! Where we going," I said as I ran after him. "It's a surprise, hurry up," and boy was it a surprise.

At no point in my mind did I remember that 3 months earlier John was sentenced to the Texas department of corrections for 10 years for aggravated assault. At no point did I remember that due to his aggravating circumstances of his conviction, short of busting out of his prison cell Shawshank style, John by law was going to be locked up for at least the next 5 years. Like a lamb to slaughter, I continued following him.

[Oak Tree] , Cook-Walden Cemetery in Pflugerville TX, where I hallucinating chasing my friend as he told me to, "Follow him this way."

He led me to a gigantic open field which had tons of stones equally spaced apart from one another. For some reason there was a paved driveway through the whole field, something I couldn't understand. I could hear John say, "Over here!" Yet when I turned to hear his voice he wasn't there. This went on for what felt to be hours. Eventually, I heard John say "Here bro, lie down I wanna tell you something." At this point I started feeling weird, almost like if you were on a cruise ship which was sinking watching a thousand foot tidal wave coming towards yourself. An obvious omen, an overwhelming sense of Doom washed over me. "John, what the fuck is going on," I said in a trance-state. "We're gonna stay here for awhile, this is where you need to be." At this point I blacked out.

[Cook-Walden Cemetery] off I-H 35 Frontage in Pflugerville TX, where I was led by a hallucination of my friend "John", who was and is still in prison. I have no-doubt that God allowed me a glimpse into the demonic underworld through this experience.

The next morning I woke up to a lawn mower in the distance. I thought, "I know I wasn't mowing lawns last night what in the world's going on"? As I sat up and scanned the landscape, my heart dropped and my stomach sunk into the ground.

Sitting to my immediate left and to my immediate right equally spaced from where I was lying were two gravestones. I had followed "John" directly into the heart of Cook-Walden cemetery in Pflugerville. I had laid down in the middle of the night right in the middle of where a grave plot was going to be dug. Talk about f****** foreshadowing. My first thought was, "holy s*** no one's ever going to believe this story." My second thought was, "damn it I'm still dope sick." Not even beginning to grasp or appreciate the gravity of my situation, I stood up and continued walking to the gym.

I believe 1,000% that God allowed me to have that experience, that God allowed me to have a taste of the spirit realm, so one day I could realize just how dire my circumstances were and just how desperately I needed him. In my opinion, this is the mind f*** we call addiction. You can wake up lying in a cemetery essentially buried alive due to your addiction, then hop up and continue running and gunning, lacking complete regard for yourself or anyone else around you. If there were ever an event that was powerful enough to shock me into sobriety, this was it. However, that's what makes addiction addiction. There's nothing that's going to get in my way, stop me, or change me as long as I don't want to be changed. If it were that simple, it would have happened a long time ago. If it were that simple, penitentiaries mental hospitals and cemeteries wouldn't be full of well-meaning addicts. This game is chess not checkers. This game is real, cunning baffling and powerful. Let that sink in.