Before I was a follower of Jesus I visually saw demons.
People can say it was psychological, psychosomatic, fabricated, or a work of the imagination. Obviously much of the work of science would point to those conclusions.
But I saw demons. Many times. I was possessed and harassed by them on multiple occasions and saw the same thing happen to my friends.
Why did this happen to me? Because of a lot of drugs.
In 1995 I began smoking marijuana regularly. From 1998 to 1999 I did LSD and psilocybin mushrooms regularly and often, I easily tripped close to one hundred times in that period.
And the psychedelic drugs especially caused me to see and experience demons.
At first, I just saw trails and things distorting and molding together.
But after multiple doses, I started to see spiritual beings made of darkness that roamed the earth, harassed, tormented, and possessed people. At times I experienced it first hand. During the first bad trip that I ever had on LSD, I was seeing these beings all over the floor of my house, and had this unshakable feeling that I was about to spend eternity being tormented. Again y’all- I experienced this and had zero belief in Jesus or God, and zero bible knowledge or upbringing!
One time I saw the shape of a face in the ground that looked like a skull. I was tripping on acid at the time. I asked my friend Chris, who was also tripping with me, if he saw the skull. He verified that he did. In the exact same place. To the point where he could even perfectly match my description.
And again- all this happened despite the fact that I grew up totally agnostic, with no biblical knowledge, belief in a spiritual realm, or even any sort of belief in God, satan, demons, or even the tangible existence of good and evil for that matter.
In fact, early in my journey out of addiction and into sobriety, my first Jesus following friend, Chip, dared me to pray and ask God if Jesus was really His Son. This was before I had any belief in anything biblical whatsoever.
I had been sober from psychedelics for many months, but was sitting in my room, having a flashback, and seeing demons. Terrified, I took my friend Chip up on his dare. I prayed, “God, if You’re real, and if Jesus is really Your Son, show me now!” There may have been a swear word or two in the prayer.
I watched as right after that prayer, a sense of great, overwhelming peace filled my body and calmed my fear, and I saw sparkles of white light fall out of the sky. The demons reacted to the sparkles of light in absolute horror and disappeared, being sucked into the ground, leaving me to not be able to see them anymore.
So when I read passages like Luke 4:31-37 and see the power of Jesus over demons. It hits home!
