The dust, the smoke, the smell of fuel, the noise, the laughing, the bottles of Jacks, the beer – these were \u2018my people\u2019 and this was definitely \u2018my scene\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was walking towards them, but something was wrong\u2026very wrong. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Normally, I would be right at home, drinking, joining in. But now, as I approached, two things were blatantly obvious:<\/p>\n
1) I had no desire for the drinks. None. As an acute alcoholic, this was monumental. I would normally not leave my house unless I was drunk. Then I would drink more on the way and when I arrived. But here, I was completely straight and the drinks were barely noticeable. I didn\u2019t care for them no desire at all. And as incredible as this was, I was hardly even aware that I didn\u2019t want the drinks. Maybe because next reality was far, far bigger\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
2) There was something separating me from these people. I couldn\u2019t quite put my finger on it: something stood in the way of me connecting normally, or being part of them . There was a fundamental difference. Here they were laughing, drinking, yelling…all I wanted to do was talk to these people about \u2018god\u2019.!!!!? I mean what?!!\u00a0<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t even know \u2018god\u2019 – I had long held to the belief that \u2018god\u2019 didn\u2019t exist and that *anyone* who believed (let alone talked about) such things was an idiot, deserving of my anger & abuse. But here I was with something in me dying to get out\u2026I wanted to take about \u2018god\u2019 bit I didn\u2019t even know who this \u2018god\u2019 was. I just knew He \/ it was doing things in my life. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\nThe cars, the alcohol, the rush, the women, none of it meant anything. I wanted to talk about \u2018god\u2019!?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I had just been reading the Bible and for the first time, everything I read made total sense(!). In fact, far from being an out dated religious book, it had answered questions I long held about life, the universe and my own life. Many of the questions I hadn\u2019t even really verbalised or consciously thought. But as I read, literal lights bulbs went off – one after the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After just a few weeks of reading, the way I viewed life, the universe, spirituality, religion, the future – in fact my whole reality – had shifted in a huge way. My conscious mind was really<\/em> struggling to keep up. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I look back at that memory with wonder and awe now – did those guys have any idea of what I was going through? What did I say? Did it make *any* sense at all? Did I talk about \u2018god\u2019? How weird did I come across? Who knows? But one thing is for sure\u2026my life was changing in a way I had *never* thought possible!\u00a0<\/p>\n
It would be 14 exactly days before I knew what was going on\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
To be continued<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The dust, the smoke, the smell of fuel, the noise, the laughing, the bottles of Jacks, the beer – these were \u2018my people\u2019 and this was definitely \u2018my scene\u2019.\u00a0 I was walking towards them, but something was wrong\u2026very wrong. \u00a0 Normally, I would be right at home, drinking, joining in. But now, as I approached, two things were blatantly obvious: 1) I had no desire for the drinks. None. As an acute alcoholic, this was monumental. I would normally not leave my house unless I was drunk. Then I would drink more on the way and when I arrived. But …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[230],"tags":[66,232,65,231],"class_list":["post-1579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-life","tag-alcohol","tag-conversion","tag-drugs","tag-my-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Hillview-Speedway-Newman-Western-Australia-Sprint-Cars.jpg?fit=1530%2C1224&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pasDCW-pt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1579\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wildeden.com.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}