Personal Childhood And Past Trauma Stories:
Altering My Brain Chemistry Before CIY
July 1999
I'm heading to the C.I.Y. (Christ In Youth) convention with my youth group in the morning, but tonight my boyfriend bought LSD for us to try. I was a very, very, very sober, youth-group-envolved teen for most of high school, but since I turned 18 last April, I've been trying new things. I could do an entire storytime about the trip alone, but I want to talk about going to this week-long church camp after that experience.
I got dropped off at my church that morning to ride in the church van with the rest of the youth group, but my mind had been expanded from the night before — everything was different.
Our youth group had little side trips planned for the drive to and from camp because the C.I.Y. convention was in Tennessee and we were traveling from Florida.
We stopped to stay in a few cabins at a white-water rapids campsite. That evening we went to a laser light show up in the mountains, and I couldn't help but wonder what the experience would be like if my visuals could be melted again.
I don't have an addictive personality and I'm not excited by much, so this feeling of wanting to alter my brain chemistry again was new to me. It was more about enjoying the ability to change perspectives and shift my kind of bland existence.
This was my last summer before moving away to Arizona — my last summer with the youth group. I'm always very honest (it physically hurts me to lie), so during one of our sharing circles I confessed I had tried acid and that I was looking forward to trying it again. My youth minister's face dropped. He was a pretty chill dude with a collection of Converse; I genuinely liked him, but my honesty and my years of questioning Christianity made him uncomfortable.
In that moment he had no idea what to say to me or the rest of the group — I completely caught him off guard, which was common for me. (The year before I told the entire youth group I liked meeting people online and having adult phone calls with them. So… it is what it is.)
I told him to look in the Bible and pray to be guided to anything in there that says what I did was wrong. He was up all night and couldn't find anything.
The next evening, when the church asked anyone interested in learning more about becoming a youth minister to come up front and give their contact info, I went up. My youth minister was shocked, especially after my confession the night before; he tried to talk me out of it. I explained how my life experience and genuine care would help kids get through rough times — I might even be better at it than him, who was sober and waited until marriage for other adult things. He didn't speak to me for the rest of the week.
About a week after I got home he called my mom and said he felt he needed to tell her what I'd confessed. I told him, "I'm 18, I'm no longer in your youth group, and I'm moving across the country. Telling my mother will just make her worry. I'll tell her when I'm ready." I always do
I left that church entirely after that, moved to Arizona, experimented with other perspective-altering things, saw that the church was a cage, and broke free.
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