My Life: #11 Sex, Drugs, & Rock-n-Roll.

Due to the unresolved conflicts of my childhood, sin poured in and out of my life.

Jul 16, 2023

THE IMMORALITY OF ROCK’N ROLL

While in high school, I was part of a rock band (more of an Alice Cooper mascot) that earned a healthy degree of popularity in our state. We enjoyed our local fame, but with this popularity came temptations of drinking, drugs, and a life of sin.

We were a “show band.” Meaning we did what most Wanna-Be bands did - played the top music scores of our day. While most of our shows were based on the group “Chicago,” I pressured the group to add a “set” on Alice Cooper. We did. As darkness would have it, this portion of our show struck a chord with our audience. Soon I found myself living out my rejective past through the character of Alice Cooper. This idol worship led me down a path of deplorable fleshly modalities.

Coming from such a rejective (not wanted) background, having sin readily available during or after concerts, I became “addicted” to the attention that came with this lifestyle. The years I spent being a part of this band introduced me to a world that my flesh simply could not handle. This fake and deceptive world was carried over into my young adult years. While trying to be responsible in my work world, my “off time” hours turned into one flesh party after another, living out a “wannabe” celebrity dream.

THE STRUGGLES OF YOUTH

After graduating in 1974, I was blessed with a job in a nearby community at a Tractor Supply store. I worked hard and became a faithful worker. The family that owned this chain adopted me into their family. I learned many things about family, business, and product supply. Even though I worked at a factory throughout my high school years, this job taught me something different – the importance of hard work and family loyalty. While working this job, my private life was starting to get out of control. It was almost like I had two sides to me – one being a faithful worker who displayed a high level of responsibility and the second being my private flesh life. Due to the unresolved conflicts of my childhood, the temptations that came with the rock-n-roll world poured in and out of my life.

This regressive slow fade leads me down a path that I have suffered extreme regret. Here I was, a “Christian” and living a lifestyle of debauchery.

Due to all the fuss and attention surrounding this “partnership” with sin, I ended up in relationships that ultimately put my life in danger.

By the Grace of God, I was able to escape this demonic industry. Since my mind was still darkened, I ended up in a biker’s club, the “Hells Angels.” This stint in my journey took me to a deeper level of darkness & debauchery. It was in this phase of my story that the Lord decided, “Enough is enough.”

At the second to the last party I attended, as the drugs were being passed around, I “dropped” every kind of drug being offered. I slipped into an overdose. My “friends” deserted me - all but one lady, who decided to “talk me through the trip.” She prayed over me for three hours. Coming out of this overdose, I committed to the Lord never to touch drugs again. However, my greatest temptation came the following weekend.

As I arrived at my fellow bikers’ gathering the following weekend, I was offered some “purple haze,” a heavy-duty form of acid. Under severe peer pressure and conviction, I dropped the acid. I panicked. I begged God to override the effects. To my amazement, He did. While everyone else was “tripping,” I remained unaffected by the drug. It was on this day I left the drug world, bad company, and the lifestyle that came with it.

However, since authentic change comes from yielding one’s life to Jesus Christ, I privately continued to smoke pot & drop “uppers” while avoiding the parties that typically come with drugs.

It didn’t take long to realize my self-help “fixes” were of little value. Since I was taught that Jesus would smoke pot, I figured since I could not afford the expensive drugs, my efforts of reducing my usage to “pot” would be acceptable unto the Lord. You know what they say, “Stupid is what stupid does.” While living in my private deceptive world, God was working on a plan that would authentically change me for life.

Grandma Corrie

Being unemployed again, disillusioned by life, my mother invites me to a local movie sponsored by Billy Graham – The Hiding Place, The Corrie Ten Boom Story. Determined not to go, my mother begged me, announcing my father was going with her. With that news, I wanted to see this with my own eyes.

Upon arriving at the theater (early), I was attacked spiritually to the point of pacing like a wild animal in front of the theater. One of the attendants came out and asked me if I was “OK.” Moments away from returning to my apartment, my father and mother come around the corner. After our typical detached greetings, we go into the theater and sit down, the whole time continuing to be under this attack. The movie starts, captures my complete attention, and peace filled my soul. After the movie was over, I expected someone to stand up and do an altar call. But no, everyone got up and left. I asked my parents if they wanted to come over to my apartment for coffee, but my father was quick to say he wanted to go home.

I returned to my apartment alone, and sure enough, the attack came on me in full force. I went into the closet in my bedroom and grabbed the preaching Bible of my grandfather, which was handed down to me, and threw it against the wall in anger. It bounced off the wall and landed opened-faced on my bed - to the book of Proverbs. With what little knowledge I had to read, God miraculously opened my illiterate mind to read a simple passage that broke me like a twig.

For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; discretion will guard you, understanding will watch over you, to deliver you from the way of evil, from the man who speaks perverse things; from those who leave the paths of uprightness to walk in the ways of darkness; who delight in doing evil and rejoice in the perversity of evil; whose paths are crooked, and who are devious in their ways; to deliver you from the strange woman, from the adulteress who flatters with her words; that leaves the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God; for her house sinks down to death, and her tracks lead to the dead; none who go to her return again, nor do they reach the paths of life. (Proverbs 2:10-19)

I got up from my knees, still sobbing uncontrollably, and flushed my drugs down the toilet. I determined to never return to this lifestyle again – and I didn’t. I will forever be grateful for Corrie, whom I call my spiritual grandmother! She not only was like the grandmother I never had – God used her life & story to set mine free.

Within a week of this surrender, I joined my father on one of his cross-country trucking trips. This trip was during the week of the historically famous “trucking strike.” While in the Bronx in New York City, we were shot at. The bullet pierced the cab and missed my head by inches. This “wake-up call” re-settled and confirmed my new lease on life. When we got back home, there was a letter waiting for me – a letter from a young lady who is now my wife. In this letter, she invited me to apply for a job at a handicapped care facility in Sheldon, Iowa. Needing a job and a change of life, I applied for this position, and honestly, surprised I got the job. It was through my relationship with my beloved Janie that our Lord stabilized and preserved my newfound Life IN Christ Jesus.

UPDATE ON ALICE COOPER (Vince)

Many years after my dark behavior of idolizing “Alice,” while living in Phoenix, I was asked to disciple Vince. As weird as this was, long story short, Vince came to know and trust Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Oddly, I was well equipped for the practical struggles of leaving the dark world behind.

My stint with the world of rock-n-roll was an expected lifestyle that matched my morbid childhood. My tendency to idolize people of fame was a camouflage for not knowing the ONE of highest fame - Jesus Christ. I realized that fame is fleeting. It is an empty life. It is truly lonely and full of addictions that magnify self-life. Sure, I’ve tasted the world of sin, and I must tell you, enough is never enough. Furthermore, I can tell you that absolute fulfillment is found in Jesus alone.

Check out Alice Cooper’s (Vince) story of salvation in his own words.