As a sort of back story leading up to my Near Death Experience, at that time in my life — January 1983– I was what I called myself ‘The Drug Dealer to the Stars.’ I had lots of clientele that I sold cocaine to in the Hollywood movie industry as well as musicians, artists, restaurant owners, etc. I thought I was a really cool and indispensable guy who was loved and respected by all. I had a source for pure cocaine that was smuggled in from Peru and everyone loved the stuff I was selling. Life was good. Then suddenly after five years of a smooth operation, the guy who was smuggling in the cocaine flew down to Peru and didn’t come back as planned. Now there was almost a panic situation with my clientele. They depended on the continuous uninterrupted supply of my cocaine to maintain their intense work routines and lifestyles. I was under pressure to find another source for cocaine or lose all my clients.
I contacted a female friend of mine whom knew a guy who sold cocaine to lots of famous rock bands and arranged for a meeting with the guy. I drove to his place in the hills behind Malibu Beach and we talked and I agreed to purchase 1/4 pound of his cocaine as a sample to see if my clients would like it. I snorted some lines of the product at his house and I immediately realized it wasn’t even remotely of the same quality as my usual stuff. However, I felt like I had to have something to offer my clientele — at least until my smuggler guy would get back in touch and I would know some sort of game plan for the future. Unfortunately for me, this was like the beginning — like ground zero — of me going on a marathon drug binge of epic proportions. Only later would I find out that the stuff that I purchased was fake cocaine — it was Proparacaine (a synthetic numbing agent) mixed with methamphetamine.
The stuff just made me go crazy. I was snorting line after line then drinking fifth after fifth of hard liquor and nothing could stop me or knock me out to get me off the fake drug. I started taking literally hands full of sedative pills chased down with hard liquor to knock me out but even that did not knock me out. I just kept snorting and snorting the stuff — getting crazier and crazier. It was like I trying to kill myself but I just wouldn’t die. Then after about four days of non-stop no sleep craziness an artist friend of mine stopped by and wanted me to purchase him an ounce of China White heroin that he knew I could get from a source I had.
I knew some Hare Krishna guys who smuggled heroin from Thailand and it was a perfect deal because no one expected obnoxious Hare Krishna guys to be smuggling drugs. I had never used the stuff or purchased any but I knew them from ‘back in the day’ in Laguna Beach when they were surfer dudes before they became Hare Krishnas. I phoned the guy I knew and he had some stuff available so I set up a rendezvous that evening on top of Mt. Soledad in LaJolla California. Mount Soledad over looks LaJolla and there is an approximately 27 foot tall Christian cross as the pinnacle of the peak.
In the evening I drove down to LaJolla from Laguna Beach on the San Diego Freeway and I was so high and crazy and I was snorting the drug as I was driving that I kept drifting side to side in the fast lane and smashing into the guardrail. I remember sparks flying up each time I hit the guardrail. Finally, I arrived in LaJolla and I drove up the steep road to the top of Mount Soledad. There was only one car parked in the lot below the tall white cross (that was lit up by spotlights) so I knew that had to be the Hare Krishna guy. I parked my car and walked over to his car and he motioned for me to get in on the passenger side. He handed me a baggy of white powder and I gave him $2000.00 and I exited the car and he drove away. I got into my car and I decided that I would try just a tiny little snort of the white powder. I put the corner of a matchbook cover into the baggy and I snorted just the tiniest little bit. Later on I would learn that the ‘China White’ was really ‘Fentanyl’ which is a synthetic painkiller that is one hundred times more potent than the same dose of heroin. This is what China White heroin was and why it was so potent and popular. But I wasn’t a junky and I didn’t have the tolerance for such a potent drug. Right away I knew I was in trouble. Right there under the Cross of Jesus I had overdosed.
I started the car up and drove out of the parking lot with the tall white cross lit up symbolically in my rear view mirror. It was raining and the rain drops started smooooshing against the windshield like jello. The windshield wipers started flap-flap-flapping like limp celery stalks — everything was sloooooo-wing down. Suddenly, I saw someone hitch-hiking over on the side of the road. I pulled over and pushed open the passenger door and I said ‘Please help me. I have overdosed. I am dying!’ Instead of helping me, the stranger jumped into the car and started immediately punching me in the face. Smash. Smash. Smash. Left, right, left, right….I blacked out. Ok, so the next think I know is that I am in this place I now call the ‘space station’ but I didn’t think of it as that when I became aware of being there. It was like a beautiful hyper-real park or nature place with vivid flowering plants and gorgeous trees (kind of like a Georges Seurat or Monet painting). There was an immense park-like area of short grass and I immediately became aware that there were lots of people there that I knew or didn’t know. There were family and friends from all stages of my life. My sisters were there. My mother was there and she was very young and beautiful and I realized how I had only always seen her as a ‘mother’ and not an individual person who had a life other than being my mother. There were friends from all stages of my life and they were all the same age (around twenty years old or so) and everyone looked healthy and beautiful. We all immediately were the best of friends again with youth and innocence in our faces and voices. We trusted each other and we were so easy and familiar with each other — it felt like Heaven. It felt like we were going to be there like forever. Like we’d always been there and would always be there.
Then I noticed over to one side that there were infinitely tall windows that were so clear that it didn’t seem like there was any kind of ‘glass’ as a shield. I walked over to the windows and I could see the entire solar system revolving and spinning outside in the three dimensional distance. I could see comets shooting through space. And I could see other galaxies upon other galaxies into infinity. I realized that this was some kind of 1/2 way station between earth and eternity. Then over on the other side of the ‘park’ I saw a kind of off-white wall that stretched along the entire unknowable length of the park. I walked over to the wall. I noticed that there was a door in the wall that was ever so slightly opened — slightly ajar. I grabbed the edge of the door with my finger-tips and I pulled it open.
Now immediately, I realized I was in sort of a courtroom. It looked like something from a Salem Witch Trial. And behind me seated and standing were my family and all my friends from all stages of my life. Seated next to me at a table was a ‘being’ whom I knew to be my Guardian Angel but who I intuitively knew was also acting as a defense attorney. Seated at a table next to us was a ‘being’ whom I knew to be some kind of Prosecuting Angel or prosecuting attorney. Seated in front of both tables were three beings who looked just like strict, unforgiving Puritan Elders all dressed in black with white collars and black hats — I thought of Cotton Mather when I looked at them. I knew that they were the ‘judges.’ I knew this was going to a be a trial for the very fate of my mortal soul.
Behind the three judges was a door that seemed to be a portal or tunnel with a sort of ‘living light’ that pulsated in the tunnel. And the living light told me telepathically in visions to my mind and feelings to my body that if I could just survive this trial that merging with it was the ‘way’ to true Heaven. And I had a speed of light realization of being a sort of cell or bubble in a sea of cells or bubbles that were all individual self-worlds joined to each other that were individual yet all One and all part of an ocean-like Being that was the Source of All Existence. So I was Me, I was They, and I and They were It and we were all One — all separate but One instantaneously. The experience (the sensation) was way beyond any sex orgasm or drug high I had ever experienced. It was the Real Deal. Then the incredible orgasmic vision disappeared and I was back at the table seated next to my ‘attorney’ and the trial was about to commence.
Now the prosecuting attorney angel started calling up to the witness chair one after another of my family and friends. What were once my friends and family now gave testimony against my character and the sundry ‘bad’ deeds of my life. One after another my erstwhile friends told of how I hurt, betrayed and disappointed them in oh so many ways. One person after another over and over — blah-blah-blah! My defense attorney-angel kept jumping up and yelling ‘objection — hearsay’ or whatever but the Judges kept yelling back ‘over-ruled.’ I had a real bad feeling this wasn’t going to turn out in my favor. And sure enough when the prosecuting angel presented his final witness against me he turned to look at the Judges and they spoke quickly to each other and then turned to look at me and yelled ‘Dying’s too good for you. You have to go back!’
Instantaneously, I was looking up at a person who I realized was a nurse. I had tubes in my nostrils. I had tubes going in one wrist and out the other. I had a tube going up my urinary tract. I was totally wired up to machines. And the nurse started smiling and crying — super happy and emotional. She said ‘Oh my God. We got you back.’ She called out to other nurses and doctors and suddenly there was little bit of a crowd in the room. The nurses and doctors took turns excitedly telling me that I was in the ICU of Scripps LaJolla Hospital and I had been in a coma for three days. They said that I was found laying next to my car savagely beaten up and that the folks who found me went to a neighbors house and had them call the paramedics whom immediately started working on me to save my life.
When I arrived at the hospital it was immediately apparent that besides being beaten I had overdosed and so they started trying to antidote the overdose but I had so many kinds of drugs in me that the usual procedures didn’t work. They ended up doing what is called ‘blood washing’ which is a form of dialysis to clean the drugs out of my body. Meanwhile, I kept flat-lining and dying and they kept bringing me back — all this incredibly heroic effort to save my life. And all the while I was in what I call ‘other space’ going through a sort of trial for the fate of my mortal soul. When the doctors and nurses finally stabilized me, I was transferred over to the ICU recovery room but they had little hope that I was going to be anything other than someone in a vegetative coma until finally I died. So the doctors and nurses actually considered it to be a ‘miracle’ that all of sudden there I was back from certain death. Other than having a bandaged up smashed up face, I was ambulatory and lucid and they were so happy — and so was I.
OK, so there was one shocking thing that I learned about the drugs I had been doing. One of the nurses gave me a print out of the analysis of all the drugs in my blood — in my body. Instead of there being any cocaine there was only a synthetic numbing agent — Proparacaine. There was also methamphetamine. And instead of there being any heroin in my blood, instead there was Fentanyl — a synthetic opoid that is 100 times stronger than a like dose of heroin. The nurse told me that is what almost killed me. I was shocked that I had been sold phony cocaine that started me out on the binge. And then I was sold super potent Fentanyl instead of just ordinary heroin — which almost killed me.
And so I wish I could say I learned a lesson right away from that experience but of course I didn’t. Later on in the day in the recovery room I phoned a female friend and had her drive down to the hospital. I sneaked out of the recovery room and got into the trunk of her car and sort of did a theatrically over dramatic escape from the hospital. But a few days later I did have a gracious thank you note printed up and framed which I presented to the doctors and nurses who saved me. Also, I paid as much of my hospital bill as I could possibly afford — $8000.00. Next I moved away from the decadent Los Angeles celebrity drug scene — I moved to another state. However, my Peruvian cocaine source came back and I ended up selling and using the drug for nine more years. Finally, in March of 1992 I was set up by some of my clients whom had gotten busted and they let drug enforcement agents arrest me when I showed up to sell the clients some product. Subsequently, in the midst of spending thirty days in jail while I awaited summation of charges, I suddenly had some kind of ‘self-realization’ and when I got out of jail I went through my legal trial got convicted did only ninety days of ‘work release’ and quit drugs and have never used anything of that sort since then — twenty five years.
OK, and so I am thankful to be able to tell my story in this forum because no one had ever believed or cared about what I experienced. And I always vividly and intensely remember the entire experience in Other Space. I know that there is something always present that is more than what most religions (except Buddhism or Hinduism) call Heaven. I was fleetingly One with It and I know it’s possible to be One with It again — this time for time beyond time.