LSD to PhD

It was 1.30 am in September 1971.

I was 16, but already I had earned the nicknames ‘Drug Bear’ and ‘Iron Man’. I could do greater quantities of drugs than any of my friends.

But this time I went too far. I took enough mescaline for 30 people, and my friends put me on a bus alone, sending me home to fend for myself. They thought it was a big joke! Actually it was a matter of life and death.

‘I’m burning in hell!’

I became delirious on the bus and got off too soon, more than a mile from my family’s home on Long Island, New York. As I walked slowly towards the house, I thought the journey would never end. I became disoriented and got lost just two blocks from home. I sat down on the ground in mental torment. I thought I had died and gone to hell. Then, at that late hour, a friend of my parents came by, walking his dog. He looked at me with shock as I screamed, ‘I’m burning in hell!’ I was shocked too.

As soon as he walked away, I made a decision: ‘I’m going to jump in front of the next car that comes by. I can’t take it any longer.’ I was losing my mind.

Within minutes, a car came racing around the corner. I jumped into the road directly in front of it. The car came to a screeching halt, just inches from my body. It was my parents! The man with the dog had gone to my house and, deeply shaken, told them what he had seen. They came looking for me. If it had been any other car I would have been killed.

How it started

How did a nice Jewish boy like me get so messed up? And why was I thinking about hell? Let me tell you the story.

I was born in New York City in 1955. My father was the senior lawyer in the New York Supreme Court, and he and my mother were happily married. My upbringing was typical of many New York, Jewish children. We moved to Long Island, I did well in school, I played lots of sports. But something changed.

It all began innocently enough. When I was eight I started to play drums and I had ability. But my favourite music was rock, and after my Bar Mitzvah in 1968, I wanted to be a rock drummer, and my role models were known for their heavy drug use, rebellion, and flagrant immorality. I wanted to be like them! Starting with pot, soon I got the opportunity to try heroin. I loved it! I was 15 years old. My grades began to go down in school, and drugs, rock music, and filthy living were my daily portion. For fun, my friends and I even broke into some homes and a doctor’s office. We experimented with the drugs we found and almost killed ourselves. But after all, we were cool! We were doing ‘our thing’. And one day we would be famous rock stars!

Jesus

Less than one year later, I was living for God and telling people about Jesus, the Messiah and Lord of both Gentile and Jew. Today, I have travelled around the world preaching and teaching. I have had the privilege of speaking on university campuses (including Harvard and Yale), written books and articles that have been translated into more than a dozen languages, debated and dialogued with rabbis on radio and TV, and earned a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literature from New York University, lectured as a visiting professor at leading theological institutes, and served as president of two Bible colleges. The Creator of the universe is now my Father, Jesus the Messiah is my best and closest friend, I live my life knowing the peace and joy of God.

Predictable change?

‘Well’, you might say, ‘you were just messed up. You were looking for something. You needed to change.’

To be perfectly truthful, I was messed up, and I was looking for something — but it was not God! And I absolutely did not want to change. I had found my lifestyle, and I loved it! I enjoyed using drugs. I enjoyed my music. I enjoyed fulfilling the lusts of the flesh. What I was looking for was more sinful pleasure and more musical excellence, leading to more recognition.

As for Jesus, he was not important. After all, I was Jewish! And, I thought, if there really is a God, he knows that, deep down, I have a good heart. If there is a heaven, he’ll surely accept me. In spite of my lying, my drugs, my pride and rebellion. Little did I know then that the Bible says: ‘All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but it is the LORD who weighs the hearts’. And, ‘There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death’. Human nature always tries to justify itself!

Girls and church

During the spring of 1971, my two best friends (and members of my band) began attending a little gospel-preaching church. Why? Because they liked two girls who went there! And why did the girls go? Because their uncle was the pastor and their father was praying for them. Then, in August, I went to the church too. Why? Because I wanted to pull my friends out! They were beginning to change, and I didn’t like that. They weren’t partying the way they used to. I had to stop them before it was too late. You can guess what happened. I lost the fight! The love of the people began to break down my stubborn pride, and, totally unknown to me, their prayers began to have an impact. Something started to get under my skin! I actually began to feel guilty about the filthy things I was doing.

Amazingly, until that time, I had never experienced the slightest remorse for stealing money from my own father, or putting my parents through all kinds of grief because of my drug use and all the rest. Now, something was happening. When I couldn’t sleep at night after pumping myself up with methadrine or swallowing several tabs of amphetamine-laced LSD, I started to feel uncomfortable with my lifestyle, seeing myself as more of a jerk than a cool teenager, and I began to dread those long night hours, alone with a feeling of being unclean, alone with my sin.

Conviction and conversion

Of course, at that time, I had no idea that this was something called ‘conviction’, a wonderful process through which God shows us just how sick we really are — in order to make us whole. And I made no connection between this sudden change in my attitude and the prayers of these sincere Christians. Instead, I made a decision: I won’t use any drugs that keep me up at night! And I stayed away from the church for the next three months.

When I finally returned there in November, something completely unexpected happened to me. For the first time in my life I believed that Jesus died for me (in other words, he paid the penalty that I deserved, he died in my place) and that he rose from the dead.

This did not strike me as especially good news! How can I say that? Simple. It was one thing for my friends to truly put their faith in Jesus. After all, one was Methodist and the other was Russian Orthodox. But for me, a Jew (even a non-religious Jew), how could I believe in Jesus? (Please remember that at that time, I didn’t realise that his Hebrew name was Yeshua and that his mother’s Hebrew name was Miriam, or that ‘Christ’ meant ‘Messiah’, or that he came into the world to save his Jewish people, or that he lived and died as a faithful Jew.) For me, Jesus was only for the Gentiles.

God intervened

But there was a much bigger problem: Following Jesus and getting into a right relationship with God meant I had to turn away from my sins. I didn’t want to do that! There was too much pleasure in my sin. And how could I be a famous rock drummer and a good, clean church-goer at the same time? Plus I was too proud to admit that I could be wrong. (Some people would rather die than admit they are wrong.) I was as stubborn as they come. And how I loved to argue. (After all, I was the son of an excellent lawyer!) Yet somehow God’s goodness and patience overcame my stubbornness, my pride, my sinful habits, and my religious misunderstandings. By the end of 1971 I was a new man! The heavenly Father intervened in my affairs, making me to know that I was guilty in his sight, exposing the corruption of my heart, and showing me a new and better way.

To find out what happened next, you can read the full text of Michael’s story on http://www.revolutionnow.org. This edited version, which appeared in the March issue of the CWI Herald, is used with permission.

Dr. Michael Brown is visiting the UK during May and debating with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at two venues: Monday May 12, 7.00 pm — ‘Can Jews Believe in Jesus?’ — Friends Meeting House, 173 Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ; Tuesday May 13, 7.00 pm — A debate: ‘Can Jews believe that a man could be God?’ — Oxford Town Hall, St. Aldate’s, Oxford OX1 1BX.

The personal testimony of Jewish evangelist, Dr. Michael Brown