‘I Started Screaming’: Greg Laurie Recounts Terrifying Moment During Teenage, Drug-Using Days That ‘Opened Him Up to Evil’ By Billy Hallowell for Faith Wire
Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, shared a terrifying story this week from his youth that “opened [him] up to evil” and helped set him on course to find Jesus.
Laurie, known for his evangelistic Harvest Crusades, wasn’t always a believer. In fact, before finding Jesus, he used drugs as a young man and got into the hippie scene.
But one scary encounter remains with him decades later — a moment that helped change his trajectory.
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“After taking acid one night in my teen years, I had a ‘bad trip,’” Laurie wrote in a Facebook post. “It was an experience that really shook me up; I felt it opened me up to evil.”
In an audio clip posted to YouTube and linked in the Facebook post, Laurie explained how a friend introduced him to marijuana in the 1960s. At first, he was cautious, but after using the drug, it led him to grow an affinity for LSD.
Soon, Laurie said the “free love” message that dominated the culture at the time started to permeate his heart and mind.
“I thought, ‘Hey man, that is where it’s at. They’ve got the answer,’” he recalled.
As Laurie further explored LSD (also known as acid), he said he felt he was coming into a new dimension of sorts and seeing things through a fresher, newer light.
“I started dropping LSD, taking acid,” he said. “[I] thought I was coming into a whole new awareness of thought.”
Laurie was getting high four to six times a day at that point and had a “D” average in school, yet he had been lured in by the life he had chosen — until a shocking event shook him up.
