I Overdosed and Saw Hell—Then I Cried Out to Jesus

When I was sixteen, my mind was ravaged with drugs.

My life was ruined. My family had given up on me. They didn’t expect me to make it to my seventeenth birthday. I grew up in church. In fact, my grandparents are the well-known missionary evangelists, T.L. and Daisy Osborn. But even though I had been raised by wonderful believers, I personally had not yet surrendered my life to Jesus.

Most of the people in the world haven’t had many chances to know Jesus. I had so many opportunities, but I missed a lot of them. God was compassionate to me. I started getting involved with drugs when I was fourteen years old. By the time I was fifteen, I was heavily involved in them. I took LSD, angel dust and every chemical I could get my hands on. I was reckless, just cooking my brain.

If I had been God, I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with me. Some people can do drugs and still maintain an appearance of normalcy for a long time. That seems incredible to me because I was never like that. I was the kind of person who would see somebody do one hit, then go and do ten myself. You have probably known someone like this.

I had already burned out my brain by the time I was sixteen. I also got involved in Eastern mysticism and astral projection while trying to find peace. On three separate occasions I tried to commit suicide by overdosing, only abusing my body further with drugs in the process.

“Send Him to Africa”

My parents were at a loss—panicked! They didn’t know what to do. They said, “We have to get him away from these bad elements in Tulsa. You know what we should do? We should send him to Africa.” That may sound surprising to you, but as an international missions’ family, we are a world family. We didn’t think about borders much. My parents thought if I got away from peer pressure, everything would be fine. The only problem was I was the peer pressure! So sending me to Africa was the nicest thing they could have ever done for my friends.

My grandparents traveled all over the world evangelizing and had friends who were missionaries in Kenya, East Africa. Their missionary friends agreed that I could live with them, hoping this would straighten me out. But the truth is, when I got to Africa, I went from bad to worse. The devil is the same anywhere you go. We live in a mean, sinful world.

When I arrived in Africa, I discovered that a pharmaceutical I used to pay for grew wild there. The country was overrun with imported drugs! I switched from pot to opium. East Africa had a big population of Indians, so I became even more heavily involved with Eastern mysticism. But I saw something else while I was over there. I saw real believers. I had grown up in Pentecostal churches all my life, but the genuineness of the believers I saw in Africa really touched my heart. Yet, I still wasn’t ready to surrender my life.

The missionaries finally gave up on me and ended up sending me home in defeat. There was nothing they could do with me because I lived like the devil. I overdosed on the way back home. When I landed, I was arrested and taken into the loving care of the Houston police department. I was a skinny guy with long hair, moccasins, army fatigues and a dashiki. The police just loved me; I was their kind of kid (just kidding). They eventually sent me home to Tulsa because they were unable to find any drugs on me—I had already consumed them all!

When I arrived at the airport, I blew off my parents and left with my old friends. I went on a chemical binge and ended up doing even more damage to my brain. Sometimes I did not even remember my own name. I slept wherever I passed out and woke up covered in my own vomit. I fasted for days and days, up to a week, because I knew if you didn’t eat anything while taking drugs, they would have a lot stronger effect—especially hallucinogens.

Not only would I forget about eating, I wouldn’t drink water either. I only drank whiskey or any kind of alcohol I could get my hands on.

At sixteen years old, I looked like a walking corpse—a wasted old person with brown teeth, hair falling out, and brittle bones. My situation was grave. It seemed like there was no hope for me. Death seemed inescapable.

God Is in Charge

Even when I was at my worst, God was dealing with me. People were planting seeds. God was leading me on paths where I could hear the Gospel. Even though I was rejecting it, the Word was still being planted in my heart. The seeds that are planted in us at a young age will eventually bear fruit. The truths I heard my grandfather preach when I was a little boy still lived in my heart. Those seeds were working; they were still living in me.

One time I was with some friends late at night prowling through town in a beat-up car, high out of my mind. I had been taking a lot of different drugs that night. I took acid and other pills, smoked a lot of hash, and consumed vast quantities of alcohol. Then I overdosed.

My body started convulsing and my friends got scared. I actually felt my spirit leave my body. I looked down and saw my body. I was terrified! I went down a dark tunnel, pursued by something horrible and ghastly. Seized by panic, smothered by fear, I had terrifying visions of all kinds of weird demonic scenes.

Then Satan appeared. He didn’t come in a red suit with horns. He came with his evil eyes, terrifying presence, and all-consuming darkness. He said, “If you serve me, Tommy, you can be a king in my Kingdom. I’ll give you whatever you want, whatever your heart desires.”

I might have been ignorant, but that was the first time I ever dreamed I was serving the devil. Up to that moment, I always thought I was just doing my own thing, not hurting anyone, just trying to find another way to get to God.  (I thought all paths led to the same destination.)

When the devil made his proposition, I said “No.” Then I was plunged into hell. I felt myself being sucked out into a dark place where I did not want to go to. I don’t know why I did it, how I did it, or where I did it, but I just screamed out, “Jesus!” And suddenly, I was back.

In the meantime, my friends were freaking out. They thought that I was dead or going to die. But I came back. I tried to speak but the experience was so overwhelming, I couldn’t. I just stuttered. My friends were scared because they thought they were going to get stuck with a corpse. Remember, these were my close friends—friends I had known for a long time. But they just stopped the car, pushed me out into the gutter, and drove away.

I pulled myself up and crawled around to the back of a vacant house. It was dark and cold. I looked up to pray. I didn’t have enough brain cells left to carry on a conversation. I was like a burned-out animal, having no hope whatsoever. I looked up and prayed the best prayer I knew. I said, “Jesus, okay.” That was it; that was my whole prayer.

Maybe a theologian would say that’s not a prayer. But I couldn’t pray anything florid, like, “O, compassionate Father who dwelleth in the highest heavenlies betwixt the cherubim.”

I couldn’t do that. Not that there’s anything wrong with elegant words. God created them. God is the Word. But He looks at the true expression of your heart. He couldn’t care less about fancy words.

As soon as I prayed those two words, everything was open. God looked right through me and saw that I meant, I surrender. Surrender is all-important. It’s different from saying religious words. I used to be the most religious sinner on earth. I would get stoned and start witnessing to people about Jesus. Every time I passed a phone booth with the sinner’s prayer plastered on the door, I would pray it. But that was not surrender. It’s not enough to grow up knowing God is real, seeing miracles, and knowing what God is capable of doing.

I thought I was enlightened, so I took that “enlightened” knowledge and decided there must be another way to get to God. It’s the truth: Jesus is the only way to God. When I called out the name of Jesus by saying, “Jesus, okay,” God knew what I meant. In those two little words, I was saying, “I repent. Forgive me! Heal me. Love me. I’m open. I’m ready to give it all to You this time; I’m not just muttering a prayer. I believe in You; I want You; I need You.”

The power of God poured through me like fire. It burned through my mind and body. It burned through every part of my body and into my heart, into the deepest parts of my being. Everywhere that fire burned, it healed, restored, and strengthened. That fire was resurrection life.

Fire is the best word I could come up with to describe what I experienced. I’ve tried to compare it to hot or boiling honey because it was so sweet. The burning was as real as if I had stuck my hand into the flame of a candle or a fireplace, yet it didn’t hurt. I was burning but I wasn’t consumed, just like the burning bush Moses saw. This fire was burning through me. I was in a state of wonder.

The thing that amazed me the most wasn’t that my mind or body was being healed, or that I was being released from so many addictions. That’s not what amazed me the most. What amazed me the most was that Jesus loved me and had come to me. He was revealing Himself to me. I didn’t know it could be for me.

In my heart, I could see Jesus being beaten, His beard torn, and His face spit on. I didn’t think of this in a religious way, like the crucifixion paintings. I saw the actual, historic, brutal Roman torture, with Jesus so badly beaten. His face and body were so shredded and disfigured that you couldn’t even recognize Him.

I saw the whip thrashing His back, over and over again for my healing. I saw Him being nailed to that cross, His blood flowing, the spear plunging into His side. At that point, I realized that Jesus suffered for me so I could be His. Did I understand it all right then? No, I couldn’t understand it with my mind. I understand it more now, but at that time, I knew in my heart that He was whipped so I could be healed. In my deepest heart, I knew He shed His blood so I could be saved. I realized that He volunteered to be separated from the presence of God so I could be included, that He was bound so I could be free, and that He took my sicknesses and diseases so I could be healed.

I raised my hands and worshipped Him, right where I was. I wept; I just cried and cried. I actually raised my hands so I could worship the Lord. Even though I had grown up in church, I had always refused to raise my hands. I never raised my hands when everyone else did. I grew up in a Pentecostal church where big women would scream and throw their big hair. They scared me half to death. I usually bit my fingernails and stared out the window. If they told me to raise my hands, I stuck them in my pockets. But now I raised my hands. Now I knew what it was all about. I knew Jesus loved me, and I wept and wept.

I raised my fist over my head. All over the world, a raised fist symbolizes revolution. I didn’t think about that at the time. I raised my fist and shouted, “I am free!” Talk about a revolution! The devil had been defeated. It’s the most complete revolution anyone can ever experience. The devil had been dethroned and Jesus had become my Lord! Hallelujah! I declared out loud, “I am free. I am free! Satan, you lost your slave. Tommy Ray O’Dell will never be your slave again!”