Growing Up On False Religion

My parents divorced when I was about ten years old and my mother, having never completed high school, proceeded as best she could to raise my older brother, my younger sister and myself on what she could earn working as a waitress at a corner cafe.

Through the influence of my (older) half-sister, I soon became involved in the Jehovah's Witnesses. Because I was hungry for the acceptance they offered, I threw myself into studying their teachings and never doubted anything I learned. After about five years in the organization, however, I began to seriously question what they were teaching. Jehovah (God) was supposed to be kind and loving, and yet he seemed more like the ruler of a foreign country: powerful but distant and unapproachable. (Eventually I learned that the Witnesses are a cult and that they literally rewrote the Bible to match their teachings.)

I became severely depressed. Previously a good student, I began skipping classes and eventually  dropped out of high school. I tried to commit suicide.

Liquor, Drugs, and the Marine Corps