I've always recognized the spiritual side, or yet I have been familiar with God, it wasn't until I was around thirty that I actually got a relationship with Him. My story starts out like alot of folk's storys may start. My parents got a divorce when I was about one, but I cant blame alot of my past trials and tribulations on that very fact but the truth is thats just a cop out. Alot of people like to blame their past on there current state on coming from a broken family. I mean I guess it catored to it all but my testimony pretty much starts around eight years old, I mean after I came to the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ I can pin point where that demon entered me as a young boy around five years old when I was molested by my uncle. I believe thats where that spirit of lust entered me and nested right into my soul and began to torture me for years to come. I was too young to reek havok on anyone elses life at this point, but being soyoung it gave the spirit time to plot and scheme on how to knock me off my square before I even got there- (your dont know what you did Unc. Thanks! "smh" I was volnurable to this lustful spirit and stayed that way for every bit of until I turned thirty or so. As far back as I canremember i grew up around playboys and other pornographic material my step grandfather kept it around my grandmother's house. I can remember sneaking to watch a video he had after they went asleep. At the age of eight a kid at the bus stop told me to go home that night and put soap on my, well your get the point. i cant remember really doing it but it wasnt long after that I was attempting masterbation or doing it, not sure. At the age of eleven I had sex for the first time. I snuck out of my house just to do it. I wanted so bad to be like my older cousins and uncle "Justin" that I looked up to. Peer preasure I guess, but it made since that I wanted to at such a young age, seeing how I was exposed at even a younger age. I had no business having sex at eleven but I just wanted to fin in so bad. Thats been a big thing with me for as far back as my memory goes. When I was young I had buck teeth and my step mom dressed me funny so being a nerdy kid was kinda my swag. I didnt have alot of friends that i really clicked with but there was a dude named Fred Joles that was my ace! We met in the third grade and we were inseperable until the sixth grade when God decided to take my brother from me for whatever reason. it says in the word that His thoughts are not our ways and His thoughts are set higher than ours. I didnt then and never since then blamed God for it and everything happened and stilll happens for a reason. One day me and Fred were swimming and he drowned right in front of me. I love you bro and I know you are still with me. I joined a gang around a year prior to this. I was into anything that was abnormal or rebelious. Smoking w**d, sex, gang activety, fighting just anything to draw attention to myself. I was never into sports much but i could ride the heck out of a skateboard and even that lifestyle was a rebelious type of attitude that I was instantly all about, holes in my pants, pinky toe hanging out of my shoes, writing ALL over my clothes. Negativity was cool to me it was rebelious and rebellion was the answer. It helped me identify anyway I could altar an image to give it a new meaning. Maybe thats why I'm tattooed from head to toe today. Just trying to express myself and tell my story threw my art, I mean it goes hand and hand with my music. My music tells a story a story that many know thats why many can relate. After Fred died i was empty so i dove head first into the gang life. I figured since i lost one, I would trade him in for atleast fourty or fifty this gang was nation wide, so that gave me even more enthusism. I mean I was part of something. Even if it was something negative it still gave me a purpose. Though was stilll young, wild and totally nieve. Negatevtity was cool to me it was rebelious and rebellion was the answer. Over the years I guess I did wonder what it would be like if my mom and dad was still together. But I would have done everything the same most likely. I mean lets be real, everything I did and every place I was, it all started with a decisionI made. I put myself in situatations and everthing happened and still happens for a reason. Every instant of my life was part of my testimony as my testimony keeps building even as I write. Being in a gang solved alot of my problems as far as I was concerned. I could write about this for me. it filled that void in my life which was a number of things really. Like i said i always felt or been as close as i could to the spiritual relm as far as a natural connection, i believe athiest have this natural connection also they just reject it. but i was filling them voids in my life so backwards for so long. i feel like until we fully come to Christ, submit and turn ourselves over to His will, we will continue to walk the same roads that just tend to go in circles, ate up with insainity as far as the true definition of insainity goes. hats why i became a full blown addict over time. I smoked w**d for the first time at 11 too, crazy year for me! But i can remember just wanting to smoke A LOT, I kept asking my uncle when was we gonna smoke some more all nite. He must have been around 18 or so. After that Fred died as far as the traumatic list of events go. so the gang life lined up pretty good with my aggrivation and depression. My dad was there but i felt like he wasnt enough. so I took for myself father figures and brothers in the gang due to not having my father there and losing my brother Fred. Being popular drugs, girls, power, I felt untouchable. I wasnt hitting on crap but in my made up world i was on top! I always had an awesome imagination LOL! Me and my cousin and uncle played Dungeons and dragons, now when i say my uncle i mean my Uncle "Justin" he was my dude!!! he taught me everything fro, skate boarding to drawing to introducing me to music, he was even in the same gang i was in. we spent a lot of time together meditating talking riding i loved him he was my out let a lot of times. i can still remember the day my mom called me and told me he was dead. that him and his new wives killed them selves after shooting his son's mother and her bofriend, thats the compressed story, and im gonna leave it at that. my whole life i felt extaordinary, different than others. In my own mind it wasnt bad and still isnt, but it is what it is. Now i know ive had the hand of God upon me and guiding me for as long as i can remember. I started trying harder drugs at the age 16 like coc*ine crystalmeth and mushrooms. things got interesting. i tried crack a couple of times but the people i did it with were already liking it way too much to share so I dont even really remember doing it enough to get high. lol go figure. Plus they were older and knew more, hince the go figure part. but the cats i did mushrooms with embarked me on a ride i cant say i wasnt ready for but i definately should've buckled up, though i was wide open! drugs gave me a thrill a ride a way out. It wasnt so much of killing the pain as it was another world. just being able to push the boundaries of my own perception and twist reality. the first time i tripped mushrooms i went to a spot in my mind where i could see past the walls i built up threw self defense mechanisms i learned over time. the reality i knew, the made up world i lived in, like not that mommy and daddy just filling my head full of stuff because they just dont want me to have fun, but are they really crazy and i'm the one sain, better yet, maybe they have been right here where I'm at watching colors ib the shadows and just never told me about it out of fear i would try it. OR maybe they are still where I'm at and just learned how to mask it. I knew my parents smoked w**d though. I found my dads tray at his house after the first time my uncle found my moms. That night me joe, Jared and his brother Jason ate a bunch of caps in a feild. I listened to Pink Floyd "The Wall" from first to last song non-stop and figured out in my own brilliant mind why and what music was made for. How it could be made for good purposes and how it could definately be made for the wrong reasons. it was that night music firsdt talked to me. Now that i have come to the pure knowledge of Christ i can see how powerful music is. satan was over the music in heaven, and it's still his greatest tool/weapon! Im not saying i felt demons coming out of the speakers that nite, but they probably did plenty of other nites, even when i was sober. i mean these spirits know how to work on you hypnotise you etc...No one ever heard a song and was like "thats so tight i should cut that off because there are demons in that song for sure! Nope its the sublimenal and hidden messages that grab our self conciousness. the seductive interlude of music and the right lyrics can pucsh you to do anything or not do it for that matter. Its hypnotising thats why Three6mafia's record label is Hypnotized minds, which there were years of demonic activity dancing around my ears whaen i was jamming that stuff. anyway that same night i seen things i will never forget. I remember watching demonic figures in my head, a cross betwwen an ALIEN and just a straight up monster as I layed there praying for sleep. I wasn't sure seeing how it was my first time, if i was ever gonna come down or not. I mean i heard storys you feel me lol. All i remember is waking up and I was back in Kansas again. Black and white and "normal" "REALITY" I remember trying to invision the visions i had that night of the aliens and MONSTERS, but like i said my mind slowed back down, simple again. One night I cried all the way home from work, for nothing! Turns out I was diagnosed with Biplolar-manic depression, or something like that. which would explain why i would totally go into a delusional state after doing crystal meth. i personally believe the cryatal kicked off the whole biploar thing in my life. Im gonna try to sum this up before i actually start on the book I plan on writing about all of this. o ver a period of ten years or so I landed myself in rehabs and pychwards 23 times. i battled with the whole addiction and taking a pill to be "normal". i never felt normal anyway, getting high, speeding or both made me feel normal, i just didnt like the world as i knew it, perception is everything and i liked my perception of it, it was my comfort zone. I tried stuff like Narcotics Annonymous but i realized i was just going in circles when i started working the steps, not to mention it was for people that didnt want to get high anymore, i didnt have a problem with getting high yet because i could half way function still. and turning my will over to God made about as much sinse as the alien monsters i saw the night i was doing mushrooms. i didnt understand myself life my will OR god. I liked the idea of being sober and untampered with but that would make me a completely different person, and that was the scariest thing EVER! In the word it teaches us that we mudst die to our flesh that we can kill that old man or woman and walk in newness of life. I liked that idea better, dont fix the old man, kill him and start over, born again! Galatians 2:20 Over the period of them years i stayed in hospitals for long. I faught myself hard on a dailey basis. Anti-psycottics and anti-depresants made me feel so awkward around others. The doctors told my mother that my diagnosis was most likely drug induced and want to see mke off of drugs for 5 years, now i heard its a year wow thanks LOL j/k My music is my life it depicts my life, tells my story. Where I've been and how ive made it threw it. Around the age of 30 after years of bad relationships and drug abuse I met my wife. I was fighting the addiction of loritabs i got myself off of everything else. I was in the process of fighting for my son and still am. When I took her out I instantly feel in love. After abpout a month my cousin that lives in Tennessee talked me into going on a retreat called The Great Banquet -Luke 13. I told God that weekend i wanted a family. That weekend God communicated with me and connected with me on a level He never really had. I was away from EVERYTHING no cell phone nothing, just me GOD and a lot of woods.i mean i had went on retreats before, i cried, laughed, and been threw all the Christianized motions/prodgical lifestyle. When i came back home Samantha told me she could definately see a change in me. I was confused like more than ever. we got into an arguement because we were more or less on two different levels, like i always did i ran from my problems. i wanted to come back out of fear, but she made me stay gone for a few days which was probably the best thing she ever did. It gave me time to think about a lot. While i was gone she found out she was pregnant. So i was even more confused happy but sad too. i was staying at my brother Ant's house and we talked and prayed and talked and prayed. It took 3 days to change my timing belt on my car, but God does a lot in three days, just look what He did with Jesus Christ. After that i went back home to her 9 months later she gave birth to my lil angel Alissa Peyton Owens. now i had an awesome son named Michael Gabriel and a daughter :) Around a year after i married her. She is my best friend and it seems god made her specifically for me! Thank you God I am forever in your dept, 100 times over!!! shortly after me and my tattoo master Billy Lyons aka Spacey hooked back up and i started working at TNT Tattoo again where i am currently still working on a tattoo minisrty, ha still rebelious, only now its against the culture, ALL of it! Now I am working on my solo cd WHITE MIKE "ME AGAINST ME" and the original RBG CD along with Unjudgable Philip Sanford. My mission is simple but serious, grab people out of them flames. Raise the dead as my father raised me from death threw others and music. Christ lives in me and i can do ALL things threw christ who gives me strenght, and all things work out good for those who love Him, those called according to His purpose, GALATIANS 2:20, PHILLIPIANS 4:13 AND ROMANS 8:28 Thank you for reading this, me and my wife Pecked it for three days, i hope and pray you see God working threw my music "from my hurt for your good"- Pastor Lee Drake, Thank you for supporting my ministry and if you need anything or need to talk about anything please call, text or email me, FOREVER WITH LOVE, WHITE MIKE AKA ThaRezzerecta .....dedicated to everyone still neck deep in the struggle!!!