Yeah, I drank the kool-aid...even licked the spoon. Unfortunately, I didn't literally die.
I'm one of those "walking wounded" who have to deal with the gut wrenching reality of my spoon fed poison. Since that poison was given to me in tiny droppersful day in day out...I didn't notice it.
Until one day, for no particular reason (or for many little reasons) I looked into the mirror and saw a gaunt, deathlike image void of any real life. It scared the hell (ok, the grave) out of me.
Those little Watchtower sips had turned me into an automaton. It kept me so doped up on the sick sugary image of an imaginary life that I could just possibly have if I could just possibly be good enough and if I could just possibly sip enough organizational ooze to keep me going.
Your reference to the mass suicide of 913 people in Jonestown...is sickening, sad, horrific and feels shockingly familiar.
Cultish, regulatory religious organizations or any other group who has even one iota of the control Jim Jones had over his/their followers are all guilty of murder in one sense or another. Be it the death of a family bond, the death of someone's talent, their creative energy or the death of one's idenity. It is akin to involuntary euthanasia.
What makes an individual or a group stir up a batch of beliefs and serve it to their followers?
What makes followers sip without reservation?
Everyone has their own idea or reason or excuse. Mine? They put it in my bottle, so much so that it runs through every vein and every crevice of who I am.
I feel like I was secretly used for some crazy ass alien experiment and now I have three eyes and mutated limbs. I cough up blood when reminders of "god" and "the bible" are spoken. I sit alone, in darkness staring at the glaring light of a moniter with only the words of other religious guinea pigs who share my pain to comfort me.
Did I drink the Kool-Aid? Hell Yes I did, I couldn't avoid it.
Do I feel like a bloated, putrefying corpse laying somewhere in some gawd forsaken jungle? again, Hell Yes.
What was that sign over Jim Jones' head?
I remember my past....and believe me I will NEVER repeat it.