Weeping,
I've read through your posts and subsequent responses, and I have to say that for 50+ you seem to have incredible tunnel vision, choosing to see the world through the Watchtower's eyes, colored by the drug-crazed, Satan-worshipping, orgy-loving clique you hung with in your 20s.
I spent over 30 years inside the organization as a "born-in". I have now spent three solid years outside. I have been exposed to a variety of personalities of "worldly" (JW term, not mine) people and in my experience the majority are salt-of-the-earth. Sure, there are bad people outside the organization, but there are also bad people inside.
Personally, I have seen the adverse effects of hard drugs on people close to me and that life never appealed to me, either inside or outside the org. Satan worshippers, I'm sure, are rare. Group sex, pot that knocked you out? Come on, be honest. Where did you go in your 20s? Woodstock?
Seriously, things in my life have been very good since I left. I see things from a different perspective. I've slowed down to smell the flowers and listen to the birds. I enjoy the occasional cigar. I'm not judgmental. I love debate and frank discussion, the grasping of someone's point of view differing from my own. I have grown to appreciate this forum and check it daily. It has become part of my mechanism for breaking free from WT-think. I can only describe the feeling of liberation as soothing and intellectually stimulating. Mostly, I've grown to love people for who they are, all their imperfections and flaws in tact, an ability foreign to mainline JWs.
If you give yourself the time to see your religion for what it is rather than what you want it to be, that effort will be repaid beyond measure. Life will become richer and more meaningful, and the little victories along the way will seem just a little bit sweeter.
That's been my experience, anyway. I truly hope yours will be equally rewarding.
