To each his own:
Ashley Smith, who was held hostage in her apartment in March by the man now charged with murder in the Atlanta courthouse shootings, was hailed as a hero after she disclosed how she had persuaded her captor to surrender, partly by reading to him from the spiritual best seller “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
But in a memoir released yesterday, Ms. Smith also recounts that she gave the kidnapper some of her supply of crystal methamphetamine during her captivity and that she did not tell the police for some time afterward.
In the memoir, “Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Hostage Hero,” Ms. Smith recalls that Brian Nichols, who has been charged in the death of three people shot at the Fulton County Courthouse and a fourth killed elsewhere in Atlanta soon before her kidnapping, asked her if she had any marijuana. She answered no but said she did have some “ice,” or crystal meth.
Ms. Smith says that at the time, she was fighting an addiction to crystal methamphetamine that had previously led her to spend time in a psychiatric hospital and to lose custody of her 5-year-old daughter.
She says she last used crystal meth about 36 hours before being taken hostage. Though Mr. Nichols used it and invited her to do so, she refused, she writes, and has not taken drugs since the episode.
I hope she stays clean, but I hope she gets some clinical treatment, and doesn’t try to simply handle this through spiritual therapy.
Mr Furious
“I hope she stays clean, but I hope she gets some clinical treatment, and doesn’t try to simply handle this through spiritual therapy.”
Why? It’s worked out fine for our dry-drunk President…
Another Jeff
The worst thing about the crystal meth angle is that, according to another story i saw, he asked for the weed because he said he needed to calm down.
You would think this woman, who obviously uses, would know that crystal meth doesn’t exactly have a calming effect.
That would be like the guy saying “do you have any vodka, i need to calm down”, and her instead giving him some Starbucks Triple-Caffeinated cappucino or something.
Mr Furious
Do I win anything for “most predictable comment from the lefty contingent”?
Lines
Saw her on a morning show today, she’s NOT clean.
She needs to bathe in the Blood of the Lamb some more, I’m sure God will forgive her sins.
ET
My best friend is from Atlanta and she occasionally sends me vents she finds funny.
OK, pop quiz: You have a homicidal maniac in your apartment. You give him … A) Milk and cookies; B) Chamomile tea; C) Crystal meth.
With the proceeds from her book, Ashley Smith can afford an upgrade to a cocaine habit.
Edited out of the Ashley Smith book: “Jesus told me not to flush my drug stash.”
DecidedFenceSitter
Unless he is ADHD, in which case a stimulant allows him to focus.
Mr.Ortiz
I wonder if this will do for drug sales what her original story did for sales of that book. Also, when people get busted for drug possession in the future, can they claim they only have it for self defense?
Lines
Meth has turned the corner!
No one could have forseen the failure of the crystal meth.
quackquack
Who the hell gives crystal meth to a murderer?
Krista
Someone whose brains are already fried by it, and took it only 1 1/2 days ago, that’s who.
Jimmy Jazz
Did Jesus tell “clean Jean” to keep the ice around for any stray murderers that might stop by? ‘Cause that’s my excuse. Recreational drugs are the Purpose of my Driven Life, that’s for sure.
Lee
Or it could have been the floor show that saved her life.
From this version of the story
“She writes that she asked Nichols if he wanted to see the danger of drugs and lifted up her tank top….”
-yeah I’m going to hell, one ticket window seat please ;)
DougJ
What this woman did was heroic in its own way. I don’t care if she was on meth or experiencing the rapture.
And let’s face it: meth dealers and evangelical Christians have the same target audience.
Krista
Yeah, if I’d been held hostage by a murderer in my apartment, I’d offer him pretty much whatever I had in order to get out alive. Unfortunately, I don’t keep meth OR evangelical literature at my place, so he’d have to make do with some single-malt and a stack of Maxim magazines.
SeesThroughIt
That stuck out to me, too. The guy asks for weed–a drug that will make you lazy, languid, and a bit silly. She gives him meth–a drug that will make you hyper, aggressive, and a bit nutty.
ZING!
I do have to wonder, cynical as it may be, if she’d have gotten the hero’s treatment if she had left out the holy-roller business. Would so many people be clamoring to make a hero out of a crystalhead even with the same outcome?
david hume
Remember a few months back when there was a courthouse shooting
(including the murder of a popular judge), then the perp held a woman
hostage a distance away from the court? She faced almost certain
death, but then she managed to talk her way out of it relatively
unharmed after she gave her would be tormentor a copy of Rick Warren’s
Purpose Driven Life.
This seemed to be a huge coup for the evangelical movement and another
death blow for so-called “secularism.” Even CNN caved in when they
dedicated an entire night of programs to the affair and Warren’s book,
having him as a guest on Larry King’s.
Now, the story can be told. This guy didn’t voluntarily give his life
to Christ. He was drugged into it — by her.
Via Kathy Shaidle: Ashley Smith admits she gave Brian Nichols
methampethamine. She gave it to him when he demanded marijuana. The
cops aren’t going to charge her since she came clean. Apparently,
the affair made her find God, and go sober on drugs too.
To see how stupid bestselling author Rick Warren, a Christian pastor
who wrote “The Purpose-riven Life”, is, look at what he said to Larry
King on CNN the other day. It shows how empty and dumb most Christian
pastors are, including this Rick Warren guy, a very stupid and dumb
person. It makes me feel sorry for what America has become, having
embraced a very stupid and dumb version of Christianity. Sad.
At first, Larry King, says: “In the past, Rick, you will admit the
evangelicals and a lot in
the church didn’t look at AIDS.”
WARREN: Oh, yes.
KING: Didn’t deal with it and in fact called it God’s revenge against gays.
WARREN: Yes, yes. Well, you know, they were wrong and we were wrong to
be quiet. I never called it that but we were wrong to not speak up.
The fact is AIDS is not a gay plague. AIDS is a human plague and it
involves — actually more women have AIDS than men do.
Later, in the same interview, Larry King says:”Back to
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AIDS and the gay community, you know there are some gay activists who
are wary of this sudden evangelical interest in AIDS is the desire to
change their sexual preference.
WARREN: …Now people ask me all the time what do you think about
homosexuality, OK? Well, I don’t approach it — I approach it like
this. When you look at a female body and you look at a male body it
seems that naturally certain parts go together.
KING: It seems that way, therefore how do you explain why someone is homosexual?
WARREN: I don’t explain it. I don’t explain it.
KING: Well, then that doesn’t suffice.
WARREN: Well, and…
KING: Do you know why women, why you like women, just because the body
is shaped differently?
WARREN: Oh, no, I’m sure I know why I like women.
KING: You do?
WARREN: I think — I think I was wired by God to like women. I think they…
KING: So, what did he do to the gay person, God?
WARREN: I don’t know that God did that. I really don’t.
KING: You mean he did it to you but he didn’t do it to them?
WARREN: You know, Larry, we all have instincts and we all have urges
and we all have desires. That doesn’t necessarily mean that I fulfill
all of them. In other words, as a heterosexual man I might desire to
have sex with 100 women. That doesn’t mean I do it because that
wouldn’t be the right thing.
KING: All right, but if you desire another man and you’re a man and
you’re an adult, who are you harming if the two of you agree and it’s
your life?
WARREN: Yes.
KING: It’s not Rick Warren’s life or Larry King’s life. It’s their life.
Here’s the kicker,which shows how stupid Rick Warren really is, when
he asks how can a person believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution AND
homosexuality at the same time. What a stupid, bigoted man he is!
He tells Larry King: “Well, again, I would just say I think to me the issue is,
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is it natural? Is it the natural thing? I mean here’s an interesting
thing I have to ask. How can you believe in Darwin’s theory of
evolution and homosexuality at the same time? Now think about this. If
Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality
would be a recessive gene because it doesn’t reproduce and you would
think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work
itself out of the gene pool.