Dottie M. – NA Speaker – “Suffering NO MORE!” NEW 2017

Dottie M. is an incredible NA speaker with a powerful story, she is truly one of the best out there. She will pull you in right from the beginning with her delivery and energy. I really enjoy when speakers are high energy and have a passion for the recovery process. This tape is a great example of how anyone can recover from drug addiction if they are willing to do whatever is necessary. GREAT Narcotics Anonymous share!

Dottie’s powerful story of a close call

My friends were starting to tell me I had a drug problem at that point. I mean, these were people that were worse than me! So I thought, “Well I lost my job, and I got in trouble with drugs” and I thought “I’m just going to show everybody! I’m just going to quit drinking.” I tried to quit drinking before, and after about twelve hours I started getting sick and shaking so I ran to my car. Luckily I had a working car at that time so I rushed to the store and got a six pack. Then I was fine. I said to myself “oh my god I’m an alcoholic!” And I never thought about it again till I ended up in treatment for substance abuse. So that was the only time that I even gave a split moment’s thought that there might be a connection between how I was, what was going on, and the substance use problem I had. So I go to this treatment center and I would not even come out of my room for the first three days, mostly because I was very sick. Another thing I told myself was that I wasn’t like these other people. Then they came and told me if I didn’t come out of my room they were going to throw me out. I said to myself, “oh my god, I can’t go back out on the streets because I’m in big trouble out there and it will not be pretty!”

So I came out of my room and I went into this classroom area they had. I remember this lady, I don’t know if anyone here is from Charlotte or if you been there, but her name was Evlyn. She was just as mean as Yankee from New York, and she would tell you what she thought in a New York minute. She didn’t think twice about how the truth affected your feelings. She said “Are you an alcoholic?” I said “hell no!” Then the whole room busted out laughing! You know, because they’d been in treatment for a while; and when I heard them laugh, I was so humiliated. I went back to my room and packed my bags. I wanted to get the heck out of dodge. Suddenly, a couple of addicts came in the room and convinced me to stay. They stayed with me, I didn’t feel like sleeping and I had not slept in four days at that point. They kept talking to me about being an addict and it pissed me off even more. Despite being so ugly toward them, they never kicked me out, they always supported me.

The kicker was what happened one night, I think I’d been in treatment about two weeks at that point. I like retelling the story because it’s kind of funny. I had not slept and I was kicking from the dope. Addicts know what it’s like when you’re kickin’ and it’s just hell. I was starting to throw up and I really did not want to go anywhere. We had volunteers that would come and drive us to meetings. They were all other addicts that were in the rooms. Charles was the volunteer who picked us up that night and he had about nine months clean at that point. He was driving a van full of us to a 12 step club for a meeting. This was the first meeting I had been too outside and with the whole group. So he took us into this meeting and he said just jokingly goes into the club and says “I brought you all a bunch of drug addicts and alcoholics!”

I thought to myself “I’m not an addict!” So I took off. It was pouring rain this night in Charlotte. I started to hitchhike and my old buddies, who were after me, saw me out there in the parking lot where it is pouring down rain. I look like a drowned rat. I’m like at this point I’m probably less than a hundred pounds. Then I saw two people, luckily they were the counselors and I don’t know why they were still in the parking lot that day. Well I do. Now I think it was definitely a God thing because I don’t know if I’d be dead if they weren’t there. They defused the situation and got me away from the old buddy. Thank God! Take me back! They didn’t throw me out, and you know they used to throw people out every single day from breaking the rules so they could make room for somebody new who needed a bed. Thank God they talked me into staying in treatment. I still look back on that incident and I don’t know how that happened that my life was saved. I asked several years later, after that it was three years clean. I said, “Why didn’t y’all throw me out?” She looked at me and she said, “Dottie, we knew you were going to die.” You know, really it’s just nothing short of the grace of God.