Angela D. – NA Speaker – “Overcoming Drug Addiction Everyday”
Recovering from addiction is a “one day at a time” thing. Angela is a wonderful NA speaker that shares her story and how she keeps her addiction at bay. This NA tape is incredibly inspiring and Angela explains how she went from the isolation and loneliness of addiction, to becoming connected with others and enjoying life once again. This is a MUST listen and has many stories that are downright hilarious. This one will make you laugh, and possibly cry, but it will surely help someone, somewhere and let them know recovery is possible!
Angela’s experience with her moment of clarity while suffering from drug addiction
What I need you to understand, is that whatever grain of goodness there was in me at that time wanted to leave that money on the floor. I wish I could stand here and tell you that I had the strength of character. To walk out and leave with, at least my dignity intact. But while I was down on my knees picking those dollar bills, promising her that this would be the last time I would do this. All I could think about my right there was waiting down the street with drugs and I know the way to get there. You know, after that day I had to go to prison. I told my Mom I was going away to prison, and this would be the last time. Literature talks about in the first step in the green and gold book. About that moment of clarity. When all of the lies and rationalization that we use to justify it we are no longer working and we get a clear picture of just who we are. And I had that moment right then, right there, after I finished telling my mother about my sentence. I looked in the mirror as I was putting on makeup, looking like a blowpipe. I still thought I was cute. I look like a stick, washed out and skinny, blowing kisses at myself. I’m talking about insanity. Because it’s easy for us to change our perception of reality. So when I look in the mirror, I quickly had to adjust my perception because I couldn’t look at who it was and what I had become as a direct result of this disease that I suffer from.
I’m talking about my disease, that when I am left to my own devices, I would self destruct, but this time, I had a moment of clarity. I wanted something different from where I had come and I was standing there having this conversation with myself. I’m tired because I’ve got two brothers that don’t seem to suffer from this disease, College graduates, Ph.D.s, heck my brother must have paid off his mortgage by the time he was barely six!
Anyways, what I understood in that moment was everything that was happening in my life was a result of the choices that I had made and was making; so I made the choices that brought me to this point in time. I could make some different choices but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what that was going to look like. But I know now. I wish I could tell you that that spiritual moment led to the day when I was walking out of jail, but that wasn’t the case. I had begun the process, but I needed to follow that process through. You know, when I see people who come into recovery, we expect everything to go away when we surrender to this process. But the thing is that we still have to clean up the wreckage of our past. There are a lot of us that have lawyers and things out there, but what this process does, is it gives us the courage in the character to stand accountable.
