Troy S. – NA Speaker – “Escaping from the Prison of Addiction”

I started going to Narcotics Anonymous meetings. I got out of there after three weeks and I just kept going to meetings. The rehab told me one very important thing, they said, “There is nothing we can tell you here in treatment that’s going to keep you clean if you don’t go to meetings” My sponsor said to go to a meeting every day. He also said I should call him every day. In my new found life, I made a decision not to go to back to work for the pizza business. I was just going to try to find something else to do career wise. So for about three months I didn’t work at all, and all I did was go to meetings and work on my own. I focused entirely on my recovery and my parents let me move back in with them. I didn’t have a driver’s license at the time and I didn’t have a car. I was living twenty miles from the nearest meeting and I still made it to a meeting every day. In fact, most days I made it to two. You know my sponsor I told me that I somehow managed to get dope every day, so I should try just as hard to go to a meeting. I said, “Yeah I remember I stole a car to buy a pound one week.” He laughed and said, “Don’t steal a car to go to one meeting but you better make one every day!”

My sponsor was great, he shared his stuff with me you know and I listened to other people share at meetings too. I also began to share and I got a thirty day tag. I thought the sky was going to part and God was going to come down himself, I just could not believe I had thirty days. You know, I was still pretty crazy inside, but I was staying clean, even though it was crazy at times. I just kept coming back. My sponsor got me started on the steps and I knew that I was powerless over my addiction and my life was unmanageable. I knew on my own I couldn’t stop. I knew that there must have been some power greater than myself that intervened because stopped using and I was the type of person that could just not stop under any circumstances. I went to meetings and I could feel an energy in the room. I did not know what it was. It was just an energy, and it was something that was helping everybody stay clean. It was there, something was definitely there. I could feel it. I did not know what it was. I did not know what to call it. That was my first concept of a higher power. I just called it God because that’s what you guys called it, so I was good with using the name.

My sponsor said, “You need to turn your will in your life for the care of God as you understand him,” and I said, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t even understand. How do you turn your will on your life over?” None of the steps made any sense to me at first. Then he said, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to get on your knees. Say that prayer right in the book where it talks about taking your will, all your life, and guiding you in your recovery; where it asks you to ask God to show you how to live.” So I started doing it, and amazing things started to happen.