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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 926 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: debbie-giving-back-and-service-in-recovery-na-2007-archive-926.mp3 Duration: 00:23:51
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My name is Debbie and I'm an addict. My clean date is February 4th, 1982 and I say that not to brag but to let you know that you can stay clean a day at a time, a week at a time, a month at a time and you'll rack up some years. Okay. Kind of nervous myself. I've never gotten used to this. When I was in elementary, junior high, high school when they had book reports I always was the one that either didn't show up that day that I was going to have to get up and do my book report or I just didn't do it. So I'm not a paid public speaker, I'm just an addict in recovery. Started out, I'll never forget the day that I had been flown to Louisiana, which is a state over from Texas, and Betty and my friend for 40 years, her husband had just, was just getting out of the treatment center and he was picking me up at the airport to put me in. And I was like, man, did, have you found the answer? What the hell is wrong with us? I had no idea what was wrong with me.
I had been in psychiatric places, locked down with people that wore diapers and my ex-husband put me and Betty in in a place one time and we were, of course, really loaded when we got in so we passed out and got up the next morning and walking down the hallway and I saw the elevator and there were no buttons on the elevator so we were locked in there. And I never knew there was an answer to this dilemma that we had. I really did think that I was going to die with a needle in my arm and I didn't know when that was going to be. The thing that finally got my attention was when I was pregnant for the fourth time and all the previous three pregnancies had been terminated by abortion. Not proud of that at all. When I got, when I started doing my inventory, that was probably one of the most painful things is because for me, just for me, I felt like I had murdered. Anyway, so I had all those things going on and I'm pregnant this fourth time and I couldn't go through with another one so what got my attention was that I couldn't quit shooting dope. And somewhere deep inside my soul I knew that it was wrong. That this baby growing inside me didn't have a choice. And that was when I realized that I didn't have a choice either.
I tried to quit all the time. Every day it was going to be the last time. And sadly it was four years later before I ever found Narcotics Anonymous. And what happened was my parents had told me that, well I went out to their house to eat because by then I was just barely surviving and trying to take care of a child. And they would let me come out there to eat. And so we ate and then I told my son it was time to go and my mother walked over to him and picked him up and she said, no more. He's here, he's staying here and unless you can get an attorney and fight we will keep him. You will never drag him through the gutter again. So that got my attention but still, you know, things got my attention but there was no answer. And so that day that I got picked up at the airport and scooted away to this one more hospital where I thought I would lay up in bed, punch the button and order the nurses to bring me all these various pills that I knew would work. And that's not what the deal was. It was all about, no, we're not giving you nothing and you're going to finally detox from these, the
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last 14 years of using. So anyway, I spent the first 39 days there and they told me that if I ever went back to
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Houston that I wouldn't make it. I'd die there. And I knew that. Something had happened in those first 40 days. I didn't want to go to a halfway house. I had no idea what that was. You know, Patrick was speaking the other day and talking about all these new words that you start hearing when you come to recovery. It's like I didn't know what anything meant. So anyway, I knew that I needed to go and the other catch was that it was a women's facility for women and their children. And my parents said that I could have my son back if I would do that. So I went. And Betty Ann came about two or three months later because she really didn't think she was an addict. It was just if I would get clean and her husband would, then she'd be fine. But anyway, so I stayed there for nine months and that first year was spent in total remorse and guilt. I could not believe what in the hell I'd done with my life and what I'd done to all the people around me, how much I'd hurt people, how much I'd taken. I don't ever remember even as a child being a giver at all. I really don't think that was any part of my heart. But through the guilt and remorse, and then going to N.A. meetings all the time, finally got out of that place and one of the guys, back then it was like we all had the same amount of clean time. And one of the guys said, I don't know, we'd heard from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that there was a thing called H&I. And so I was wondering what in the hell that was. And they said, you know, it's where a couple addicts will go in and spread the word. Well, by then I had already done my first step and I was really bad about, you know, writing letters of ninth step amends letters out of order, of course. I hadn't done the previous steps. And then it was like 1, 9, and 12.
By then I wanted to shout to the world that I'd found an answer, that there was a way out of this hell. And so I thought, and then plus they kept telling me that I was going to have to let go of old people, places, and things. I mean, the whole time I was in that recovery place, I was writing letters back home to the using addicts that I had ran with for years. And they kept saying, you know, you're going to have to let them go. And so in my mind I thought, okay, well, if I go in the prison, I'm going to be seeing people that are just like the old buddies that we ran with. And I can tell them there's a way, there's a different way to live. So that was how I began, that's how in my mind I thought that I would, what I would do to shout to the world. Actually, over the years it's kind of changed. And I have been involved in H&I since the first year. When I moved, finally moved back to Texas, I had almost three years clean and, you know, it was like, okay, is there any H&I meetings? Where are they? What do we do? And by then we were kind of trying to, because in the beginning there wasn't any, this deal about the men with the men and the women with the women. We didn't have enough addicts, recovering addicts to have those kind of, that kind of criteria. It was like, whoever is willing, send them in. And so there was a women's meeting already started at the county prison, a county jail, it wasn't a prison. They're separate in Texas. So I got involved and I've been involved in that meeting for 22 years. And I don't say that to brag, I just say because I, somewhere along the line I made a commitment. And it wasn't because I had realized that I had a heart for giving back at that point. It was just that I just loved it. And then over
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time, really as I began to develop a real relationship with God, because that wasn't anything that was easy for me. When I got clean, the God that I had, I wasn't agnostic. It wasn't that I didn't believe. I did believe, but I thought that I had a cruel, harsh, punishing God. In my mind, He had had a bullwhip after me for years. And it was because of some of those things I just talked to you about, that all the things that I had done that were so wrong. And I thought I had hell to pay for the rest of my life for all those things. Little did I know, as I got my sponsor, that she started to talk to me about, and I had never heard of a forgiving God. All the things you did, then you were going to burn in hell for the rest of eternity or whatever. I didn't know. I wasn't one of those people that was brought up in church either, so I didn't have a clue. But as I began to hear about this loving, caring, and forgiving God, I started to feel like, really to realize that recovery was such a gift. That each day I was clean was a gift from God. And what gift was I going to give back to God? And that's how I felt and thought. And so, one of the reasons why I stayed involved in HNI also, I was raising my son, and I knew that if I got involved, like GSR or anything at area level, that I would have to be traveling on one Sunday a month. Back then, Texas is the second largest state in the United States, and we only had two regions, and so to go to the regional, we sometimes had to drive, and I've heard now that y'all have further than us, so it's not such a big, I made it a big deal back then. But I did it, we had to drive three or four, we had to drive three or four hours to get to the region. And I had also gone to school after I got clean and became a hairstylist, and so my schedule was working Tuesday through Saturday, and that only gave me one day to be with my son, and that one day was Sundays, and so I wasn't going to take that time away from him. He suffered enough, and I really related to Deion last night, because actually going through a hard time with my child, he barely speaks to me. He's 29 years old, and he has started drinking, and I really don't know if he, because he won't talk to me. I've offered us to go to some counseling and help to try to get to the bottom of all this. I don't know if it is because he's sinking into addiction, or if he has just rage and resentment against me. You know, I did, I really know that I did the best that I could. I was raising him alone. We had very little money, and I just did the best I could, and a lot of times I was gone to meetings.
You know, it was really hard to distinguish in how much I needed to be at meetings and how much time I needed to be with him, and I know that he suffered from that, but still as I look back, I don't know what I could have done different except maybe try to get babysitters or something, but there was no money. So anyway, that was my reason for not getting involved in area and region, and now what's evolved now for me is over the last probably six or seven years, I've really realized that giving back is not just about N.A., and I made a promise to myself that I would never, ever leave N.A.
You know, it's, I don't know about you guys, but it seems like people get, you know, over five years, five to ten, or over, especially over ten years, where we're from. It's like, oh, I'm recovered. I got a life, and I don't have time for y'all. And I, you know, I know that I'm not the only one. and I don't have time for y'all and I you know I noticed how bare the room is
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today and what this subject is giving back and I don't know I'm not going to make any accusations but forever we've had trouble getting people to just sign up and be accountable and you know I don't understand one hour a week that's all of course you know what we don't talk about either is that whole trip going you know you get to I get to be with women that since I sponsor a lot of women a lot of my spare time is taken up with them and so going to H&I meetings we have that whole car trip going and the car trip back and it's like you know you get to develop friendships I that's what's been very important to me but now what I was I get sidetracked and go in circles what I was wanting to say was that I don't know how many years ago I realized that that giving back was not just about Narcotics Anonymous and when my child was growing up I made sure that I was in the PTA and went to those meetings and felt like a fish out of water for a while and then learned how to be with people other than recovering addicts and my son was in the FFA where that's the Future Farmers of America and that's a school project where they raise animals for the yearly rodeo and and what is it yeah livestock sale anyway they use their own money to raise the animal and and then at the livestock and rodeo then all these people come and they auction them off and so he made his money back and and he got reserved champion which was good yeah he raised a hog but I was in the FFA booster club so I had all these other mothers and fathers that I learned to you know just be out in society with and then about five years ago I got this one of the things that I thought for sure was going to happen kind of when the fog lifted it was like okay who is going to be my next husband and because I thought you know you come to N.A. I mean I was 29 years old and almost divorced and I thought okay well that's what I'm looking for a husband and gonna have a baby that won't be born addicted to heroin that was my greatest wish in the beginning and that I would be given a second chance to be pregnant with a child and no drugs and raise a child in a completely clean environment and you know what God had different plans for me I've never been married again and I don't know that you know that's just yet and I believe that but I always wanted a daughter and so in my mind this is how it worked in my mind I thought I will there's a mentor program in the schools in Texas and so for the last five or six years I mentored a junior high child at first I wanted a cute little five or six-year-old because I thought that would be really fun and it would but as I thought about it and thought back to my own life of how difficult it was in middle school 12 13 14 years old that's when I got started in my addiction and that's when everything was so confusing and so that's the age that I've chosen is and I just go to the school I take a lunch break and you only get to visit with them for about 45 minutes it's their lunch break and you can take them lunch and just sit and listen and talk and to me that's the way I can give back to to society I was a leech and a mooch and I took from anybody that I could and now my heart is just about you know what can
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I do what could I do to change to make a small difference in this world and I don't know what all those answers are but I'm open to God I you know I do I do pray and meditate and listen to him it's really a privilege to be here I was one of those addicts that could never well three and a half years I was on methadone maintenance so if any of you guys have ever done that you know that you're a prisoner to it because you don't want to miss that line in the morning and because I thought that stuff saved my life because I quit shooting dope all I did was just go to the line I drove 40 miles to get to the line and that was like at five o'clock in the morning because I thought the stuff saved my life because it for the first time in my life I was working and keeping a job and so to me methadone saved my life and I was going to stay on it for the rest of my life and I forgot where I was going with that but it didn't work of course it turned on me and getting old that's the only thing about celebrating recovery for me every time I yearly clean date comes around seven days before that I have my real birthday and it's like I love that I have that I'm able to stay clean but I'm getting older that's a blessing that's denied to many of us so and so I'm really grateful really appreciate being here what I was going to say was that for those three-and-a-half years I could never leave town ever there was only one time that I did leave for two days and I had my methadone transferred to the town that I was going to go to and anytime when you're an addict I don't know about you guys but for me I couldn't I couldn't go anywhere I couldn't do anything because I sure didn't have enough I was one of those addicts that didn't have a plethora of money to get this big score and then go on these lavish vacations with my drugs no that's not the kind of addict I was it wasn't until I got clean that I've been able to do and go and traveling is one of my passions I found that out you know just being clean I found out what I like and what I don't like and I'm still discovering all that I haven't arrived anywhere you know I could talk for probably three hours on my biggest problem area which is relationships but that's not what this topics about so I don't have to share that anyway appreciate you guys letting me share I knew Patrick had told me that we would probably have to if we came to the convention and I just put it out of my mind because I didn't know what the topic would be so there was no reason to get scared scare myself for three months and anyway thank you for having us