One Last Hit | A Sobriety and Addiction Recovery Podcast

What is happening, ladies and gentlemen?

My name is Austin and welcome to the

One Last Hit podcast.

And we have a very special one today.

So I'm joined by Miss Dawn Mannion.

Did I say your last name right?

Is it Mannion?

Yeah, you actually did.

Cool, cool.

And she wrote a book called Love is

Greater Than Addiction,

which I was just telling her I've gotten

through the first few chapters.

I had a vacation come up,

so I forgot the book at home accidentally.

But she has a really,

really cool story that I'm excited to dive

into with you today, Dawn.

So thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

So let's let's go early.

What like where where does it all begin?

What are your earliest memories?

How did this all start?

I mean,

like a lot of people ask me, like,

how did it all begin?

And it's really difficult.

It's not like there was one dramatic

moment where I became homeless and I was

shooting up and you know what I mean?

Like.

It's crazy how gradual it was and how

easily everything became normal one step

at a time.

I was drinking with my parents when I

was young, and my parents,

they were fighting their own addictions,

and nothing was not normal to me because

that's the environment I was raised in.

So like I started drinking a lot.

I was I was probably a full blown

alcoholic by the time I was nineteen,

you know, and I mean,

most people think that's young,

but it took me so long to get

there.

I started when I was like eleven or

twelve, you know.

And then alcohol, like most addictions,

became not enough.

I discovered cocaine.

Cocaine was the answer to all my problems.

I loved cocaine.

And I don't mean to glorify it by

any means,

but it brought me to further and further

into my addiction.

I didn't even know I was an addict.

I mean,

I didn't even admit that I was an

addict to myself until I got sober.

You know,

and then I'm curious about something.

Apologies for cutting you off.

But before we go too far down the

timeline.

So young Don,

you picked up a drink at eleven.

What was going on prior to that?

Like if you could name all right,

if I could get you, you know,

kind of into your into your heart here.

What did it feel like to be a

kid with you said you had two parents

that were fighting their own addictions?

Like what did childhood feel like in

retrospect?

I mean, weirdly enough,

like my childhood seemed pretty normal.

And I think that,

I think that anybody who's gone through a

childhood like mine would say the same

thing, because when you're young,

you don't really realize how unnormal

those things are, you know,

because you are growing and raised in

that, you know?

So when I started drinking,

I thought I was cool.

I thought I was like the adults in

my family.

I thought I was, you know,

fitting in with my family better than I

probably ever did before.

You know, it's all about acceptance.

I don't know why I've always battled that

acceptance thing, but...

But yeah, so does that tell me more?

Yeah, no, no, it totally does.

I want to.

There we go.

Tell me more about the acceptance thing.

Like, what was it?

Do you were you not accepted as a

child?

Do you have memories of that being the

case?

I don't really understand it a lot myself.

It's not that I wasn't accepted because I

guess I was,

but I was always just the eager to

please kid.

I was the kind of kid that,

you know,

if you told me I was doing something

wrong,

I would never do it again because I

just wanted everybody around me to be

happy with who I was.

I wanted to make people proud.

I wanted to be loved more than everybody

else, you know?

And like,

I got straight A's until like the sixth

grade.

for that reason.

I just really always wanted people to love

me and like me and stuff.

And I don't really know where that stemmed

from, but it was just always,

I had to be the best, you know?

And it's crazy.

Yeah,

it's crazy how you can go from wanting

to be the best and looking forward to

college and stuff like that and becoming

the best at shooting up.

It's just so crazy.

Yeah, yeah.

No, I got you.

And it sounds like, all right,

so you get straight A's until sixth grade,

which is coincidentally the same grade

when you start drinking.

And what was your first drink?

Oh, really?

Okay.

What was your first drink like?

Honestly, I don't even really remember.

I don't think I liked it very much.

I do remember the first time I got

hammered drunk.

My mom had this great idea that if

she...

got me so drunk that i would be

so hung over that i would never want

to drink again and um it's actually a

funny story that my mom still tells to

this day about how the next day i

was i woke up in my own puke

i was only like like or something when

that happened and and she asked me hey

dawn do you want to drink with me

tonight and i said to her and maybe

not tonight mom but ask me tomorrow

it's crazy so her theory was great so

thirteen years old and having five kids

myself I've got a fifteen year old girl

and a twelve year old boy and I

think about me taking my first drink at

thirteen I was a baby so thirteen years

old your mom gets you so drunk that

she's hoping the experience will deter you

from ever wanting to drink again and it

sounds like

what it actually did was spur on your

drinking.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Once it became okay with my parents,

it became an okay thing to me.

You know, I was like, well,

my parents let me do it, you know?

And so that's where I actually,

I think really began branching out from my

parents' house.

I didn't drink at home anymore.

I started drinking at parties and,

you know, things like that.

Me and my friends, we were going to,

you know,

houses of much older kids who are actually

allowed to drink and old enough to,

you know,

and we were regulars at parties like that,

you know?

Yeah.

Sorry, we have a small lag and I'll,

I'll edit this part,

but we have a small lag.

That's why I keep over talking to you

and I apologize.

I'll fix it in post.

But so how do we get from

the girl who, you know, is taking,

you know, maybe have a few drinks,

you know, you get tanked up at thirteen.

How do we get to full blown alcoholic

at nineteen?

Well, I mean,

I was going through a lot with the

whole move to Florida.

I didn't fit in with the kids in

Florida.

They were way more advanced than me in

everything, like in academics,

which is where I started to lack there

because I tried my best and I still

wasn't quite living up to the standards.

the standard that I had held for myself,

you know, being a straight A student,

you know, and they were,

they were already doing drugs.

They were already, you know,

partying and I didn't really know what to

do to fit in, you know?

And so once school was no longer looking

like a

prospect of keeping me you know in the

standard i wanted to be i started making

friends and that was how making friends

became it was like well i better do

what they do that way there because it

i mean it started off where we didn't

do the same thing so they would pass

around the joint and i'd be like oh

no thank you you know but that always

made me kind of like

stuck up, you know?

And so, and I'm also Irish.

So I don't really get the whole,

I get the spins and I threw up

and my body tells me to stop.

I don't really get that.

So it was like almost a party trick

that somebody my size could out drink the

biggest men there, you know,

and stuff like that.

And so it just became so regular in

my life that I didn't even really

even acknowledge the addiction part,

you know,

I thought people who told me to stop,

they were people who didn't care about me

or,

or if it was a problem for them,

then it was their problem, not mine,

you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when you say you were fully full

blown alcoholic at is this daily drinking

every day?

Yep.

Yeah, I drank.

It got to a point where I was

by time I was like in my early

twenties,

I was drinking like two cases of beer

every night to myself.

Yeah.

And I'm talking like a whopping eighty

nine pounds.

I weighed at the time, you know,

so it's insane to think that I was

able to drink through that much alcohol.

But I mean, my parents, like,

I don't mean to say anything mean about

my parents,

because I don't think they realized what

they were doing at the time.

But they were enablers, you know,

I would go over to their house,

we would have my birthday parties at their

house,

and they'd be full blown big ass events

is my language.

Um, big events where we can,

you can say anything you want to say.

You're good.

All my friends.

And then when my parents would provide

bottles and bottles of liquor and we would

just get super drunk, you know, and it,

and it was cool because they were allowed

to come to my house and stay there

and do that, you know, and I,

I loved it too.

You know, I mean,

my mom was like the cool mom,

you know, and, and it was great.

They brought me closer to my parents of

anything really at the time.

So,

and it's crazy because when I quit

drinking, we actually had a fallen out.

And I wonder sometimes still to this day,

I wonder if that's,

that was partially because I was no longer

helping them enable me or enabling them,

you know?

Yeah.

Well, sorry to hear that.

So, so cocaine,

you mentioned cocaine comes into the mix.

When, when does that show up?

Cocaine is crazy because, I mean,

like I say,

I don't like posting blame to my parents

because everything that I did was on my

own free will.

You know, it was never forced upon me.

I caught my mom doing cocaine when I

was like.

thirteen or fourteen years old I caught my

mom doing cocaine and a friend of mine

she had brought it to a party once

and she was like hey I've got this

and I was like oh I don't know

and then I was like but my mom

does it so it can't be that bad

right you know and so I did a

line and immediately fell in love with

cocaine like I hate to admit it now

but it's the truth like I

That first line, it made me confident.

It made me not care whether people were

thinking about me.

It made me happy.

I used to joke that cocaine's a dreamer

drug, and it really is.

It makes you think about all these great,

amazing things that you're going to do

with your life.

Unfortunately, you just can't,

not when you're always messed up.

That's all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what,

how does that affect your life from that

point forward?

I mean, where does it,

where does it start going?

Um, well, you know, cocaine,

I actually started to realize it was a

problem.

Um,

and then I got pregnant and so it

was a good excuse for me to quit

doing everything.

And I always fit.

I always felt like being a good mom

was the kind of mom who didn't,

you know, do drugs.

And so for the first,

for like about seven years where I quit

doing drugs completely just to be a mom.

And with my third child, my daughter,

I started doing cocaine again,

but like on the weekends when I had

a babysitter, you know, stuff like that.

And by then I was drinking again too.

And

Then I just,

I don't even know what happened really in

between there and meth.

But once I discovered meth, I was like,

oh, this is way better than cocaine.

I was like, it's cheaper, lasts longer,

and I'm more effective on it.

I don't have to sleep, you know?

So that's, I mean,

that's kind of how that went, I guess.

Yeah.

Do you remember?

I mean,

I assume you do the first time that

you got high on meth.

Like who, what was that like?

What, what brought that about?

It's it's crazy because my drug of choice

at the time was cocaine.

This is after I'd left my daughter's

father.

So I was only seeing her occasionally,

you know, and yeah,

And so I had all the free time

in the world to do cocaine.

So I was doing cocaine and I was

living in a trailer with my boyfriend at

the time and his best friend.

Well,

his best friend did meth and I couldn't

get any cocaine that night.

So I just, he was like, well,

I've got meth.

And I was like, okay.

I mean, I was like,

I trusted him at the time I've seen

him.

and how he acts on meth you know

and i never seen anything wrong with it

so i was like okay so honestly if

meth had not been available that day i

probably would have just stayed on cocaine

you know but it was because cocaine was

not available and meth was that i was

like okay i'll give it a try and

what can you describe it like for anyone

that's never you know never done that drug

like what what was the difference between

that and and blow

I wish I could say that I hated

it right away.

I wish I could.

But I took one hit.

I was smoking it at the time.

I took one hit and it was like,

wow, to me.

I...

It was like all the things that cocaine

gave me, but no crash.

I had no crash.

I wasn't fiending for more.

Ten minutes later, you know,

it lasted for hours.

And I felt like I was a lot

more capable of doing things at the time.

And so, like,

I had all this extra energy and all

this extra time because I wasn't sleeping.

And I really, truly believed that I was,

like,

succeeding in things you know i was

working two jobs at the time you know

and

And I was like, wow,

this is the best drug ever.

It makes me more social.

I'm less awkward.

I'm getting everything I need done.

I'm working my two jobs and now I'm

not tired after two days, you know,

two jobs in one day.

You know,

it was it was so great in the

beginning.

Like,

I really thought it was the answer to

every problem that I had not even thought

I had, you know.

Yeah.

Yeah, the great the great lie, man,

that bag will cost you fifty bucks and

the next twenty years of your life or

whatever, you know,

and so in was more expensive at the

time.

And so I was spending half the money.

It was lasting twice as long, you know,

and it was like, wow,

why wasn't I doing this before?

Like that's that's when and then I still

did cocaine after that.

I actually

It's so funny how addiction lets you

believe you're in control.

And so I thought in order to not

spend too much money on one or the

other,

I would do cocaine for two weeks out

of every month.

And then the last two weeks of the

month,

I would do meth and it kept my

tolerance down.

And yeah, I was like,

I have control over this because I have

a system that makes it work,

not spend all my money on it.

Because two weeks,

I found out two weeks off of cocaine

lowered my tolerance pretty well.

And so then I'd do two weeks of

meth and then two weeks off a meth

lowered my tolerance pretty well.

So I was keeping it relatively

inexpensive,

but still doing what I wanted to all

the time.

And so how do you get from your

living with your boyfriend and his

roommate, right?

Taking your first hit of meth to,

to being homeless for a long, long time.

it's crazy because I mean, I went,

I bounced from that time.

When I first started meth,

I bounced around from friends' houses and,

you know, pretty much couch surfing.

I mean,

I was paying rent at these places,

but yeah,

I might as well have been couch surfing,

you know?

And I moved in with,

I got a new boyfriend and I moved

in with him and he did heroin,

but he also did meth and he sold

meth.

And so I used to get very upset

with him because we would run out of

meth.

And by then I was on meth constantly.

I couldn't get cocaine anymore.

I didn't even want to anymore.

And I used to get angry with him.

Oh,

how do we run out when you sell

it?

You know?

And so I got, you know,

I don't know, snooty about it.

And I said, you know what?

I'm going to start selling meth and we'll

never run out.

And for the next year and a half,

I sold meth and never ran out.

Not once.

Even made it through Corona and

everything.

I never ran out.

I mean,

by then I had high connections and

everything.

And that boyfriend,

he didn't like me anymore.

And he kicked me out because I showed

him up basically.

And I wasn't getting him free stuff.

I was yelling at him for doing it.

And so that ended and I ended up

back at my mom's.

which I already knew living with my

parents how that ends.

I've never been able to live with them

long as an adult and them not kick

me out for one reason or another.

So I was there a short time.

During that time,

I started dating a guy named Caleb and

he was homeless.

And so when I got kicked out of

my parents, I was like, well,

Caleb's homeless.

He'll take care of me.

I got out on the street.

And as soon as I,

almost as soon as I joined him on

the street,

he got arrested for domestic abuse because

he was dragging me behind a gas station

in the middle of the night.

Somebody had called.

I was,

I was fearing for my life and everything

was crazy.

Somebody had,

a customer had called the cops because

they saw him drag me around inside the

building.

The police ran up on him before he

got me behind the building, luckily.

And they arrested him for domestic abuse.

And actually, at the time,

I was so my mind was so messed

up.

I was afraid of being homeless.

I was a drug addict.

So I actually got very mad that somebody

got into my business and called the

police.

I tried everything to get those police to

not take him to jail because I was

afraid of surviving on the street alone.

And I was like,

you're taking my only resource here.

And I even went to a domestic violence

class at Quigley House,

not because I decided to leave him or

anything,

but because I thought it would improve his

chances of the state not picking up the

charges.

Yeah.

No, he had priors.

So the state picked up the charges.

They gave him sixty days and I spent

the next sixty days learning how to be

homeless on my own.

And I learned during that time that I

actually was better at it than I was

depending on him.

So by the time he got out of

jail,

I expected to be able to show him

my new independence and everything.

I expected that to work out.

I don't know.

um it didn't it didn't work out um

he i ended up breaking up with him

and because i was like man why am

i dealing with this violence and all this

you know i can live by myself i

know this now so i um i broke

up with him he disappeared and i still

have no idea to this day whatever happened

to him he just fell off the face

of the earth so i don't know if

he overdosed on drugs or what because he

was doing fentanyl

Or what?

I don't know.

Wow.

Slowly became better and better at

becoming homeless.

You know, like I just I got better.

Like when I broke up with the boyfriend

who used to shoot me up,

I got better at shooting myself up,

you know, and it's crazy how addiction.

it changes where you draw the line at

what should be success.

Instead of being proud of me getting a

job or still trying to get out of

that situation,

I became proud of being better at it.

And that just seemed okay to me.

I was like, wow,

look how good I am at this.

Could you describe to me and anyone

listening what a normal day looked like

being homeless?

I tell people all the time,

I created an acronym for it, actually.

It's called the H-M-B-D-G-H repeat symbol.

And that means hustle money, buy dope,

get high, repeat.

That's what it stands for.

And every morning you wake up,

you take inventory,

you see how much dope you have,

you know,

and that is true for a lot of

homeless people.

And it's not because we all got there

because of dope,

but we definitely were all on dope by

the time we got there.

You know,

and that's once you did inventory,

if you had no dope,

then it was time to hustle money.

You had to figure out how to get

out there and make a dollar because you

only had a few hours before you needed

money.

the dope, you know?

And so once you hustle money,

you get high.

As soon as you're done getting high,

I mean,

there's not enough hours in the day to

hustle money, buy dope, get high.

There's not.

So by the time you're to the point

of getting high, it's recycle.

You're right back to the beginning of the

next day.

Hustle money, you know?

And I mean, unfortunately,

hustling money is,

there's only a few ways you can do

that when you're homeless.

if you have a daily habit you can't

just go get a job people don't understand

that it's you have a daily habit you

have a habit that's demanding things from

you now not a week from now when

you get your first paycheck you know and

that's that's

Totally.

That's if you could even get a job,

you know,

because when you have nowhere to shower,

nowhere to live,

nowhere to no way to drive there,

it becomes exceedingly more difficult to

get a job.

I had a job when I first got

on the street.

I was working at AutoZone in the warehouse

and.

I quit that job thinking, oh,

I'll just get another job because I've

never had trouble getting another job

until I was homeless.

When you have no phone for them to

reach you on, when you have no,

you know,

you have no resources to keep that job.

It's it becomes difficult.

That's when I started flying a sign.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Quite a common way of doing it.

And so you were living now.

Were you were you in Jacksonville?

What part of Florida were you in?

I'm in Orange Park and Jacksonville.

I'm like literally on the Duval Clay

County line.

So Duval being Jacksonville,

Clay County being Orange Park.

I've been both jails arrested in both.

I've been homeless all around both Orange

Park.

What was your living situation like?

Because I know you kind of described that

a little bit in your book.

Well, in the beginning,

I was afraid to live in the woods.

I was afraid of the dark.

I was afraid of the people.

I was afraid of being invisible.

So in the beginning,

first couple of years I was homeless,

I lived on sidewalks.

I rode a bicycle,

which carried all my belongings.

And I slept anywhere I could find a

corner where I might not be noticed right

away with a camera above me.

because I was convinced that if there was

a camera above me,

if anybody tried anything,

I could just point at the camera and

hopefully they'd be like, Oh, better not,

you know, or whatever.

I just thought living under a camera would

be easiest, you know, um,

eventually you get chased off of enough

sidewalks,

you get arrested enough times and,

and you just have nowhere else to go.

But the woods,

I had friends who lived in camps, um,

And so I gradually began staying with

friends in their camps.

I never really built my own until I

met my boyfriend, Tony,

still to this day my boyfriend.

He was the first one that really showed

me how you can make a home in

the woods.

Um,

he built me a surprise camp off of

two ninety five.

Um,

it was like literally right off the on

ramp of the freeway.

It was crazy.

Like, um, most people drove by it.

They'll never know when it was there

because you went through a little hole in

the fence.

But, um, we started building that camp.

He surprised me with what he built.

And then we started building from there.

We survived our first hurricane in that

camp.

And it became it became something that was

not just walking through a hole in the

fence into a discarded patch of woods,

you know, like it was it became home.

You know,

it was somewhere we both showed up at

night to to to expect the other one

there.

You know, it's where we slept.

It's where we learned to love each other,

really.

And I mean,

I think if we never had those moments

in that camp in the beginning,

we probably wouldn't still be together

sober today.

Yeah.

Did you ever, did you ever like,

did the cops ever come in and bust

up your camp or were you,

did you ever get robbed or anything like

that?

Always.

I mean,

it's it's when your life when you live

in the public, your life is public.

Everything you do,

everything you have is public.

It doesn't matter, you know,

and the police,

some of them and I'm not going to

speak for all the police because there are

good cops out there who have good morals,

but some of them target the homeless

because it's an easy arrest.

When you carry everything you own on you

and you're a drug addict,

chances are you're going to be carrying

drugs.

When you're living on somebody else's

property,

even though that person lives in, like,

say,

California and they just own a slice of

land here that's going to shit,

it still belongs to somebody.

You know what I'm saying?

And so they use that as an excuse

to almost hunt you down.

And it's constant.

Every single camp you own,

you know you don't have long.

Because within I don't think I've ever

lived in a camp for more than a

couple months before the police came and

disbanded.

And then not only do they disband it,

but they trespass you from that property.

So you have a whatever allotted amount of

time they give you to get off the

property.

You have that much time to get everything

you need.

owned in that couple months and get it

out.

And then once you get it out and

run out of time,

if you go back to get anything,

you risk getting arrested because you've

been trespassed.

So I'm actually like currently I'm

trespassed it like over forty stores along

Glanding Boulevard locally where I'm

technically not even allowed on the

property or I can go to jail.

And I can't even tell you what those

places are because there's so many.

Just listening to the progression from the

little girl getting drunk with mom,

continuing to drink cocaine, meth,

now homeless.

And then you had mentioned earlier

injecting crystal meth.

How did that come about?

Well, I was like,

I was kind of naive when it came

to injecting drugs.

I just knew I never wanted to do

it.

I would not do it.

I thought that injecting drugs only

happened with heroin users.

I didn't realize that you could actually

inject meth.

That boyfriend that I told you about that

I used to sell drugs for was

He did heroin and he also did meth.

And that's when he told me because I

started not really feeling the effects as

much from smoking it.

And I would complain about it.

And he was like, well,

I I got a solution for that.

And he was like,

if you shoot it up,

you will never not feel it again.

And I was like, oh, wait.

I was like, you can do that?

And I was drunk at the time.

I was drinking that night.

And he was like, absolutely.

And he reassured me it was perfectly safe.

He told me it didn't hurt, blah, blah,

blah.

I will never,

ever forget my first time shooting up

meth.

instant,

it started I started to feel it go

up my veins.

And like,

My arm was on fire and I looked

at him.

I was scared.

I was like,

is it supposed to feel like that?

And he reassured me.

He was like, yeah, that's fine.

It's good.

That means it's good meth.

And I'm like, okay.

And then as soon as I felt it

hit probably around my shoulder area,

I felt that feeling hit there.

It hit me.

And it was like...

It was such a rush that I coughed.

I couldn't even breathe.

It was such a rush.

And instantaneously, I was like,

I love that.

I love that.

But I was still like conscious about what

that meant.

And so I wouldn't shoot up all the

time.

He did it for me.

I was too afraid of needles.

I know that sounds crazy.

I was too afraid of needles to actually

do it or look at it to do

it.

so he did it for me and he

would only do it for me when the

smoking wasn't working.

And then when we broke up, I thought,

okay, that's it.

We're not,

I'm not going to do it anymore.

You know?

And then, um,

that feeling of wanting that feeling again

came back.

And that's when I was like, okay, well,

I'm going to try to do this myself.

And I missed, and I missed several times,

um,

A lot of people don't know this,

but when you miss with meth,

you miss a vein.

It hurts.

It hurts a lot.

It also has a high like when you

shoot cocaine, totally numb.

It doesn't hurt when you miss.

But with meth, it's I mean, it's poison,

you know, so you should expect it.

It hurts a lot.

And I had I had lumps like two

inch lumps all over my arms from trying

meth.

But that first time that I actually hit

the vein myself,

I was so proud of myself.

And it sounds – I hate saying that,

but I was.

I was so excited and so proud.

And once I knew what to look for

and how to feel for the veins and

stuff,

I became –

It got to the point to where I

don't even know why I quit smoking or

the little system I had formed.

It was just all I wanted to do

was shoot up because it literally was the

best way to get what I was looking

for at the time.

Wow.

And so how long were you homeless for?

Eight years,

so maybe a little bit longer than eight

years.

Okay.

And so towards the end of that eight

years, what does life look like?

I mean, eight years is a long time.

You've clearly settled into a routine by

that point.

Yeah.

Best I could, anyway.

We had a nice spot, nice little camp.

There was like maybe eight...

like six or eight of us that lived

down there um it was far enough from

society we didn't get police come in very

often and when they did they came on

good terms you know because they knew all

of us they didn't just come raiding and

throwing us out you know they came down

to be like hey there's a little girl

missing have you heard anything you know

and then they leave um so we thought

we were you know safe um but right

before i got sober i went to jail

um i went to jail for possession which

is what i always went to jail for

you know um sorry i went to jail

for possession and um i spent seven days

in jail can you stop i'm sorry one

second that's all good i'm doing something

here

Thank you.

Okay.

Anyway, um, what was I talking about now?

I don't even know.

Yeah.

You're going to jail for possession.

Oh,

I went to jail and it was not

by then.

It was not my first time in jail.

I had been in jail quite a few

times before that.

Um, when I got out of jail,

I went to my camp and, you know,

when you it didn't matter if you spend

one night in jail or six months in

jail,

you never know if your camp is going

to be there when you get home.

But I went to the camp and my

my like shelter was still there,

but it had everything had been cleaned

out, cleared out.

And I didn't know where my boyfriend was.

And I went I went over to my

best friend's shelter, Liz.

And I was like, whoa,

what's going on here?

You know, because she was still there.

And she explained to me that two days

after I went to jail,

my boyfriend got locked up and went to

jail as well.

Once the other homeless people knew that

we were both not at our camp,

they came and they robbed everything we

owned out of it.

Anything that was worth money,

anything that was useful,

like flashlights or batteries.

They even took both our beds.

We had a we had a hammock and

then we had like a mattress.

And they took both of that like

completely.

It was crazy.

And so at that point,

I was at a complete loss.

I was very desperate, feeling very,

very tired of the life.

You know,

I used to say all the time,

I'm getting too old for this.

I'm getting too old for this.

Riding my bike everywhere and stuff,

you know.

And, um, so I feeling totally defeated.

I prayed,

I prayed the hardest prayer in my life.

I asked God different things like before I

used to pray for, you know, just why,

why me?

Why can't you make it better for me?

You know, or like,

why can't you fix him?

You know,

and this prayer was a little more deep.

It was more like,

why can't you fix me?

I need your help.

I can't do this anymore.

Um,

And I was bawling my eyes out praying

this prayer.

It was like middle of the night in

front of the at-home store,

which is like a, I don't know,

like Pier One type thing.

But I was sitting out front of the

store charging my vapes,

bawling my eyes out praying to God.

I was like, please just give me,

I need a clear way out of this

situation.

I need a clear way out of this

life.

And then I need you to please give

me the courage to take it.

And then once you give me that,

I got to be,

you got to help me become the woman

I need to be to bring him with

me because I love him.

And as long as he's here,

I'll be here, you know?

And three days after that,

the police came and raided our camp and

kicked us out.

Um, at that time,

I didn't think it was the answer to

my prayer so much as just chaos in

an already chaotic situation, you know,

but, um,

I now, in retrospect,

look at that moment as when God started

working and fixing.

I mean,

it only took him three days until my

camp was raided.

It was three days after that before I

moved into his dad's house and waited for

him to get out of jail.

which is when I got sober.

So in a matter of like six days,

God had completely one eightied what I've

been doing, messing up for eight years.

And it was,

it's a huge awakening and it definitely

brought me closer to God and made me

realize just how real he is.

Yeah.

You know,

grace never looks like grace in real time.

I've got a buddy of mine that says

that all the time.

It's like, man, isn't that true?

It always just looks like my life is

ending and turns out to be the new

beginning.

I love that.

And so how long do you have sober

now?

You're pushing a year, right, Dawn?

Yeah,

I'll be a year this month on the

twenty fifth.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

That's, that's amazing.

And so how did you get sober?

Like, did you, was,

are you in twelfth step recovery?

Did you use any sort of sobriety methods

or?

I mean, in the beginning,

I wasn't even really planning on getting

sober.

I moved into his dad's house.

My boyfriend's dad's house as a last ditch

effort.

I had nowhere to go.

I had nothing to do.

That's where he told me to go.

So that's where I went.

um when i got here he said i

had three rules it was don't bring trash

inside because i was a huge dumpster diver

you know um be i had to be

home by dark because once the dark come

he told me the door would be locked

i wouldn't be allowed inside and i had

to stay sober

And so I think sobriety started at first

as just fear of losing my place to

live while Tony was in jail.

And I still actually kind of thought that

maybe, can you stop?

I thought that maybe when he got out

of jail that maybe we would go back

to doing what we were doing,

what we knew.

Because he spent a few more months in

jail than I did when I got arrested.

So I started living here alone with his

dad,

which was so awkward because I barely knew

the guy.

And I started, I don't know,

I got a phone and I was able

to have phone calls from him from jail.

And we just started talking about leaving

that life behind us.

And the longer I went without drugs,

the less I really wanted to go back.

And then once he got out of jail

and he joined me,

that's when I definitely was like,

I'm done with that.

I started like before he got out of

jail, I cleaned the room.

I got rid of all syringes and

paraphernalia I could find.

I mean,

I wanted to make it a temptation free

home where he can come home and be

sober with me.

And I started going to Celebrate Recovery

and Elevate Life Church.

CR is they're nice.

They're great.

They're good people.

It's a faith based program.

I never did do the twelve steps,

but that's because my location closest to

CR is too far.

We ended up we ended up stop going,

not because I didn't want to go anywhere

or didn't want to do the steps.

It's just too far.

And I made a deal with Tony.

I was like,

if you go to church with me.

then we'll stop going to CR, you know,

cause he didn't really like it there.

I understand why.

But so we stopped going to CR and

started going to church because it's

closer basically.

But I haven't had a struggle with not

a lot.

I have some,

I've had some struggle with staying sober,

but not much.

Okay.

And so how did the book come about

to you?

What about that process?

I wanted to write a book.

I wanted to tell my story.

And I told Tony about it.

And so he bought me a laptop for

Christmas last year to write my book.

And the longer I went and the more

people I told my story to,

the more I realized that I really have

something here that can help somebody.

And I read this poem in jail,

it's called Holes.

I don't remember who it's by,

but it's about this guy who's stuck in

a hole and a voice yells up from

above and he says, build a ladder,

but the ladder's not high enough.

But the guy says,

I'll throw down my rope and he pulls

them up and that guy is Jesus.

And then he looks around and he sees

all these other holes.

And so the point of that is that

it inspired me that sharing my story can

help people out of their own holes.

And I know that when I was homeless,

if somebody had come back,

if just one person that I personally knew

had come back and told me, hey,

you don't have to live like this anymore.

It's possible to get out.

I might have stopped doing drugs sooner.

I might have gotten sober sooner.

I might have I might have started trying

harder.

But I was to the point of so

much acceptance of where I had gotten in

life that I really,

truly believed that there was no way out.

There was I believe that loving my kids

had to be done at a distance.

They would never forgive me.

I believed that I could never get a

job again.

I believed that I was either going to

die in a ditch or in prison.

That was my belief.

But if somebody like me had come back

and said, hey,

Maybe you don't have to die in a

ditch.

I might've believed them, you know?

I mean,

every success story I heard on the street

was either hearsay or, you know,

or non-existent.

It was made up, you know,

it was nobody I knew.

Yeah.

So that was my goal,

was to write the book so that people

knew,

so they can hear from one of their

own that it is possible,

that there are success stories,

that people can overcome that,

and there's still hope for them.

And that's why I have the mission to

sell a hundred books.

Once I sell a hundred books,

I'm going to donate a hundred to the

jails and like the jails I was in

Duval County jail, Clay County jail,

sober living houses, you know,

where people are actually going to read

the book.

Hmm, man, that's awesome.

That's beautiful.

Dawn, tell me, tell,

tell people listening where they can find

you, where they can buy your book.

okay well my book is available on amazon

i've got one here you can it looks

like that and it's called love is greater

than greater than symbol addiction by don

manion and uh yeah you can get a

hardcover like this one here or you can

get a paperback on the hardcover is

fourteen ninety nine i think or no

nineteen ninety nine for the hardcover and

then fourteen ninety nine for the paper

There's also in the back, hold on,

let me see if I can write it

real quick.

For anybody struggling with addiction,

I have included resources in the back.

They're both national and local for

Jacksonville,

resources for men and women for sober

living and things like that.

Absolutely incredible.

What a story, man.

What a story, Dawn.

I'm so glad that you're sober today.

I'm so glad that you wrote it down

and you were able to find your way

out.

That's absolutely beautiful.

And do me a favor,

once we finish here,

don't drop off right away.

We'll chat afterwards.

um yeah and for for anyone listening thank

you so much for tuning in if you're

listening on apple or spotify do me a

favor leave a review whatever the hell you

do on those platforms and if you're

watching on youtube subscribe hit that

like button my name's austin this is the

one last hip podcast and uh we're gonna

get the hell out of here thanks again

don and we'll talk soon