By Dale G.
Nine months into a two-year sentence at the California Institute for Men in Chino, I was sober—not by choice, but by circumstance. My hope for the future was as hazy as the fog that rolled in each night. Then I heard a rumor: the AA meetings had coffee. I didn’t know what the meetings were about, but I knew I liked coffee.
So I went.
As I sat with my cup in hand, something unexpected happened—I started listening. More than that, I started identifying with the men who were sharing. It was a miracle, considering that in prison, I never truly identified with anyone. But here, I saw my own struggle reflected in their words. The desperation, the endless cycle of trying to stop and failing—I wasn’t alone. I was told to keep coming back, so I did.
Once a month, an H&I (Hospitals and Institutions) panel would visit, bringing a speaker from the outside. I didn’t know what a panel was, but the idea of someone coming in from beyond those prison walls intrigued me. It felt like a connection to a world I had been ripped away from. One panel night, we took our seats as the speaker walked in—a woman. That was rare.
She started sharing her story, and I was captivated. She spoke about living in a busted-out trap house in Echo Park, the tweakers she was surrounded by, the shadiness, and her repeated attempts to get clean—only to fall back into the grip of crystal meth. She talked about staying up for days on end, not eating or drinking, the chaos, the desperate search to stay high.
It was my story.
But the woman standing before us was not the woman she described in her past. She was kind, composed, and seemingly successful. I knew the kind of people who lived in those trap houses—she wasn’t one of them. At least, not anymore. That realization hit me like a freight train: tweakers could recover. There was hope. She had found something that pulled her out of the darkness, and it existed in the rooms of CMA.
That shocked me. This was an AA meeting, but she spoke openly about her addiction to crystal meth. And thank God she did. Thank God no one told her to censor her story. That night, she gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time—hope.
She had driven miles from Glendale to Chino on a weeknight, for one hour, to speak to a room full of incarcerated addicts. She had no idea who she might reach, but she showed up anyway. And it mattered.
Years later, after my release, I walked into a CMA meeting and heard a familiar voice. It was her. I couldn’t place where I knew her from at first, but as she spoke, the recognition flooded back. After the meeting, I asked if she had ever spoken on a panel in Chino. She smiled and said yes.
I thanked her.
That single H&I panel was the first time I heard someone speak specifically about finding recovery from crystal meth addiction. That night gave me the push I needed. After my release, I went straight to treatment, found CMA, and found a home.
I’ve never turned back.