Exorcising Demons

A Story of Addiction and the Road to Recovery

Dori Granados looked in the mirror, eyes bloodshot, pupils a deep black hole. As if a helpless outsider, she watched her rigid body tremble in the flickering light. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw them: the demons. They shifted and contorted, running in circles around the room, tormenting her.

Dori was trapped in the depths of hell, her crack cocaine addiction devouring what was left of her frail body.

“It Calls My Name”

Dori moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana when she was 12. She was forced to separate from three of her siblings, one of them being Lisa. Lisa was Dori’s protector, teaching her how to brush her teeth and get along in the world, since her mother didn’t bother to do so. But Dori now had to adjust with only having her brothers Jay and Berry around. And things quickly took a turn for the worst.

Dori loved her brothers. She knew at their core, they were good people. But they had been broken too. Their father planted bad seeds in good hearts. Both of them began to abuse Dori physically, emotionally, and sexually.

Not only did Dori feel neglected at home, she didn’t fit in at school. She had no one to turn to, no shoulder to cry on. It didn’t take long before Dori began to lose her self-worth and sense of dignity— and so she turned to food.

One night Dori was lying on the cot at home watching a movie when an actor said, “It calls my name.” That’s how addiction felt to her.

The family didn’t have much money at the time, so the kids had to ration their food. When no one was home, it was Dori’s turn to eat. She had about an hour or two of kitchen time to herself. She would start with a cold hot dog from the refrigerator, then come back for more. Soon she found herself dipping fingers in the peanut butter jar, her sticky fingers climbing cabinets to eat some crackers—blacked out, involuntarily inhaling everything in sight, until she felt a sickening, piercing pain overflow deep within the pit of her stomach.

She hurt, but she couldn’t stop.

Dori put on 30 pounds in a matter of months. She was filling a void. And the void soon turned into depression at the age of 12.

A Change of Appetite

Time went by, and instead of buying those extra ho-hos at lunch, Dori bought speed. “It ripped me right out of my depression.” She began to drink and party. She did everything she could to feel “up.” At about age 15, Dori discovered codeine. The drugs made her feel invincible, and so she decided to run. Dori dropped out of out of high school and hitchhiked to Florida with nothing but a bag of codeine pills, on a mission to meet her father.

Dori had no recollection of her father from youth. All she could hold onto to mold an image of him were the stories of her siblings. She discovered that he was a gambling drunk, running away from debt. He molested her sisters, abused her mother, and at times told his sons to spit on her mom. Dori had to know for herself if this emulation of her father was depicted accurately. Turns out, it was spot on.

When Dori finally met her father, his first move was to take her to the bars. She was the ripe age of 16. He forced her to sleep in the car because his current wife didn’t like her. Dori decided this wasn’t the place for her. After having dropped out of high school and hitchhiking all the way to Florida to meet her father, she wanted to move back to Fort Wayne. She scrounged up her bags and her father dropped her off on the high way.

She hitchhiked the rest of the way home.

On the Road Again

Dori was in Fort Wayne for a brief moment before she was holding a thumb up on the side of the highway again.

Along her path, she met a girl named Dianne, who she soon began to travel with. On their journey, the two met Jerry Night, the manager of ZZ Top. They were asked to go on the road with them and sell shirts. It was a good gig for a while, until the girls saw all of the groupies in a huddle together smoking dope. They decided to choose another path.

The girls took their money and headed to Houston.

Once in Houston, Dori and Dianne rented a hotel and walked down to a truck stop together. They began to sell their bodies. Dori wasn’t having sex for the money. She says she ultimately wanted to fill a void. Her short-term relationships with men gave her a fleeting gleam of the love and acceptance she had always longed for. So she continued to use drugs, have sex, and party.

“UP”

After Dori’s first divorce at age 23, she began experimenting with cocaine and drank almost every day. Years passed and on her 30th birthday, she decided she didn’t want to drink or go out and party anymore. It didn’t feed the high like it used to. She needed to explore other options. So she decided to stay home and smoke crack.

With 40 dollars in hand, Dori went out, bought a dime and smoked all of it. She had used before, but not habitually. She started out using it three times a week, until it turned into multiple times every day.

Soon, Dori lost the 10,000 dollars in her savings account, her home, and her car. She sold everything she could to get the next hit.

Dori recalls her first encounter with crack so vividly. She was in the bathroom. “Up.” All she felt was “Up.” Never in her life had she experienced such an overwhelming flood of ecstasy. “It was unlike anything I had ever felt before.”

The high lasted for about a minute, and in that minute, the whole world melted. From that point on, the only thing that mattered to Dori was getting the next minute. She smoked crack almost 24/7 for an entire decade, continuing to find herself in and out of jail and prison.

Dori relapsed for years after being in and out of jail. When she was in the Delaware County jail, she grew a network with the street community of Muncie. Once she got out, she knew the game. She found a pimp and worked for him for three years. Her pimp soon became the father of her child, Madi. Dori continued to use crack throughout the entire duration of her pregnancy. “By the grace of God,” Madi was born and charted as the healthiest baby born that day.

“She is my Christ child.”

Dori tried to stop smoking crack once her daughter was born, but the fact of the matter was, she didn’t want to. She tried the balancing act of being a full-time crack addict and a full-time mother. She would put bottles in a pot over the stove to warm them up. “I was so high I’d melt the bottles.”

Dori remembers one day at the dope house distinctly. Her pimp was out and she was home alone with the sleeping baby. She was smoking dope and decided to try and be a better mother. She wanted to put the pipe down and clean the house, but the more she wanted to do it, the less ability she had. Each time she tried to sit the pipe down on the counter, something told her she could not. The pipe stuck to her like a leach, magnetic, sucking the life out of her. Each time she made an attempt, she ended up pulling the pipe back to her mouth and soaking up another hit. She felt completely out of control of her body. Her face and arms were marked up with deep cuts from slitting herself with razor blades. In the pits of hell, she could feel the demons present. She wanted to be different, she wanted to make a change, but something was pulling her the other direction. She was convinced a demon had attached to her.

“God help me!” she cried out.

In that moment, she gathered the strength to put the pipe down and call churches. Numerous pastors turned her down, calling her crazy as she desperately explained the need to exorcise the demons within.

She finally got ahold of a pastor that wanted to help. He told her to throw away the pipe in her hand as well as all of the drugs in the house and come over right away. But she said she couldn’t do that. It was her pimp’s drugs. It was how they paid their rent. It was their livelihood. He would have killed her.

The pastor then refused to help her and hung up.

Dori’s pimp finally got home. Her face was swollen from crying hysterically, at war with the demons all day. She went up to him and frantically described the need to release the demons. She got in the car and drove to the hood of Roswell, Georgia. She spotted out a church, took a hit, rode around the block, and with every inch closer, put more and more on the pipe. She continued to drive in circles, the clock getting closer to five, with every minute losing what she thought was her last chance to be freed.

Dori drove into the parking lot with two rocks left. She took another hit, walked up to the door and knocked. A little African American boy answered the door. Dori asked him to go get an adult she could speak with. A woman came to the door. Dori, trembling, in a state of delirium, pulled out her pipe and crack to hand over to the woman. Desperate, she begged for help.

The woman took her into the bathroom and told her to break up the pipe. She prayed over Dori as she struggled for 30 minutes to do it. Dori shook violently, throwing up multiple times. And then… she finally broke free from the magnetic pull of the dark force—she did it. Dori broke the pipe and let go. Immediately after, her entire demeanor lifted. The color in her face grew brighter. For a flash in time, her mind and body was at peace.

The demon had been released.

A Rocky Road

Although Dori never lost control like that again, she did continue to use crack. She was in and out of jail and on September 11, 2006, Dori was sentenced to ten years in prison on a Class B felony for dealing cocaine.

In her time at prison, she went to college and became a leader in many areas. It was in those moments of incarceration that Dori also had time to sit back and reflect on her life. She grew a connection to the source. She was on M8, the top bunk, when the vision came to her. That was when she knew there was something different.

“I knew there was a plan.” She believes to have received messages from a higher force telling her to create a rehab facility.

Dori vividly remembers a dream she had in prison: “I was getting ready to go to bed and had a baby. He loved me but I didn’t like him too well and when he got in bed I didn’t want him too close to me. When I woke up, the baby was a man. I went into the kitchen and fell. The man picked me up and I realized I loved him. I wanted to wrap myself around his leg.”

“It was God.”

Purpose

Dori served four out of the ten years in prison and was released on good behavior. She has been sober for seven years now and works full-time for Urban Light Community Church, which she has been affiliated with for five years now.

In August of 2013, Dori became director of Wayside Mission. She helped start a rehab program in the region. What began as one book is now a 12-week study with 15 pages of guidelines and a very structured environment. The program is called “Urban Light House.” It is a rehab facility for women recovering from drug addiction.

Dori feels a deep, intimate connection with these women.

According to the Urban Light House website, the program is Christ-centered, and provides a safe home for up to eight women while they work through a three to 12 month program to break the chains of bondage from addiction.

Dori has a drive to help drug addicts recover. She wants them to know it is possible and that she is a living example. “I believe I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Dori says that she has finally served her purpose in this life. “The holy spirit lives in me to guide me.” She finally feels at home.