Dorian Price: Back from the Brink

“I liken it to the story of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde.” On the surface, Dorian Price seemed to have it all together. He was clean cut, had a good job, attended church, but Dorian had a dark secret. He had been addicted to cocaine since the age of 16. “I would say in a week, at least $300 to $400 at least,” Dorian tells The 700 Club. “As much as I used and as often as I used, the people around me initially did not become aware of it for a long time. But the addiction was starting to affect me to the point where I just wanted to escape it.” Dorian decided to relocate from Detroit to California. The move seemed to help at first, especially when he started dating Brenda.  He says, “I met her at church. It was such a blessing to me to get away from the lifestyle that I had experienced prior to that. It was so refreshing just to be clean and without the drugs in my life.” They eventually became engaged. Brenda was unaware of Dorian’s past cocaine addiction. When Dorian lost a close loved one to cancer, he turned to drugs for comfort. Then he disappeared. “I couldn’t cope with that at the time, so I used that as an excuse to run back to drugs,” he says. Brenda adds, “I talked to his family, they hadn’t seen him.” That was the first encounter with finding out about this deep, dark mysterious lifestyle. She says, “It was very scary, very scary…and real difficult to understand.” Despite her fears, Brenda believed Dorian could change.  “My prayer time was a lot about the Lord bringing Dorian back to safety.” Dorian eventually came home, and Brenda took him back. They married, but his focus was far from his new wife and home. He says, “Basically, rather than working on marriage and bonding with her, all my focus was on how to get drugs. I would get on a binge for two or three days, non-stop use. That is when I would take off from work, take off from relationships [and] disappear." She says, "I'm going to go out in the streets and find my husband. I would go to crack houses. In time, it was less about, 'Lord, change him' [to] 'Lord, change me.'" Brenda says, “Trust me. There were a lot of lonely nights, a lot of scary nights, a lot of weeping nights. But the one thing that kept me going was, 'Lord, I will be a fool for You. I don’t care. I just want to follow whatever You want me to do.” After five years of heartbreak, Brenda filed for divorce.  “I was broken from the idea of divorce,” Dorian says. “It affected me to the point where I knew in my heart I needed to make a change.” Dorian cried to God to save him from the addiction, but cocaine still had a strong grip on him. He began to think he’d never kick his 30-year addiction. “But what I didn’t know was that with God, overnight it can happen,” he says. Dorian’s deliverance came in a fast and furious manner. One afternoon, he was crossing the street in San Diego, when he was stuck by a trolly car. “At the trolley station, there were two trolleys coming, one in one direction, and another in the other direction. I ran right in front of the one I didn’t see,” Dorian explains. "That trolly hit me and carried about me about 20 feet, and then I hit the tracks." Dorian was in a coma for three days. He underwent extensive therapy but walked away without permanent injuries. After his accident, he realized that, for the first time in three decades, his desire for cocaine was completely gone. He recalls, “That is when I surrendered to the point where I realized it was all about God and not about me. Of all the treatment centers that I have been through, the only true recovery is the Lord because He is my covering. If it wasn’t for his covering, I would still be lost to my addiction. He removed my dependency on cocaine.” Dorian read the Bible and started going to church. There God answered another one of Dorian’s prayers.  “God spoke to me so powerfully,” Brenda says, “and let me know that He loved me. He did have a good plan for me and the plan was that He wanted me to go back with Dorian. He just assured me, 'You are not the same; Dorian is not the same.'” After four years of divorce, Dorian and Brenda were married again on Dec. 17, 2007. “She is God’s gift to me. He knew the desire of my heart, and He kept His word,” Dorian says. “We have a closer relationship amongst each other because of our relationship with the Lord. I was lost. I couldn’t do it, but the Lord, let Him take the lead.” Brenda says, “He is real. He has a plan and purpose for your life. It is going to be done. Just trust Him.”