With the nation still in the midst of the fentanyl crisis, Centralia College student Jamie Cline, of Olympia, chose to make her own struggles with addiction the focus of her speech for the fifth annual Statewide Inspirational Speech Championship last month.
Cline was one of five finalists competing out of hundreds who entered from 34 community colleges across Washington. Her speech ended up winning her the championship. She became the second Centralia College student to win in two years and the third to win over the past four years.
Last year’s winner was Jasmine Preslicka, who is on course to graduate early from Arizona State University with an accounting degree and a 4.13 GPA, said Jeff McQuarrie, Centralia College public speaking instructor and director of the Statewide Inspirational Speech Championship.
The 2021 champion, Tony Messineo, works with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and just completed his master’s degree in business management and IT with a 4.0 GPA from Central Washington University.
“As you can tell, I’m super proud of these students,” McQuarrie said.
With some of her competitor’s sharing stories of their families’ plights in countries such as Bangladesh and Ukraine, Cline was surprised her speech, titled “A Life Worth Living,” won.
“The only difference I think was their stories were told to them by their family members, and with mine, it came from my experience. And gosh, they did awesome too,” Cline said.
Cline’s story began in 2007 in Olympia when she was 21. She lost her fiancé and was later hit by a drunk driver.
“I was put on a very strong opiate pain medication, and I fell into depression and started drinking and mixing my pain medication, which eventually led to harder drugs,” Cline said. “I spiraled downhill … I lost my home. I lost my job. I lost the respect of my family. I lost my friends. I lost everything.”
This went on for years as Cline fell in with the wrong crowd, leading to her being robbed and ending up in jail.
“While I was in jail, my dad, who I was very close with, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. All this stuff together was a wakeup call to me,” she added.
She was released from jail and found herself in her parents’ backyard where all she could do was pray.
“It wasn’t a pretty prayer. It was an angry, just mad at the world, prayer. I was begging and pleading for my life, for sobriety. And I got an answer. It wasn’t a coddling answer, but the exact words I heard were, ‘OK, but it’s going to be a tough road,’” Cline said. “People say, ‘Oh it was probably in your head,’ but I swear, I can hear that voice.”
She returned to jail just three days after hearing that voice, but refused to give up and finally began to go to counseling along and attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
“I try to tell people I was eventually able to get sober, but this was not an overnight experience,” Cline said.
Despite the challenges of getting sober, Cline wants to tell her story to let people know that no matter how dark things get in the depths of addiction, they can still change. She also wants to continue letting people know that addiction can happen to anyone, even to people like her who don’t fit into typical addict stereotypes.
Cline grew up in a middle class family with her father working for the Washington state Department of Ecology as a hydrogeologist and her mother working as a claims manager for Washington State Health Care Authority. Cline was also an athletic star in high school.
“My parents were wonderful people, the best parents you could ask for. Neither one of them were addicts or alcoholics. Mom barely drank. But somehow, both my brother and I became addicts,” Cline said.
“We have these preconceived notions of who addicts are, and they’re not true. You don’t think the star volleyball player is also going to become an addict in a few years, but it happens,” McQuarrie added.
Once she was finally on the road to recovery, her life began to turn around again, and she has been sober since Oct. 7, 2018.
Now, Cline is close to getting her bachelor’s degree in business at Centralia College and is looking to attend graduate school. She has received invitations to apply from multiple state universities and even one Ivy League school, Columbia University.
While Cline would love to study at Columbia, both she and her fiancé work full time and have to worry about raising their daughter.
“Unfortunately, they don’t have online programs and classes (at Columbia) anymore,” Cline said.
Moving to New York and finding work for both her and her fiancé before the school year starts in the fall is also a tough task.
Though she may not be headed off to Columbia, the current honor student at Centralia College still plans to pursue a graduate degree at one of the other state universities she’s been invited to.
To watch Cline’s full speech in the 2024 Statewide Inspirational Speech Championship, visit https://bit.ly/46HkkNx.
