Outskirts Press, INC.

“No one understands addiction,” she said. “It is like loving someone who doesn’t love you back. You do it until you don’t. Or until you die.”

After Nancy Jackson was arrested for DUI—not one, not twice, but five times— she got behind the wheel of her car, intoxicated, and was arrested. Incarcerated at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, she spent a year behind bars, living with people she couldn’t tolerate and wouldn’t have associated with anywhere else. She often wondered what it was that made her give up everything that meant anything to her. And finally she learned the answer: a disease called alcoholism. Two Hots and a Cot is a brutally honest and compelling day-by-day account of her journey on the road to recovery through the Oklahoma justice system. Living through nightmares in the dark and nightmares in the light of day, she learned to survive in the unknown and the unexpected. She learned to deal with despair, anger, and frustration, and turn it to hope. She found wisdom in the words of women who were incarcerated for drugs, alcohol, crimes against humanity and themselves; women who were mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and sisters. She found friendship, faith, and healing in the most unlikely place, behind bars. And she found God.