complex color trauma/drama. Need advise!

Hi everyone. first I want to give some background so you can have a better understanding about what my poor hair has been through.

I have been dying my hair at home for 9 years at home and never had problems untill I went to a stylist! Since last year I went from dark brown to blonde, back to dark brown, and then to red. Surprisingly my hair was in pretty good condition, but I could tell it was slowly getting worse since the red faded and looked crappy so quickly and needed touched up so often. I decided that this is enough! I want to grow my hair long and I want to go back to my real color so I don't have to dye it anymore. I decided to go to a stylist because I have never dyed over red hair before and I figured she could do the best job in making the new color fade resistant.

Boy was I wrong. my natural color is a light ash brunette so I asked her to do highlights too thinking it would make it look less dull when it started to fade. It took this person 4 hours to do my hair (I am talking about the length of time the dye was on my hair I was actually there for 5 hours) and she was even cutting other people's hair when I was under the dryer. I thought it was strange for her to do this, but I assumed she knew what she was doing. After all that I was outraged to find that the color didn't take and she totally fried my hair. I feel so insulted.

Now down to my question. I know you can't get red out without a stripper. I have used a color stripper a few times before at home and have been able to do it in a way that my hair didn't suffer badly and turned out ok. I am tempted to try it again because I am determined to win this battle to go natural. I am afraid because 1) I have never used stripper on red hair before and 2) my hair is very fragile and this might make or break me.......but I think it might be ok if I just wait for a month or so and deep condition untill the time comes. I am afraid to go to the salon again and I can't afford it. I had to save money forever to go last time and I feel more comfortable coloring my own hair now than having someone else do it. My hair has been through so much! I just want to get back to my natural light ash brown color so I can stop the torture. lol.

Does anybody think this plan will be successfull? I need some hardcore hair people with experience to help me with this one please!!!!! I am desperate and still a little upset. I think my hair is upset too :)