If I perform stripslashes first, then the process doesn't work.
I usually raise eyebrows with this statement, but you should never (with very, very few exceptions) need to unescape anything. Ever.
Richard was pointing out that the only reason you would need to strip slashes after retrieving data from the database is if you escaped it twice before putting it in there.
If you're only escaping it once, which you seem to be claiming, then you should not have to unescape anything.
Hope that helps.
Chris