Once upon a time I was a sweet, blue eyed blond haired little girl that had everything going for me. That all changed the first time I ever injected that poison into my arm. Like many others, my poison is heroin.

I actually started my drug career at a really young age. I started drinking at 11 and by 12 I was smoking pot everyday. A few short months later I was introduced to pain killers and benzo's. The order in which all this happened is a blur or more like a hurricane of blackouts, nods, overdozes and addiction. The first 'hard" drug I did was cocaine. I thought by doing coke it made me cool, it made me older and more sophisticated. See to me that was a glam drug, rock stars and celebrities used cocaine; I was finally "cool" in my own eyes.

Like I said before my using follows no timeline that I can remember. I do however remember the beginning of the end - the use of heroin. I belive I was 19 but I could be off by a year or two in either direction. I remember that I bought a bag of dope because I couldn't find any pills anywhere and I was becoming desperate. I close person to me introduced it to me and when I watched what she was doing, loading up a syringe of a brown liquid that was just a minute ago a powder in what she called a stamp bag, I have to admit I was buzzing with excitement. I could not wait for it to be my turn.

She hit me the first time and told me that was it, I only got shown once, I'd have to learn to do it myself. So she did explain to me what she was doing, "use a tourniquite to bring the veins up to the surface and when you see blue, hold that needle steady and gently push it into the vein. When you think you're in, pull back the plunger and watch the stream of red blood rush into your needle and then just push it in."

I swear to God when she pushed that liquid into my arm I was instantly in love. I don't want this to turn into a war story or glamorize my drug use in anyway. I think I had to bring those couple stories up though to show you where I came from in order to tell you where I ended.

I spent the next 10 years doing anything I could to feed the?insatiable hunger I had for heroin. There wasn't a person safe from me, meaning I would steal from anyone including my mother. I boosted from stores, I sold every possession of worth that I owned and when i went through all of the material things, I sold my body as well. Heroin made me do things that I would never in a million years do if I wasn't a stone cold junkie.

For me heroin addiction threw me into a cyclone of manic-depression. If I had a good day and scored a ton of dope then I was "happy", no worries, not having to figure out where my next fix was coming from. But on the not so good days, I'd have the needle still in my arm and I would be thinking of how I was going to come up with another shot. Then on the excruciating days when I didn't have any at all and was dope sick, I would be so depressed that I certainly contemplated suicide. Honestly I did have several attempts of committing suicide but there is a reason I'm still here...there is a purpose for my life. I may not know what it is yet but I know it's out there somewhere I just have to do the soul searching to find it.

As it has been said, a drug addict must hit their bottom before getting clean. Over the years I have had many bottoms, many rehabs and detoxes throughout the years but I was never quite ready to give it up. There was always excuses I could come up with to start using again. My last bottom, the one that has finally made me want to stop and stay stopped happened a little over 3 years ago.

I'm going to try to keep this story as "clean" as I can. It is a very graphic and horrendous experience for me and is extremely difficult to talk about, to live through again. So here goes. I am 31 years old living in a shooting gallery with no running water, no electricity and no heat. The only furniture is a disgusting wet couch that another junkie found laying out for trash. There is a bean bag chair and several outside lawn chairs and a filthy stained mattress in the middle of the room. I myself usually sat on the floor or one of the chairs, I could not bring myself to sit on that mattress. I was sitting on the floor infront of one of the few windows left in the house, there was a streetlight right outside and gave me a tiny bit of light to see what I was doing. I had just scored and was preparing my shot. Nobody else was home which wasn't unusual, it was early yet not even 11:00 pm. Anyway like I said I was preparing my shot and I heard people talking and coming up the steps. I didn't think anything of it, there were people in and out of that place all hours of the day. I had my arm tied off and was digging around for a vein getting frustrated because I couldn't find one and I just wanted to shoot my dope. Three white men came up from behind me and asked if I was the "owner". I didn't even look up, maybe if I would have just looked up none of this would've happened. The one man who had asked about the owner swooped me up in his huge arms before I even had a thought of what I could do to protect myself. I must tell you that a lot of things are happening at this point but I have to leave them out for my own sanity. The guy that grabbed me up threw me hard down on that mattress and the other two stepped into action. They grabbed rope that I don't know to this day where it had come from, and they tied my hands together and shoved a bandana in my mouth. I don't even remember if I was screaming. I do remember that I thought they were going to kill me and I was suprizingly at peace with the thought, I only hoped it wouldn't hurt too bad or take too long. They did not kill me but the three of them raped me over and over again, so many times that I stopped counting. They were so rough that my vagina was bleeding and the pain was like nothing I had ever felt before. As all this is going on the men were calling me names like worthless, dirty, no good, junkie and more that I don't remember.

Every so often they would take a break to shoot up what I now assume to be crystal meth. Each time they did this I remained quiet except for the tears that I could not control. I never asked them why me or if they would stop if I gave them some of my stash. No I layed there like a hurt dog just waiting for it to start again. And yes it would start again. There are no clocks in a shooting gallery so I can only guess how long this went on, maybe an hour or maybe two. That first guy that grabbed me up came back over to me and asked me if I wanted to live. I told him in a shaky voice "no". He had a flash of concern on his face but it didn't last long. He raped me for the last time and told his two buddies they were done, to "leave the dirty junkie" alone. And just as fast as they showed up they were gone.

I was in so much pain I couldn't stand up. I kind of crawled along the floor, found my stash and cooked up the last of the dope I had hoping and praying that it would just kill me, take me out of this world. I didn't even cry about what had just happened. I just did what junkies do- I got high.

I woke up the next morning still in excruciating pain and found that I was completely naked. I managed to put clothes on and I walked a short way to Mercy Hospital. I must've been a sight. When the triage nurse called my name and took me back to a room I absolutely lost it. I cried out like a wolf, I couldn't stop crying. You know I'm not a religious person but that triage nurse was put there to be my nurse that day. She let me cry and she held me, even as I swore at her. She never let go of me; she knew exactly what was happening but she never said a single word while I cried for my life. When I did finally calm down the nurse said to me with absolutely no judgement in her voice, "Honey are you ready". At first I assumed she meant to get cleaned up and move on. Then it hit me, for the first time in my life I had an epiphany. I didn't have to live like this anymore.

That wonderful nurse got me a room in their detox wing in record time. Everyday she stopped in to say hello, although I wasn't saying much at this point. I hadn't said a word of what happended that night to the rehab employees or the?counselor assigned to my case. I was there for a mere 5 days, thanks to the wonderful County insurance. I won't lie. I got high the minute I was out of there but the next morning I went down to the methadone clinic and signed up. I haven't touched an illicit drug since then. Yes, I am on a methadone maintenance program but in my heart I am clean regardless of the criticism and contraversy surround methadone.

Here's the way I see it, if I wouldn't have gone to the clinic that day I would still be using, that is if I was still alive. Methadone saved my life. It is a life sustaining medicine for me just as insulin is to a diabetic.

Thank you for allowing me to share my story.