Later that year, at age 16, my love affair with alcohol began. It started out only on the weekends, splitting an entire bottle of Banker’s Club vodka, or if we had the money to splurge, a bottle of Bacardi 151 rum with my then-boyfriend. I drank until I was completely oblivious, until I passed out and had no idea of what happened the night before.

Alcohol quickly became my best friend and my worst enemy. My drinking habit got to the point where I would bring a water bottle filled with cheap vodka to school and drink throughout the day, only to have a hangover by 9^th period.

I continued this pattern of overly excessive drinking through my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college. I became the girl who gets drunk and falls over her own feet, the girl who gets drunk and fights with everyone, the girl without a care in the world. I didn’t care, until one night in October 2004, when I almost lost my life to alcohol.

That fateful night, I made the decision to get into a car of a friend who had been drinking. We were going around a bend in the road way too fast. I felt my body slam into the driver and then through the windshield. I was life-flighted to Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. I wish I could say that I stopped drinking completely after that night, but I still drank, just not every day or nearly as heavily as I had been.

A month after the accident, I found out that my boyfriend of over two years, my first love, was doing heroin behind my back. I gave him an ultimatum, dope or our relationship. He chose the drug.

Although I started dating someone new after our relationship ended, I was still bitter. I could not understand why he would choose a drug over me, a drug that not only took the life of a close friend, but would probably take his life as well.

Eventually, my bitterness and curiosity became stronger than my hatred for the drug that destroyed my relationship, and soon enough, I snorted my first $10 bag of heroin. I fell in love immediately with the high, the warmness, the itching, and the nodding out. Little did I know, from that day forward, my life would never be the same.

Like alcohol, I started out doing heroin only on the weekends, as an escape from the stress of college, and of course, to chase that first high. Weekends soon became daily. I received a $22,000 lawsuit settlement from the car accident, and before I could stop myself, the money went up my nose and I entered full-blown addiction. At that point, all I knew about heroin was the intense high it gave me, but running out of money meant that I would soon experience the hell it could bring.

I had never experienced any kind of withdrawal before I got involved with heroin. My addiction got so bad that I would snort a bag, and two hours later I would get sick. A week of chills, sweats, hot flashes, body aches, diarrhea, nausea, insomnia, a dope fiend’s worst nightmare and the closest thing to hell on earth.

When my money ran out and the dope ran dry, I would do anything to avoid the dreaded sickness, even steal, scam and lie. It wasn’t about getting high anymore; I just wanted this sickness to end. It’s crazy how you can be “on your death bed” sick, but as soon as you snort the tiniest bit of dope, it all instantly goes away and you feel normal again. Spending an hour and a half packed into a car with a bunch of sweaty, smelly junkies on the way to cop some dope is worth it, just to feel normal again for a few hours.

My addiction was taking over my life. Every night I went to bed knowing that I would wake up sick as a dog in the morning. I knew that instead of going to class or work, I would be spending my day sick, in bed, plotting ways to get money. I was stuck inside a black hole and couldn’t see a way out.

Instead of going to class, all I could do was lie in bed, tossing and turning and wishing I was dead. All of my goals, college, a successful career, a promising future, were deteriorating right before my eyes and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

After three days of being at the end of my financial rope and enduring the sickness, I fatefully got a credit card in the mail. With the card I bought five cartons of cigarettes and sent my boyfriend to Pittsburgh to trade the cigarettes for bags. He got caught, and was charged with possession and went to jail.

I had no choice but to deal with the sickness and finally get clean. The first day in over a year that I woke up healthy was the greatest and most relieving day of my life. It was finally over.

After I got clean, I went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings religiously, attended an outpatient rehab several times a week and vowed never to get involved with drugs again. I listened to counselors telling me how lucky I was to kick this disease without inpatient rehab or medication, that I was just physically addicted and not mentally hooked.

I stayed clean for 45 days before I relapsed. Although I went through treatment and went to meetings, I still had that urge, especially knowing in the back of my mind that after 45 days of not using, I would be able to experience that intense high once again. It’s always about chasing that first high.

Kicking my habit the second time around was rough. I was more mentally addicted than ever and it felt like that monkey on my back just wouldn’t go away. The sickness was unbearable, and to quit, I needed to go on medication.

Addiction is a lifelong struggle that began the first time I ever tried heroin. I will always be a recovering addict, because recovery is an ongoing process; relapse is always a possibility, whether you are ten days clean or ten years clean. As they say in Narcotics Anonymous, “Take it one day at a time.”