Karen is a residential patient at Genesis House in Chicago, a facility designed to meet the needs of women in recovery.

Do you want me to start in the beginning? I’ve been using drugs since I was 13. Actually, I got married at 17 and I quit using drugs up until I was maybe 34. At 34, my husband, who I was married to from 17, introduced me to a more serious drug- cocaine- and marijuana. From that day on, everything led up to me coming here, because it got worse and worse. I don’t know how much you want me to go into it.

I have my whole story, but I don’t know if you really want…

At first it was cocaine. I managed a restaurant at that time. My boss would leave for Greece and stay there for periods of months and leave the whole place to me. I did the firing the hiring, the bookkeeping the scheduling, everything. And he left me the keys to his safe. So my cocaine use then was getting worse because of my job. My job was very stressful. I had to work from like 10 in the morning to 11 or 12 at night I was there. I found that the cocaine- I thought that the cocaine was giving me a little energy and making me sharper, and I was on top of this. Which I was, in terms of my job. But the cocaine use was getting out of control and my personal life was falling apart. I found that it gave me energy. I could do the hours with no problem. I never got tired. It was… okay. So I would tell my boss- “Stay there, I got it….” But in actuality, I wasn’t there at all.

I was taking my own payroll and paying myself, but with the cocaine use getting greater, I needed more money. So I started dipping into my boss’s money. Okay. That was not the person I am, but the cocaine use turned me into that. I wasn’t raised like that. That’s not my values, that’s not my morals. But the cocaine use turned me into something different.

So, anyways… when I would get home at night, I would find that I was really still too wired from doing this cocaine- caps and caps of it all day long. And I was really still wired, still too awake to go to sleep. But I knew I would have to go to sleep to get up for work the next day. So I told my husband I need something to bring me down because I was too wired. He said, “Here I’ve got something for you.” Now, I did not know it was heroin. He called it “Boy.”

I didn’t know it was heroin when I first tried it. I am not going to lie and say I never knew, because I did a few days later. But at first I did not know. He told me it was called “Boy.” He said, do a couple lines of this. And I did. And… it… instantly, instantly… made me feel better. Made me feel a million dollars. Way better than cocaine… Instantly better.