“I grew up in Mobile and went to Catholic school my whole life. I had a good childhood. I was in a car wreck when I was 22, and had back pain while waiting tables. The doctor ordered physical therapy and gave me a prescription for pain medications. My insurance didn’t cover physical therapy but it covered the pain pills.

At first, I only took the pills if the pain was bad and I needed to get through work. Soon after that, my dad passed away in a car accident in 2004. I was devastated by losing him and started taking the pills all of the time, but I went by the doctor’s instructions. I couldn’t afford physical therapy, but it was only $5 to get my prescription filled.

I once ran out and had to wait a couple of days to get my refill. I felt like I had the flu, but after I felt better instantly after I took the first pain pill. My friend told me I was having withdrawals. That didn’t make sense because I was taking the medicine exactly as my doctor told me to. I looked up the symptoms for withdrawals and I knew that I was hooked.

That year I lost my dad, I had a miscarriage. My husband and I were dating them. Between miscarrying and losing my father, I was in a hole that I couldn’t climb out of. I was addicted to the pain pills and got sick without them. We married in 2006 and I got pregnant on my wedding night.

I numbed myself the pain medication and never dealt with the death of my father. Getting pregnant right off the bat was hard on our marriage. We were the only married ones with a child in our group of friends. I had postpartum depression and was still on painkillers.

On New Year’s Eve of 2008, my mom kept our daughter and we went out with a group of friends. One of those was a cop, and he checked all of us to see if we had outstanding warrants. I didn’t realize I had a warrant in Baldwin County for failing to appear in court. I went through a police road block in Gulf Shores and didn’t have my driver’s license. I went the next week to pay my fine, but they couldn’t find my ticket and it wasn’t logged into their system. I paid the $10, gave them a copy of my ticket and license, and thought I was fine.

New Year’s Day, I drove to pick up my baby from my mother. I was on the phone with a friend when I was pulled over by a police officer. I was freaking out because I knew they had a warrant on me and I didn’t want to go to jail. My friend told me to give them her name and driver’s license number and he would let me go. The officer knew her husband, who was also a cop, and arrested me for obstruction of justice using a false identity. That is a felony. I should have only been arrested for giving a false identity to a police officer. I was pulled over because we didn’t have a tag on our new car, but I had the paperwork. I was scared and giving my friend’s name instead of mine seemed like a great idea. That was very stupid and why I have a felony on my record.

My husband didn’t understand why I couldn’t quit the painkillers. I wanted to come off of them because the prescription was no longer enough and I turned to buying them on the street. Pain medication was like speed. I could clean the house, care for the baby by myself while my husband worked, and do all I was supposed to do. Working in the restaurant business, it was easy to buy pain pills because a lot of people were taking them to keep going.

At the time, you could go to doc in the boxes in Texas and easily get prescriptions with refills. People bought pills cheap there and sold them here for $6 or $7 each. They were making a killing selling opiates, and I used my pain as an excuse to keep taking.

That January, my mom forced me into rehab and I was doing okay. The day after I got out to rehab, I had the court date for giving a false name to a police officer. I had a lawyer and we were going to have the charge dropped to a misdemeanor.

While I was in rehab, my mom read an article about Mobile County Drug Court saying it was helped many people get clean. If you went through drug court, it would also erase your felony conviction. She thought that was a good idea and told my attorney she would pay whatever it took to get me into drug court. He should not have been talking to my mom, but he did.

The day I got out of rehab, my lawyer told me, ‘your mom is paying me much more money to have you go to drug court. You will do that, or you can go in without representation.’ I was fresh out of rehab and thought, I have got this. No problem.

It took more than a year to get into drug court, I went in Sept. 2009. By then I had relapsed. Drug court was a big mistake that my mother still regrets. It shows you plead guilty to the felony, but you completed a program to remove the felony from your record. But a background check for employment shows you were arrested and plead guilty to a felony conviction.

Drug court has to be your life. I thought I could put opiates down for a year and stay clean. But the program put a lot of stress on me, my husband and I weren’t getting along, and I had so much anger towards my mother who thought she was doing the right thing. I couldn’t quit.

I still wasn’t convinced I was an addict. I thought an addict was a junkie. I didn’t think I was mentally addicted to pills.

We got pregnant again and I went to jail for the first time for taking opiates. I wasn’t supposed to be tested that day, but they called me in because a friend tested positive. The first time you test positive in drug court, they are supposed to put you in jail for three days. They put me in jail for 37 days.

I got out of jail and found out my husband was cheating on me. Instead of getting out and staying clean, I went nuts and into depression. I stayed clean for the rest of my pregnancy, but it was hard. I worked things out with my husband, but was rear-ended at 65 miles an hour. I was still pregnant and refused pain medication. My OBGYN knew I was in drug court and took the best care of me. He had to give me something with narcotics to slow the contractions. I knew I would test positive in drug court for the narcotic and took my paperwork from my doctor to explain. The judge sent me back to jail.

I wanted out of drug court. The felony would be on my record, but I didn’t care about that anymore. Then I was accused by the court of using methanphetamines while pregnant and sentenced to prison. I was not a meth user and have never done that drug, but it didn’t matter.

They sent me to Tutwiler Prison for Women.