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SPEAKER: All this week, we've been hearing stories from Minnesotans struggling with drug addiction and loss. And those soaring rates of painkiller and heroin abuse are changing treatment programs. Opioid addicts have a very high relapse rate in traditional treatment. A recent study found 2/3 would relapse within a half a year. Reporter John Collins has the story of a 34-year-old woman, who's fighting to get her life back from addiction with the help of a new medicine.
JOHN COLLINS: With brightly dyed red hair and punky clothes, Liz Casper wouldn't be out of place at a hip restaurant or bar. But instead, Liz is in the basement of a former Minneapolis church. That's where her drug abuse support group meets. She's only been off heroin for four months this time.
LIZ CASPER: It takes so much. I can't even explain it. This disease is so upsetting and I'm so angry with it because it's taken so much. It's taken my friends. I gave up my life for this disease that is killing us. It is killing us.
JOHN COLLINS: Substance abuse has always been a problem for Liz. She started drinking at 11. She went to rehab for cocaine at 20. That is where she met a man who would change her life.
LIZ CASPER: He was a heroin user. He was much older than me. He was like one of the old school. And when I first met him, I was actually really scared of him, because I had this picture in my mind of what a heroin user was, and I was scared and then eventually it's like I became that person.
JOHN COLLINS: She still remembers the first time her boyfriend shot her up with heroin. She was sitting in a wicker chair in her mother's kitchen. Within a year, the heroin was running her life.
LIZ CASPER: Get up really early in the morning because we were sick, and call up the dopeman. And if he was open, he was open. If not, we'd have to keep calling, and calling, and calling. And it's sad, you know what I'm saying, but it is what it is, I guess.
JOHN COLLINS: During those years, she would do whatever she had to do to pay for drugs. She's not proud of it, but she worked as a prostitute. Or sometimes, her boyfriend stole from stores. The first time she overdosed, she was shooting heroin in a boyfriend's garage.
LIZ CASPER: I had a spoon full of my drug of choice. And instead of setting it down, in my mind, I thought it was going to spill and I didn't want to waste that. And I ate it.
JOHN COLLINS: Liz woke up with hearing loss in both ears, and a brain injury from lack of oxygen. She went directly from the hospital into a locked treatment facility.
LIZ CASPER: I was in different institutions. And I think at that point in time, I was done. There was something in me that just clicked and I was willing to do stuff differently.
JOHN COLLINS: She was clean for 3 and 1/2 years.
LIZ CASPER: Yeah, I had Donovan when I was 18 months sober. He was my little AA baby. He was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
JOHN COLLINS: Liz and her young son got their own apartment. But she relapsed again after a medical procedure where the doctor gave her a painkiller. The heroin slowly came back into her life. After another overdose, she lost her apartment, and custody of her son. She says, it's like she's been on autopilot during these relapses.
LIZ CASPER: It was physical. It was mental. I just got this feeling inside like it was almost like anxiety, like I had to do it. Like I needed something. Like sometimes there was absolutely no stopping me. Like I was going to get it.
JOHN COLLINS: Just four months ago, Liz got sober again. She chose to take medication that can assist with opioid dependency. She's on monthly Vivitrol shots, which means, even if she used heroin, it would not get her high. She wants others who are struggling with addiction to know they should not ever give up.
LIZ CASPER: We are definitely important people. We do bad things but that doesn't mean we're bad people. We are good people with a bad disease, and that is so true.
JOHN COLLINS: Covering Health, John Collins, Minnesota Public Radio News.