My name is Pat and I have been a methadone patient for many, many years. I am now 37 years old and have five beautiful children, all of whom were born while I was taking methadone. My husband and I have been together for 20 years coming this October. We started out as drinking partners when I was only 17 years old and ended up drug addicts. It is coming up on five years that I have been clean from drugs and alcohol. The beginning was tough but you get used to it. At the present time I have decreased my medication to 20mg. Last year I can remember being on 120mg. It took a while but I am finally down to a lower dose. I am not yet ready to detox at this time because of the number of kids I have. I know that because I have been in treatment for so many years it's going to be a hard detox.

My two oldest children are 15 and 18 years old and although all five kids are my sanity, the two older ones are my utmost strength. What helped me to become clean and stay drug free, are those guys. How can a parent tell their children not to use drugs when they are shooting up in the bathroom? I love my kids too much to cause them anymore harm then I did when they were younger.

I wish that I could help pregnant women who are in the clinics because I went through so much grief with my children. I was told at my local hospital that I couldn't be treated there because I was an addict and methadone is only a substitute for heroin. I was also told that my babies would be addicted from the time they came out, another false comment. None of my kids were addicted to methadone. The only problem I had is with child number three because I was seven months pregnant and I was dibbling and dabbling a bit too much during pregnancy. He was only five pounds and eight ounces and being as he was early, he stayed in the hospital for 10 days. They tried to tell me that he was going to be prescribed paregoric - I refused and I fought it to the max. There was no way that they were going to put medicine in my baby five days after the methadone was out of his system. There were no signs of withdrawal at that time.

Luckily my persistence paid off and he came home without any medications in his system. The other four kids came home in between two and five days. As long as the methadone is out of their systems and they show no signs of withdrawal, the doctors need to find a good excuse to keep the infants in the hospital. I had a private doctor with my first two kids and they let me take them home with the methadone in their system. It's all in how you present yourself.

People on methadone need to show the rest of the world that we can also live in the community as one. There are many people around me who never even guessed that I was on methadone. I am clean, productive and have been entered in different colleges over the past several years. The clients who walk and talk drug lingo are the ones who put a bad name out for people like me.

When my little guy turns five years old and is in school full time, I will try to finally make a move off of the medication. By then I will be down to an even lower dose and I only hope it won't be so painful. I know that I will never touch another drug in my lifetime. It's been such a painful commute back into society. Bills, doctor appointments for me and the kids, PTA meetings, understanding my family and dealing with problems with a clear head, my memory coming back after all of the years of drug abuse, those are all of the things I am fighting for!! It's going to be a long, long road ahead but with the right reinforcements I think that I can finally do it!!