"She had some heroin and she shot me up," he said. "And then she shot up her son. (She) wanted to get us hooked to help support her habit."

Joshua was soon shooting up every day but always believing he could drop it anytime he wanted. But a year later, he knew he couldn't.

"It is the best feeling a human could ever feel, 100 percent total mental and physical sedation," he recalls. "But after awhile, you still get high but not as high. And then you take it just to function."

A year and a half ago, Joshua and his heroin-addicted girlfriend moved to Salt Lake City to pursue treatment together. Their money ran out, and "It wasn't long until we were strung out real bad. We were each doing eight or nine bags a day."

"We were homeless, sleeping in alleys and under stairs," he said. One night, they were caught shooting up in an alley, but the police did nothing more than give them tickets for having drug paraphernalia (needles).

They panhandled, they stole, whatever it took to score heroin. Joshua was caught shoplifting food at Albertson's. "We hadn't eaten in about two weeks," he said.

A Salt Lake man — Joshua calls him a guardian angel — intervened and got them both into treatment. He relapsed briefly after his girlfriend left him, but Joshua says he has been clean for a year.

"I was doing so good when she was there with me," he said. "I didn't think about (heroin). I think about it now. I think about it all the time. It's hard not to."

"I think if I just do it and pass out, then I won't think about all that has happened. Heroin is a reason to escape and it works."

Most addicts began experimenting when they were teenagers, and many come from family or neighborhood environments where drugs and alcohol are commonplace.

One Salt Lake addict, now in treatment, was 14 years old when her own mother shot her up with heroin. While tragic, that case is not unusual.

State survey data indicate children as young as sixth-graders are taking hard-core drugs like cocaine and sedatives. Experimentation with heroin starts showing up in surveys of eighth-graders.

According to one survey of 4,365 students in Brigham City, Cedar City, Price, Roy and Tooele, drug abuse begins showing up among children in significant numbers among sixth-graders. Seven percent said they had taken drugs in the past 30 days.

By the time they get to the eighth grade, the number is up to 15.5 percent, and by the 10th grade it is 19.3 percent. Some 15.7 percent of high school seniors admitted to drug use in the previous 30 days.