"I had a conscience. I wouldn't sell to first-time users. I didn't want to be responsible for starting them on the road to hell."

But she saw plenty on that road. More than half her friends over the years have died. About half of the women she befriended fell into prostitution.

"Heroin makes young women old and old women dead," she said. "Your shell is there, but heroin is all that matters."

Three years ago, Clairann walked into a Salt Lake treatment clinic and never looked back. She is three credits short of graduating with a degree in business, she has found renewed faith in God and she says she is planning the life she should have had at 25.

"I want to go on a cruise, I want to go to Disneyland and I want to go to the (LDS) temple," she said, giddy and hopeful.

Clairann, 52, also crusades to keep drugs out of the hands of kids, using her cell phone to report drug dealers in her neighborhood and around schools.

"It's so sad, seeing the kids" involved with drugs, she said. "If I can help just one person. . . ."

Her voice trails off, her eyes betraying the painful memories of a young woman made old before her time — herself. " I know God forgives me."

Almost without exception, those in treatment for addiction consider themselves lucky, even blessed by a higher power, to have been given a chance at recovery. For some, it was the intervention of family or church or co-workers that empowered them to turn their lives around. For others, it was a judge who gave them an option: treatment or prison.

All of them have friends who are still addicts who wish they could get out. Friends on waiting lists for treatment programs. Friends without hope.

Those involved in the treatment community wonder: Why is society willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting and incarcerating addicts but precious little on prevention or treatment that would keep people out of trouble with the law; why is society willing to spend millions on foster care, but parents with drug problems cannot get into treatment programs that could allow families to stay together?

Fleming agrees there is plenty of merit to the criticisms leveled at state policy that has left treatment programs underfunded and state officials at the mercy of those lawmakers who see drug addiction as a moral failing unworthy of taxpayer dollars.

Lawmakers have typically approached the problem by making drug laws tougher and then building more prison cells to accommodate those who break the laws.

Faced with an epidemic of methamphetamine addiction, Gov. Mike Leavitt tried taking a proactive approach in early 2001, asking lawmakers to appropriate an additional $300,000 for treatment programs. They gave him nothing.