Some Lortab abusers resort to stealing the drug, although such cases are rare, Ashburn said.

"Jen," who is currently serving time in the Davis County Jail and also asked that her real name not be used, is one of that minority.

Jen's creative solution to feeding her addiction to prescription drugs was to go to real estate open houses and then ask to use the bathroom. While she was in there, she would search the medicine cabinet for pills.

Dusty Bell freely admits to her love of painkillers.

She has loved them for 30 years, since she broke her leg skiing as a 16-year-old growing up in Sun Valley, Idaho, the privileged daughter of an Olympic skier.

"Part of it was growing up in the '60s environment," she said. But a bigger part was that she was hooked and she knew it. By the time she was 22 she was doing whatever it took to get the pills.

She was an addict while working as a firefighter. She was an addict while she worked as a 911 police dispatcher.

"There were periods of sobriety," she said, but not many and they didn't last. "Invariably I screw things up."

Dusty later went to prison for prescription fraud and forgery. She moved to Utah four years ago for methadone treatments that are still illegal in Idaho. The methadone has kept her off the prescription pills and her occasional dabbling in heroin, but she's still not happy.

"Methadone is a drug and it affects you like a drug, a very powerful drug," she said. "I am high right now, and I don't get to the point of clarity very often. I am definitely not where I want to be."

"Pam" is another member of drug court program who asked that her real name not be used. In addition to being a Lortab abuser like Mary, she was also an alcoholic. Her husband had her arrested six times for public intoxication inside her own house, she said.

Pam said her Lortab abuse and alcoholism were so bad that she used to pray at night that she would be caught because she knew that was the only way she'd stop.

Pam's substance abuse problems reached a climax on the night she took several Lortab pills and drank an entire bottle of whiskey. She said she was so high that she jumped out of her second-story window, landing on her head. But rather than allowing anyone to assist her, she ran into a nearby field to hide, she said.

Later, she went back to her home and crawled into the doghouse in the back yard, where she was eventually discovered by a police K-9 unit.

Both Mary and Pam said even after they were arrested they initially refused to put themselves in the same class as heroin and cocaine users. "I don't belong here," went through both of their minds as they went from court to jail.