"It's getting to the point that to get public treatment in Utah you have to commit a crime and have it (treatment) ordered by the court," said Pat Fleming, director of the Utah Division of Substance Abuse, the state agency that distributes federal and state money for addiction treatment.

Curled in a fetal position in a hospital emergency room, Steve Davis came to an inescapable realization: The medical community has an inherent bias against addicts.

Davis had been fighting an infection most of the previous day. And when he went to Discovery House for his daily dose of methadone, part of his effort to kick his addiction to painkillers, the clinic called 911.

He arrived at University Hospital by ambulance about noon. By the time he left at about 6 p.m., he had seen one student doctor, "and all she did was come in a couple times to apologize that no one had seen me yet."

Davis can't prove it, "but anyone who was there could easily tell I was being neglected. I managed to come out once and beg them to do something. It's like they forgot about me."

Why? Davis believes a urine sample taken when he first arrived tested positive for methadone. "I can't help but think that changed how they were going to handle me," he said. The nurses finally told Davis they couldn't figure out what was wrong and to come back for more tests."

"I was dehydrated and had thrown up the methadone, so by then I was going through withdrawals besides being sick from the infection," Davis said.

He did not know it at the time, but Discovery House called the hospital, offering to bring up a replacement dose of methadone. The hospital told the clinic there was no need, that everything was fine.

"They didn't make the slightest attempt to help me and sent me home with some morphine, which is like giving me aspirin."

(A hospital spokesman said he couldn't discuss any particular case or course of treatment but noted that hospital policy is to provide care without discrimination.)

For thousands of Utahns, the physical addiction is only part of the battle. There is also the unshakable weight of a stigma that has stereotyped them as social dregs, criminals or worse.

They are branded losers who have only themselves to blame for their plight.

"People see drug addicts as the bottom of the barrel," said Jana Merkley, former director of a Salt Lake methadone clinic. "It was OK that Grandpa was an alcoholic. They knew how to deal with that. But they don't know how to deal with drug addiction."

That social stigma can be a beast more merciless than heroin. And it attacks just as addicts are coming to grips with their addiction and seeking to make amends.