FORMER ADDICT REMEMBERS THE AGONY OF PRESCRIPTION DRUG ABUSE

ABINGDON -- Michael Blackson remembers the long nights lying on the floor
of his apartment. The nausea, body aches, muscle cramps and cold sweats
took over his body and nearly drove him insane.

In 1999, he'd finally had enough.

"I said to myself, 'I can't take this anymore,' " he said. Blackson, 37,
experienced firsthand the dangers of prescription drug abuse.

He didn't take it seriously when he started abusing the drugs in the late
1980s, he said. Had Blackson not found treatment at a clinic five years
ago, he probably would have died, he said.

"I lost my marriage, I lost everything," he said, his voice cracking.

It doesn't necessarily take much for a prescription drug to become lethal,
even for nonaddicts, if they're combined with other drugs, authorities say.

Dennis and Bonnie Presley know that all too well. Two years ago, their
19-year-old son Joshua Bryan died after combining Valium and methadone
while hanging out with some of his friends in Damascus. He wasn't an
addict, they said, but the consequences still proved deadly. "We were
shocked," said Dennis Presley, his stepfather. "How he had gone didn't
really matter."

For Blackson, his addiction began with alcohol in the late 1980s. Friends
provided him with the opportunity to experiment with drugs such as
Percocet, Lortab, Vicodin and even cough syrup. He said he was hooked after
his first taste of opiates.

"I knew right away it was something that would be part of my life," he
said. "It was that much of an enjoyment." What started as recreation became
an unpleasant necessity.

"It got to a point where I wasn't getting high anymore, I was doing it to
keep from getting sick," he said.

A few years later, Blackson began doing something he never thought he would
do -- inject heroin. For former addicts like Blackson, the road to
independence from opiates is a long one. He has been receiving treatment
for the past five years at a methadone clinic and expects to come off the
treatment in the near future. H fears that one of the consequences of his
abuse is that opiates will "always be a part of my life," he said.

Blackson's advice to people is to avoid even experimentation.

"Just don't do it," he said. "It's not worth the price you'll pay for it
eventually. If you play with fire, you're going to get burned."

Bonnie Presley hopes people will learn from the mistakes of others.

"I don't want to see this happen to someone else's child," she said as she
wiped tears from her eyes.

Blackson, who goes to a methadone clinic in Galax, is a tutor at Virginia
Highlands Community College as he works toward his degree, and he's back
with his wife and two children.

If people are committed enough to breaking their addiction and avoiding the
potentially deadly effects of prescription drugs, they can succeed,
Blackson said.

"If I can do it, anybody can do it," he said. "My two kids are here and my
wife and I are back together. That's the ultimate testimony right there."