Last of a three-part series:

PATH TO ADDICTION 'YOU LIVED TO FIND PILLS AND THAT WAS IT'

GAUTIER - A Year Of Rehab Led Couple Back From A Life Of Escalating
Use

Robby was 28 when he found himself standing in a graveyard, a casket
in front of him that held his older brother, Tony, and Tony's only
child, 22-month-old Ericka McKenzie.

Robby's family and Tony's widow, Ellen, wanted McKenzie buried in her
father's arms.

"She was a daddy's girl," Ellen said. "She always loved being with her
daddy."

Ellen's memory of that day in November 1997 when her husband and
daughter were laid to rest is blurred. Ellen was in shock, overwhelmed
by the emptiness that had taken hold of her.

"I was upset," Ellen said. "Everybody was upset. There were hundreds
of people at that funeral. I thought I was doing pretty good, handling
it the best way I could. Now I know I wasn't dealing with it at all.

"It's hard to grieve two people at one time," Ellen said. "I don't
know that you can. The pain is so bad, and you always miss them both."

After the funeral, when people stopped coming around as much, Ellen
turned to her drugs to ease her pain.

"I went immediately back to a partying mode," she said. "I took pills.
I starting going out again."

Robby had moved in with his parents for a while after Tony's death. He
wanted to straighten up.

"They tried to get me help," he said. "I went through rehab once and
it didn't work."

Ellen and Robby soon found themselves together, plunging into a world
of drug use and isolation.

"That's probably the only time I questioned God," Robby said, looking
back on those days. "Even though my brother was an addict with me, I
had been divorced. He was married and had a child. I thought, 'Why
couldn't it have been me?' I didn't like what I was doing, especially
because of the way I was raised. I always tried to put up a front to
make that wall look OK."

Ellen continued to visit Robby's family after the funeral. She became
close friends with Robby, a friendship that eventually led to a
relationship and then marriage.

Going from bad to worse

After Robby and Ellen married, their addictions worsened.

They spent a lot of time hanging out with other drug users who
preferred the prescription painkillers OxyContin (also known as
Oxycodone), Lortab and Loracet Plus.

They soon had a friend showing them how to shoot OxyContin into their
veins for a more euphoric high. They couldn't have been happier.

"I can't explain it," Robby said. "It was just better."

The couple continued their routine, and Robby ended up landing a job
at a sawmill. He'd quit his last job and sold marijuana to make a
living for a while. When he starting working again, he continued to
sell marijuana to support his and his wife's growing addiction to OxyContin.

"If you didn't have it (OxyContin), you would be sick as a dog," Ellen
said. "So that's the way you lived. You lived to find pills and that
was it. That is what our life consisted of. After you got the money
you needed, you got the pills.

"Once you got the pills, you started looking (again) for more pills.
It went bad quick."

In their first two years together, Robby would learn he had a
life-threatening form of colon cancer. It was then that Robby started
to realize just how addicted he'd become to prescription drugs. He
still had no aspirations to quit.

Battling cancer and addiction

Robby only stopped drinking liquor after he started having severe
stomach pains that doctors couldn't explain for years.

In June of 2000, Robby ended up in the hospital with severe pain that
later was diagnosed as cancer. A month later, he was at a north
Louisiana hospital undergoing surgery to remove the cancer.

Robby vividly remembers the day of the surgery. Doctors drugged him
before the procedure, but nothing seemed to keep him knocked out.
During the surgery, Robby opened his eyes and heard the doctor saying,
"Why is he awake? He's not supposed to be awake."

Robby had built up such a tolerance to painkillers by then that the
medication he was given before surgery simply wasn't strong enough.
After he got out of surgery, doctors put him on such a powerful IV
that it easily would've caused others to overdose.

He also was given two 16-ounce Old Milwaukee beers each day to curb
any withdrawal symptoms and was given a pack of pills to take if he
felt like he was starting to overdose.

"I never had to use that medicine," he said. "I wasn't going to
overdose. My body was so addicted."

Ellen stayed by Robby's side at the hospital. She also knew how
addicted he was to OxyContin, so she'd bring a syringe filled with the
drug during her hospital visits and shoot it directly into Robby's IV
bag.

By the time Robby was hospitalized, he and Ellen were shooting up
anywhere from six to eight times a day. They eventually started
selling their furniture, even their bed, to pay for the drug because
it was expensive.

The OxyContin pills came in 20-, 40- and 80-milligram tablets, and
they were paying $10 for a 20-milligram tablet, $20 for a 40-milligram
tablet and $40 dollars for an 80-milligram tablet.

"OxyContin is like a poor man's heroin," Robby said. "You'd break them
down, heat them up in a spoon and shoot it up. I couldn't seem to get
enough."

Robby's hospital stay turned out to be one of the best things that
could've happened to him and his wife. Before his surgery, he learned
of an arrest warrant for him on a charge of prescription forgery.
Robby was desperate months earlier when he forged a prescription to
get 30 of the 20-milligram OxyContin tablets. A pharmacist immediately
turned him in to sheriff's deputies.

Now, he was facing a 10-year stint in jail. He'd already been caught
in the past stealing furniture from outside of people's homes. He'd
sell the furniture to get the money he needed for his drugs.

Robby had two choices: Go to jail or get some help.

The road to sobriety

Robby didn't have to worry about going to jail for more than a month
after his surgery. He was recovering and started going to doctors who
would prescribe him OxyContin for the pain.

"It wasn't a problem," he said. "You just tell the doctor you had
cancer and you got the medicine."

Ellen also found a way to get her own prescription. She'd been in a
car wreck years earlier and suffered injuries. She used that excuse to
get the same prescription from other willing doctors.

The couple still managed to take more pills than they were prescribed
and resorted to buying them off the streets.

Their habit worsened to a point that they paid for drugs instead of
electricity. They had to move in with relatives to continue their habits.

Everything started to come to an end when Robby learned that he and
his parents had to meet with the local district attorney about Robby's
pending felony charge of prescription forgery.

"I went to see the DA, and he said, 'You are either going to get your
act together or spend the next 10 to 12 years in jail,' " Robby said.
"He said he wanted me to go somewhere for at least 60 days. If things
didn't change, he was going to turn loose my paperwork to the judge
and I'd probably be looking at 10 to 12 years in the
penitentiary."

Robby had no choice but to check himself into rehab. With the help of
local law enforcement in his hometown, he learned of the Homes of
Grace, a religious-based rehabilitation program for male and female
addicts in Mississippi.

In January 2001, Ellen and Robby were driven to the center. Neither
wanted to go.

They were taken off the drugs completely and the days and weeks ahead
were some of the roughest they'd face.

"You go cold turkey," Robby said. "If you can imagine the worst case
of flu and pneumonia, then that's it. That's how it felt. The first
164 hours I was there, I was awake 160 hours. You couldn't sleep. You
were nauseous but you only dry-heaved. You didn't have anything in you
to vomit. You itched."

Ellen and Robby went through their withdrawals on their own. Ellen
stayed in a women's sector and Robby stayed in the men's area. The
only contact the couple had was by mail.

"It was a three-month program, but we ended up staying a year," Robby
said. "We had turned our lives over to God. That's what made it work
for us. There was a new excitement in our life."

The center helped Robby find his first job after his sobriety at
Cajun's Fried Chicken in Biloxi. Then, he worked at a thrift store in
Ocean Springs and for a lawn service.

Now, he and Ellen both are sober and employed full time at one of
South Mississippi's nonprofit organizations. They both love their
jobs, have their own vehicles and own a three-bedroom home.

Ellen's son, Tyler, also lives with them. Tyler lived with his father
during the height of Ellen's drug use.

The couple now spends a lot of their time giving testimonials at South
Mississippi churches. They share their stories about drugs, addiction
and the tragedy that often accompanies the lifestyle.

Robby also is attending classes at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community
College, earning A's and B's in his first semester. He hopes to earn a
bachelor's degree in physical education and one day work with children
- - teaching them about sports and coaching.

In September, Ellen and Robby had been drug-free for more than 2½
years. The reason they've achieved their goals, they said, is because
"God has restored a lot of what we've lost."

Robby's message to practicing addicts today is: "You are never too low
to get help. The only thing that could separate you from help is
death. I know what that's like."

Nothing can erase Robby's memory of that day in 1997 when he lost a
brother and niece because of drug use.

"I still remember Tony and think of him on a daily basis," Robby said.
"The day they were killed, I was walking out of my brother's apartment
and I asked my niece (McKenzie) to come give Uncle Robby a kiss. She
looked at her dad first. Then she came over and threw her arms around
me and gave me a kiss good-bye. That kiss is still with me."