I read so many post on here that I have been compelled to write my story in hopes that it will help someone. I started smoking crack when I was 17. I had ran away from home with some friends and went to Jacksonville Florida, it was 1988.I met up with a guy who was 20 years older than me and the first night we met he introduced me to crack. Well I think I may have drank to much that first night to reaize the real high I was getting. Well the guy went to jail that night for buying and I eventually went back to where I had been staying with my friends. I couple a days later the guy calls and says he wanted to hook up again. Well being young and nieve, I went thinking it was cool this older guy wanted to hook up with me. Well fast forward 2 months later I am living with guy, him 38, and me just turning 18. He was a functioning addict. He had a job at a tire place where he had been for 10 years. He did all drugs, prefered to shoot coke but settled with crack when he could get it. Now at this point I am living with guy, using crack or shooting up every day.He supported both our habits. I think he liked the fact he had this young girl. Well aftr about a year of this his attitude changed, I became strung out on drugs, smoking everyday, I crossed over, I started sneaking behind his back while he was at work and would entertain men and drug dealers for crack or money to buy crack. I would sleep with whoever would give me a hit.I remember sleeping with this crackhead that had no teeth, nasty, stinking guy for one small hit. Well all this time I stayed in touch with my family back in Kentucky, no one in Kentucky knew the extent of my problem. I had never called my family back home to ask for money, they just thought I had hooked up with an older man and he was taking care of me. One day after about a year and half of this I was waiting at a street corner for a police officer.The night before I had stolen the next door neighbors lawn mower and gotten a ride across town to sell it to get a hit,unfortuneately for me I got gang raped by 4 dealers. I decided to call the police. When they got there I just started crying, well the one police officer put me in his car and wanted to know what happen, I told him and well I got the do you know who did it routine and of course I said no that I just wanted to go home, he wanted to know where I lived and I said Kentucky, then I just let it go, I told him what I had been thru for the past year and a half and that I didn't want to do it anymore, that I had a good famiy back home and I just needed to get away and never come back. Well that officer took me to the bus station that morning and put me on a bus back to Kentucky, he bought me breakfast and gave me money for food. I don't remember what his name was, I dont think I ever asked, but I thank Lord everyday that he did what he did for me. I am now 37 years old, I have been married for 15 years and have a beautiful 16 month old baby. I came back to Kentucky and never looked back. I went back to school, got my GED, got into a nursing program at Eastrern Kentucky Univ. and became an RN.My husband knows I had a rough time when I was in Florida, but he will probably never no the full extent of it. I've never told him about the crack whoring and the gang rape. I have never touched crack since I left Florida. I snorted a line or two when me and my husband was dating and we wouuld be at a party or something,always just recreational. I never went to counciling or rehab to get off the drugs, I just said enoughs enough.