TAUNTON - Valerie imagined herself as many things when she was a student at Taunton High School - heroin addict was not among them.
 "I'm smart," the 19-year-old said. "I am intelligent. I passed the MCAS. I scored really high on the MCAS."
 She said she wanted to become a counselor, a dream she still clings to.
 But that dream is on hold. Today, she lives, day to day, with heroin as her partner.
 Valerie started snorting heroin at age 17. Her boyfriend at the time was using it.
 "I wanted to try it," she said. "It was always around. I started snorting every day."
 Then she began injecting the drug. The boyfriend eventually went away.
 The heroin didn't.
 "I was stuck with a bad dope habit," she said.
 She said she has stolen to pay for the $100 to $150 a day habit: grabbing goods or cash and then dashing off.
 "I've done things I'm not proud of," she said. Page 1

 She's lived on the street but never prostituted herself as so many other women battling heroin addiction have. "I just couldn't do something like that," she said.
 She went to a treatment program in Fall River once. "I stayed for one day. I didn't want to be there," she said.
 She tried methadone, a drug used to stop opiate cravings, but returned to heroin.
 A few weeks ago, Valerie was minutes from death when a friend heard her loud snores as she lay in a bedroom and summoned help.
 She spent two weeks in a coma-like state in the intensive care unit at Morton Hospital and Medical Center, recovering from what she says was a heroin overdose.
 "I was in the hospital for a month," Valerie, who didn't want her last name used, said. "Since I've been out of the hospital, I've relapsed."
 Heroin is now her life.
 She has a two-page poem she says tells it all.
 "This is it," Valerie said, pushing the pages across a table. "This says it all."
 In a soft voice, Valerie read the poem. Her hands touched the bottom of the page as she read the last two lines.
 "You'll give up your morals, conscience, your heart.
 And you'll be mine...till death do us part!"
 Valerie looked up.
 "That's all you need to know."

 Maureen Boyle can be reached at mboyle@enterprisenews.com.