Few people know the perils of drug abuse better than a 55-year-old former schoolteacher whose job it used to be to teach that very topic--which is why it's particularly ironic that she's a cocaine addict today. More than 30 years ago, Gwen--who prefers to keep it to one name when discussing her addiction--spent her days teaching in the Virginia school system and drafting the schools' drug-and-alcohol-abuse curriculum. She spent her nights researching the subject firsthand.
"I started using alcohol and pot in college," she says. "Then I turned to sniffing cocaine and freebasing. By the time I began teaching, I was spending big-time...