Laurie Besden, executive director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, shares her story.

PENN TWP — The stories of women who have struggled with addiction and managed to rebuild their lives and families were on display Wednesday at the Ellen O'Brien Gaiser Addiction Center's annual community luncheon.

Earlier this year the center opened an expanded treatment facility dedicated to serving women, while Butler County continues to struggle with an opioid addiction and overdose crisis that has led to 67 deaths so far this year. Wednesday's event at Butler Country Club was a reminder that the victims of that crisis come from all corners of the county.

Tara, a Butler native from a “normal family,” said her struggle with addiction started at age 18 when she first tried heroin, and lasted until she was 30. Along the way she had her first child — a son who was born in 2004.

“I caused a lot of people, and myself, pain and suffering,” she said.

Now, Tara said, she's clean and sober thanks to the Gaiser Center, where she found compassion and friends to help her get her life under control. She decided to speak Wednesday because she wants to push back against negativity on social media and the idea that addicts are lost causes.

“I honestly thought I could never stay sober,” she said.

It wasn't until December 2012 that Tara managed to stay clean. Since then she's managed to rebuild her life — mostly with the help of people she met during her recovery. She even found love in recovery, and last month gave birth to a baby boy with her fiancé.

“Five years ago I wasn't allowed in my family's house,” she said. “In July, I was in my sister's wedding. I just want people to know that it is possible to stay clean and sober. No matter how many times people have been in treatment or overdosed, they can get sober.”

Tara's story wasn't the only one on display Wednesday. Laurie Besden, executive director of Lawyers Concerned for Lawyers, a Camp Hill-based nonprofit that focuses on helping lawyers and judges deal with everything from substance abuse to eating disorders and compulsive behaviors, also spoke.

Besden said it's important for people to remember that the crisis is universal. She grew up in an upper-class family in eastern Pennsylvania, and offered herself up as an example.

“Until I was in an addiction I, too, thought that it only happens to certain people,” Besden said. “I thought I was immune.”

Besden is a lawyer, but she's also a recovering addict who abused prescription pills and cocaine for years while still managing to maintain a near-perfect GPA in law school and hold down demanding clerkships and other legal work for years.

Besden's addictions began in earnest at the University of Maryland, where she routinely drank heavily. But it wasn't until her third year in law school, after she was involved in a car crash on the way home from a Pearl Jam concert, that prescription painkillers entered Besden's life.

“I thought I was immune from this,” Besden said. “So I went 100 mph into an addiction I thought I couldn't get.”

What started as a 20- to 30-pill script began controlling Besden's life. She started frequenting the emergency room to get her fix, and later began setting up fake identities to get pills through mail-order prescriptions. The pills became what got Besden through bar exams and trips to Europe with her boyfriend. By the time she landed a coveted clerkship for a judge on the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Besden was taking 40 pain pills per day and had set up nine different identities through mail-order prescription services.

By the end of her one year clerkship, Besden said, “every minute I was awake was controlled by drugs.”

Then, Besden said, she tried cocaine for the first time and her life spiraled even further out of control. She lost weight, went on days-long benders and began to fall out of touch with members of her family, who were struggling to find a way to help her.

“My family did their best,” she said. “They had no idea what to do with me.”

It took a Montgomery County judge to put Besden on the path to being sober, she said. After a two-year stretch from 2002 to 2004 that saw her arrested five times for offenses like prescription fraud and DUI, she found herself in jail on an 11½-month sentence.

“He (the judge) probably saved my life,” Besden said.

That January she got clean for the first time in years, and went on to win back her license to practice law in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in 2009 and 2010, respectively.

In 2011 Besden became the executive director of LCL and began speaking at hundreds of events like the Gaiser luncheon on Wednesday. She said it's important for recovering addicts to reach out and tell their stories, to help dispel the stigma that surrounds addiction and addiction treatment.

“It's never a far distance from my head, how horrible addiction is,” she said. “But as long as somebody's breathing, there's hope. I'm not unique.”