NASHUA – Hollie Perkins has lots of scars.

Some keep her strong. Some she battles daily. Some define her.

Let’s start with the track marks on her arms – a remnant of her days as an intravenous heroin user. She once considered having them removed. She decided they need to stay.

"I want this to be part of my life. It’s something I lived through and pulled through," Perkins, 39, said in her kitchen, pulling up her blouse sleeve to reveal now-faint signs of the drug that ruled her life more than 10 years ago.

Nothing and no one else mattered when she used heroin, including her three daughters, then 7, 9 and 11 years old.

"They knew mommy wasn’t mommy. They knew something was wrong with me," the Nashua native explained.

Why are you always in the bathroom? The girls wanted to know. Why are you always sleeping? They asked.

"They said, ‘Mom, we know something’s wrong. Would you please get help? Please?’?" Perkins recounted.

The bathroom became her shooting gallery. Her daughters noticed that she locked the door behind her and was spending so much more time trying to find a spot on her tired veins to inject the drug, Perkins said.

"They came to me like five different times – crying, begging for me to get help," Perkins said.

"I cried with them. But even with them poor girls in my face crying their eyes out, I was in that bathroom a half hour later getting high," she added.

Perkins finally told her two oldest daughters the truth about her addiction. That still didn’t stop her from using heroin. She moved out of her apartment – selling her furniture, car and everything she owned to her drug supplier.

"I was moving out … and my drug supplier was moving into my apartment. I said I would leave you this if you give me this," Perkins said.

The family landed at the Country Barn Motel and Campground in Nashua. That’s where Perkins said she saw the light.

"I went outside one morning after I put them off to school. I just looked up at the sun and, for some unknown reason, I said, ‘What the hell am I doing? This is not my life. I cannot live like this anymore,’?" Perkins remembered.

She knew she needed help. She called Merrimack River Medical Services in Hudson, which provides withdrawal management and medication-assisted treatment with methadone. She got an appointment about four days later.

"In all honesty, I would be dead if it wasn’t for methadone. From the day I walked into that clinic until today, I have never used again," Perkins said.

She celebrated 10 years of sobriety on April 3.

"When I’m on methadone, I do not crave the drugs. I do not think about drugs. That medicine is like God’s gift to me," she said.

"A lot of people think you are switching one drug for another drug. But you are under the care of a doctor. You are seeing nurses every day. The nurses dispense the methadone. If they think you are using, they will drug test you right there. If you come up dirty, you won’t get your dose," Perkins said.

Another reason Perkins said she stays on methadone is because she developed Hepatitis C from intravenous needle use and takes Percocet, a narcotic painkiller, to manage the pain.

"Because I have to take Percocet, I fear I will get the high feeling and I don’t want to feel that way again," she said. Methadone blocks her from "feeling the high."

Perkins dropped out of Nashua High School when she was 17, got jobs working as a cashier or clerk at convenience stores around the city and, beyond trying marijuana in high school and using painkillers after major surgery, never dabbled in drugs, she said.

It wasn’t until she was 27 that she said she tried heroin.

Today, she wonders if a family history of alcoholism, mental illness and sexual abuse contributed to her drug use.

"I was molested when I was five and didn’t tell anyone until I was 27 doing drugs," Perkins said.

"I wouldn’t talk about it. So it kind of screwed me up growing up … It made me feel anger toward everyone," said Perkins, who said she also has been diagnosed with bipolar mental illness.

Perkins, whose previous surnames are Michaud, Barrientos and Salazar-Medellin, was convicted twice of theft, according to the New Hampshire judicial branch. Court records show she was convicted in Hillsborough County Superior Court-South in 2008 for a felony theft by unauthoritized taking and sentenced to three years probation.

She also has a misdemeanor conviction of theft by unauthorized taking out of Nashua District Court in 2014, the judicial branch said. She was sentenced to a minimum five months in county jail, which was suspended for one year, according to the courts.

Sober more than 10 years, Perkins says she has her daughters’ respect and a granddaughter whom she calls "the light of my life."

"They are so proud of who their mom is today," she said of her daughters. "I love those girls so much. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have gotten clean."

Kathryn Marchocki can be reached at 594-6589, kmarchocki@nashua
telegraph.com or @Telegraph_KMar.

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