At 17 she snorted her first line.

By 23, she was shooting up.

A mere four years later, Donna Green sits on a hospital bed at a Terre Haute nursing home, where a crayon drawing by her daughter and a poster of The Doors are taped to the wall.

Dabbing her eyes with a wad of toilet paper, Green struggles to explain what drug use has done to her life. "Don't do it," she says, crying softly.

Words don't come easily anymore. She clenches her fists, raising and shaking them in frustration over difficulty speaking, a result of a stroke in October.

The right side of her face is numb. She also has trouble writing and remembering certain time periods.

Methamphetamine abuse rotted her lower teeth; she now wears dentures. Bruise-like splotches of purple mar the underside of her arms from injecting meth. Her face in drawn and her skin is pale.

Although she's decades younger than the woman in the next bed, Green feels nearly as old as her roommate.

For a few minutes, the 27-year-old Green contemplates just how old she feels.

"Seventy," she says.

The turning point

A decade ago, Green's life held promise. At West Vigo High School, the vivacious young woman earned decent grades and participated in activities ranging from equestrian club her freshman year to Students Against Drunk Driving her senior year.

"She seemed happy," said retired English teacher John Seifert, who taught Green in his journalism class.

Seifert was shocked about the path Green's life has taken since her graduation in 1993. "She was a nice girl," he said. "I just hardly believe it."

After high school, Green attended two semesters of business college before summer arrived.

"Then I discovered the university of methamphetamine. It all went down after that," she said in an April interview.

Her life centered on "doing dope" and partying, she recalls. She never returned to college.

She quit the drug briefly at 18 during her first pregnancy. But she would use meth throughout her three later pregnancies.

Two months after the birth of her second child -- a girl -- Green injected meth for the first time.

It happened to be Green's 23rd birthday and the first day at a new job. She begged her mom -- who had been using and was later arrested on a drug dealing charge -- to help her shoot up before she left for work.

"I just wanted to see what it's like, just one time," Green said. She went to work that day, but never returned and hasn't worked in the four years since.

In the months that followed, Green experimented with her new-found method of getting high, practicing with a syringe and water before dabbling in prescription drugs and cocaine.

But meth was her mainstay, and she lived with her mom, Cindy Cooper, because she knew the supply of drugs and needles was plentiful.

Looking back, Cooper said she blames herself for her daughter's problems.

"I just wish to God I hadn't have helped her," says Cooper, who is still on probation for the drug dealing charge.

Back at the time when she helped Green shoot up, Cooper was dealing drugs and brought back supplies from Arizona. Green remembers standing in the driveway, awaiting her mother's return, which signaled the next fix. Green later turned to locally made "crank" for her high.

Green's binges lasted weeks and eventually paranoia set in. "I was seeing things," she said, remembering a trash bag covering the window of a home once appeared to be a "great big gorilla."

Green spent most of her time in the bathroom, her traditional setting for injecting the drug. At times, she locked herself in for days, keeping a television and radio -- everything she needed -- including a Janis Joplin tape she'd play again and again.

When the tape wasn't playing, voices seemed to come from everywhere -- the sink, even her underwear, she said.

When she did venture out, Green did what she needed to get more dope.

Once, she bought decongestant pills and lighter fluid -- two of the key ingredients used to make methamphetamine -- in exchange for an "8 ball" (roughly 3.5 grams) of meth.

"I'd baby-sit kids for it. When you're addicted, you don't care what you do," she said.

Downhill spiral

For Green, life soon took a turn for the worse.

Even before her fourth child, a son, arrived Oct. 23, 2001, Green had been in and out of the hospital and nursing home because of a leaky heart valve and staff infection related to her IV drug use. She'd also been diagnosed with Hepatitis C, a disease of the liver which can be spread through shared needles.

But things got worse after her son, Rodney, was born.

"They took him right away from me. I didn't kiss him good-bye," she said of her now year-old son who continues to be in foster care. Her oldest son, now 8, lives with his father's family in Missouri. Green's two daughters, 6 and 2, live with relatives in the Wabash Valley.

Out of the hospital after giving birth, Green began a drug binge that ended with her coughing up chunks of blood and being readmitted to the hospital in November.

In a letter addressing Green's condition, a doctor wrote that Green had "multiple medical problems," including inflammation of the innermost layer of her heart's chambers and valves, a widespread infection and fluid and puss in her lungs.

"Her prognosis is not good," the doctor wrote as Green breathed with the help of a ventilator. Cooper, jailed at the time on drug-dealing charges, had asked to be allowed to visit her daughter, prompting the physician to advise court officials on Green's condition.

Family members wondered if Green would survive and prepared for the worse, arranging for a burial plot in Terre Haute.

Randy Smith, pastor at First Assembly of God in West Terre Haute, remembers praying for God to give Green another chance.

On life support and in a drug-induced coma, Green slowly improved.

"The next think I know, it was two months later and I was on the second floor" of the hospital, she said, recalling that she awoke to a feeding tube and catheter. "I couldn't walk. I couldn't talk."

Months of physical and speech therapy followed. By spring, Green vowed not to use meth again.

But the temptation outweighed the risk. "It's hard to stay off drugs when you're around it so much," she said of the prevalence of the drug around certain members of her family -- including her mother and sister.

Green returned to the routine of shooting up. She lived with her 25-year-old sister, Cindy Jo Green, who said in December that she had preferred to smoke methamphetamine but no longer used the drug.

For a few weeks last fall, Donna Green says she stopped using when her supplier moved out of town. But it was too late. Her arm went numb as she sipped on a soda. She was having a stroke.

Green stayed three weeks in the hospital before being transferred to the same north-side nursing home where she'd been months earlier.

Medicaid has covered the enormous cost of her care.

An anchor

Green thumbs through a book she's been studying. The paperback -- a Bible study on the first four books of the New Testament -- has everything to do with a decision she made Oct. 18.

A piece of paper, tucked in the pages, reminds her she accepted Christ into her life.

"There is a change. I see it," said pastor Smith, who first met Green about three years ago when she and her mother attended his church.

He's continued to witness to Green through the hospital stays, through the struggle of her youngest child being taken away at birth and through the continued use of methamphetamine.

"It's so sad that it takes something like this for people to be willing to change," he said.

Around Green's neck, inches above a scorpion tattoo, hangs a silver-and-purple beaded necklace, given to her by someone who works at the nursing home. The inscription on a silver charm reads "forgiven."

Overcoming the temptation of drugs is the greatest struggle ahead for Green, Smith said. "The biggest thing is what she does with it from this point."

Green admits she still craves the drug that made her feel so good at first but has crippled her health.

What will stop her from using again?

Green thinks for moment. "God."