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"I didn't just wake up one day and decide to ruin my life," said Angel Hruska, 29.
"I was prescribed prescription pills that I got addicted to and when they stopped prescribing them the withdrawals were unbearable and I made some bad choices," she wrote on a Daily Voice Facebook page. "But unless you've been there in that situation yourself you'd never know what you would do in that situation."
Hruska was behind the wheel of a 2013 silver Volkswagen that police said was speeding on North Prospect Avenue late Thursday when she was stopped.
A search turned up 45 envelopes of heroin and a dozen empties, Capt. Mustafa Rabboh said.
Hruska was released pending a court hearing.
"Yes, I coached cheerleading, and I've been an umpire for over 10 years, and I play softball avidly," she wrote after local media published news of her arrest.
"I'm a person that got caught up in some thing I couldn't handle on my own.
"This disease takes so much from you, you don't even recognize yourself after a while," she wrote. "It destroys your relationships, your love for things, your desire to anything else.
"I wasn't even using to get high, I was using just enough to not be sick so I could just go to work and live day to day without so much pain and suffering.
"So if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone.
"This could happen to your sister or your mother or father your daughter your son or your friend," Hruska wrote. "You never know who's struggling to get by each day.
"The only thing that really helps is telling them you'll be there for them and that they can get through it, offering support and telling them not to be ashamed -- because you have no idea how shameful it is.
"Because of the stigma surrounding it I had no idea where to turn or how to ask for help without my life being ruined.
"If people were able to ask for help without the stigma of being labeled an addict, it would be much easier and many more people would be attempting to get clean," she added.
Hruska said she is "a person with feeling and is just trying to get better so she can get back to her life and the people and things she loves....Just like you.
"I tried on my own so many times, but without insurance it's not easy to get help," she wrote. "Even with insurance it takes time, and when a min[ute] feels like an hour when [you are] sick it's not easy to accomplish even when you really are trying to get help.
"The hardest thing I've ever done in my life is tell my parents, because until that moment they thought of me a certain way, and now I don't know if they'll ever look at me that way again -- and it breaks my heart.
However, she said, "I take full responsibility for my actions and I'm doing my best to get better so I can get back to the life that I loved living.
"I cant wait to go into detox and then rehab, because I know once they help me get clean I WILL stay clean [because] that's what I've dreamt of since the moment I realized I was addicted to this junk.
"If I were you I wouldn't bet against me," Hruska wrote. "I may have stumbled and fallen but I will get back up and dust myself off and get back to [the woman] I once was."
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