BREAKING FREE.(after addiction)

Reclaiming your life after an addiction involves more than just willpower. It means healing on the physical, mental and spiritual levels

After both her parents died of cancer just two years apart, Jean Olsen went into an emotional tailspin. To ease her troubled sleep, the 40-something nurse from Tennessee started taking Vicodin, a narcotic analgesic she found in her mother's medicine cabinet. When the prescription ran out, Olsen began stealing Vicodin from the hospital where she worked.

She also started helping herself to the prescription narcotic Stadol after an old migraine problem flared up. The drug not only relieved Olsen's pain but made her feel euphoric, and it enhanced her sexual pleasure. Within a year, she was addicted to both drugs. After being fired from her job for stealing drugs, Olsen checked herself into an inpatient detoxification program, though she still wouldn't admit to having an addiction. She also sought treatment at a group apartment for addicts and an outpatient program, where she admitted to being an addict for the first time. Yet neither of those approaches worked. In the midst of everything, she became clinically depressed. Only after being treated by a doctor who specializes in addiction and attending daily Narcotics Anonymous meetings was Olsen, now 54, finally able to conquer her addiction.

For Carol O'Hare, 44, the road from a gambling addiction to recovery took a different route. Her problem began more than a decade ago, when she was a newly divorced mother of three with no job skills. To relieve stress, the Las Vegas resident started playing video poker and was soon hitting the casinos every night. O'Hare's gambling addiction bled her dry: She lost her children's savings bonds, a lot of borrowed money and her peace of mind. Physically ill and emotionally depressed, she shared her problem with a friend, who recommended Gamblers Anonymous. The meetings made O'Hare realize there is no magical cure for her addiction. "For me, it was crucial to learn what I was going through wasn't a moral issue but a mental health problem," she says. O'Hare has not only recovered but now helps others fight addiction as the executive vice president of the National Council on Problem Gambling.

Mary Sonntag, a 41-year-old New York City resident, also overcame a behavioral addiction, one that developed during her senior year in college. Her battle with eating disorders started when the 5-foot-3-inch, 120-pound student forced herself to throw up, or purge, because she felt too full after a meal. The incident mushroomed into an obsessive pattern of dieting and exercising. A year later, Sonntag weighed 78 pounds and was eating only eight corn nuts a day.

Sonntag was diagnosed as anorexic and bulimic. She was hospitalized three times …