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Once rich Nadine Purdy and Oprah

 

Nadine, her husband and their three children were living in a beautiful home and enjoying the success of their small boutique...until Nadine's life took a sudden turn.

"I hung out with the beautiful people, and I felt very inadequate," Nadine says. "Like I wasn't up to their level...like the people were going to find out I was a fraud."

That's when Nadine decided to start using drugs. "Cocaine gave me a feeling of strength," she says. "It was a really good feeling in the beginning."

Nadine became a cocaine addict and, she says, developed a $600-a-day habit. She estimates that she spent about $250,000 in one year on drugs. Nadine's husband divorced her and she lost custody of their children.

After the divorce, Nadine says, she began abusing heroin and ended up homeless, sleeping on the street and in subway tunnels. "One of my lowest points was being homeless and living in the New York City subway system in the tunnels and not being able to see my children," she says.

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