Miranda Conway remembers watching the young lady in pain.

She remembers seeing the young woman’s face after it had just smashed into the steering wheel. It was bloody, her nose and lip were hanging by a small piece of flesh, and the gums around her teeth were gone.

She doesn’t remember feeling the young lady’s pain, but she remembers understanding exactly what the woman was going through after she had just smashed her car into a tree.

Conway remembers that night so well, because she was that woman. She was the one who totaled the vehicle. She was the one in the middle of a near-death experience.

She was the one high on meth.

“Then I woke up,” said Conway, 26, a Mount Vernon resident.

Conway was in pain after the accident, but that was the last thing on her mind. She called her dealer asking him to come to the accident scene and help clean up.

“Our responsibility was the drugs,” Conway said. “We had to get rid of the pipes, clean out the car and move it to private property so the police couldn’t search it.”

After the car was cleaned of drug paraphernalia, Conway called for an ambulance. In a state of shock, she slipped in and out of consciousness while being transported to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin.

“I’m still here,” she told the paramedic. “Just pray for me.”

Conway underwent a six-hour surgery and 156 stitches to reconstruct her mangled face. After the surgery was over and the healing process began, Conway was able to think about her life and the position she was in.

“I wasn’t thinking God saved my life and gave me another chance,” she said. “I was thinking when my lips get well, I can’t wait to get high again.”

In the summer before her senior year of high school, Conway began hanging out with a different crowd. Looking back, Conway believes it was the smoking and drinking that led her to illegal drugs.

“Cigarettes and alcohol are doorway drugs,” she said.

In November of her senior year, Conway quit school and went to work.

“I felt like it was better to have a job and party,” she said.

These bigger parties included marijuana, acid and eventually meth.

“It all came with the party,” she said. “At different parties, there’s a different drug. Before I knew it, I was addicted.”

Conway moved out of her parents’ home and lived with a friend. The friend’s father, “Snake,” was a dealer in the area and cooked meth as often as possible. Conway posed as the nanny of the family, but was also sleeping with Snake when they were home alone. She became pregnant and fell into depression.

In the spring of 2000, her parents gained custody of her child.

“I was so deep in meth,” she said. “I was so high, I didn’t know what to do.”

After years of many cooking binges, Snake fell hard to the drug. He became ill, and at times, was severely depressed. One summer day he swallowed more than 300 pills.

His body laid limp on the floor, attempting to surpass the deadly toxins. Moments before his most certain death, Conway wanted to clean the house before rescue personnel arrived.

“Before I could help him, I had to search the house and clean it before I called for the ambulance,” she said.

After the house looked reasonable, and all drug materials were stowed away, Conway called 911. Help arrived within minutes. Paramedics pumped nearly 100 pills from Snake’s stomach, and he survived.

The first time they talked to each other, Conway was surprised at his response.

“He was so angry that I saved his life,” she said. “He didn’t say thank you; he asked me why I saved him.”

For Snake, suicide was his way of dealing with the meth. It was his way of escaping the drug and escaping the lifestyle. Conway was confused by his reaction, but it didn’t matter. She too was dangerously high every day, crawling closer to death.

“It’s not about who lives or dies, and it’s not about friendships,” she said. “It’s always about the drugs.”

Conway remembers her body and how it looked on Christmas night 2001. Her body was fragile, her skin yellow and her liver was moments from shutting down. Clumps of hair would fall out daily.

“I had sores all over me,” she said. “They were dripping out meth.”

That evening, Conway spoke to Snake.

“I’m going to die,” she told him. “I don’t want to die alone.”

Months later, police gathered enough evidence on the residents living in the home and prepared to arrest Snake. The police jumped Snake outside of the home, and he began to run trying to escape. The jolt of the body, the surprise and the years of drug abuse caused his heart to explode.

Days after Snake died, Conway called home. She called, asking her parents to help fight the addiction and save her life. They told her if an address change was what she wanted, then she was not welcome. If she wanted a change of heart and a different lifestyle, however, she was more than welcome to come home.

Conway was sent to a drug rehabilitation center in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“It’s about changing lifestyle,” she said.

Conway lasted three and a half weeks before she came home.

“Mentally and emotionally, I was 17 years old,” she said. “That’s when I started taking drugs.”

Her parents were scared, as was Conway. Instead of going back to Michigan, Conway participated in a mission trip with her family’s church to Aldama, Mexico. Each day was a struggle for Conway as she kept off the drugs, but her body was still full of addiction. She regained her faith and looked to God to help fight her own personal war.

“It’s a hopeless life, but I kept focus by reading the word of God,” she said.

Dianna Redfearn, a close friend, helped Conway get through the ordeal. Together, they’ve used their belief and friendship to overcome the addiction.

“It’s shown me how real God is,” Redfearn said. “He can take a wasted life and fix it.”

Hubert Conway, Conway’s grandfather, said he’s surprised at how far his granddaughter has come.

“It’s like she’s back from the dead,” Hubert Conway said. “We nearly gave up on her.”

Although she was in and out of jail, stole from him and the rest of the family, her grandfather was able to forgive and forget now that she’s changed her life.

He also believes she’s going to overcome her problem and live a new life.

“I feel confident that she’s going to make it,” he said.

Although Conway lasted three and a half weeks at the rehabilitation center, she still accomplished her clean date while there: Jan. 7, 2002.

It’s been more than a year now since she’s used drugs.

Winning her own personal war with meth has opened up new roads for Conway. She’s not working, but she’s regaining her dignity and lost time with her two children living at home. She’s overcome the drugs, but now has to overcome all the suffering it’s caused herself, her family and her children.

She wants nothing more than to be happy and focus on the future.

“I have to learn how to do things again,” she said. “I have to learn how to be a mom.”

In conjunction with her rehabilitation, Conway has spent much of the past year talking with people who are struggling to clean their habits.

Through God, friends, family and much support, Conway believes she can beat the addiction.

Her life depends on it.

“Today, it’s one day at a time,” she said. “That’s how it’s going to be for the rest of my life.”