This ‘Teen Mom’ Star Is Getting Candid About Her Near-Death Experience

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The experience, which Jenelle wrote about in her new memoir, Read Between the Lines: From the Diary of a Teenage Mom ($21, amazon.com), made her realize how bad her struggle with drugs had become. “I was appalled—I couldn’t believe that happened,” she says. “I really was so close to dying.” Jenelle says she hadn’t spoken to her mom in two weeks at the time, but she reached out to her. “I called her and begged her to please come help,” she says.

Related: ‘Teen Mom 2’ Star Jenelle Evans Is Opening Up About Her Addiction To Heroin

Jenelle says she quit cold turkey after that. “I just went to my mom’s house and rode it out,” she recalls. “I started to go through withdrawals for the first time. I didn’t know it would be like the worst flu I’ve ever had for seven days.” Jenelle says she experienced insomnia, panic attacks, hot and cold sweats for a week, uncontrollable shaking, and joint pain. “You can die from trying to withdraw on your own,” she says. “Luckily did it safely. But I said to myself, ‘I’m done. I can’t ever go through this again.’”

Jenelle says she decided to speak out about her experience to call attention to how severe the heroin epidemic is. “It’s horrible. It is like a disease and needs to be treated like it,” she says. (Subscribe to Women’s Health’s newsletter So This Happened for the latest trending news and stories)

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In an excerpt from Jenelle’s memoir that was published by E! in June, Jenelle said she was shooting up heroin four or five times a day at one point. But Jenelle now says that she’s settled down. “I don’t go out partying. I’m not a bad kid anymore,” she says.