BOSTON -- As more women enter the workforce, more are turning to self-medicating with alcohol and drugs to help them balance the challenges of work and family, experts say.

Many of the women are hiding it from their families.

NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner met one woman who knows the dark side of substance abuse.

Nichelle Taylor, 40, admitted she was a 24-hour a day user for years. She said it started with marijuana, but quickly moved to pills, sniffing and smoking cocaine, and then finally, heroin. Taylor said the drugs made her feel better and took her to another place -- until the day they nearly killed her.

"The last eight months of my heroin use caused me a serious heart infection," she said.

The day of her open heart surgery was the last day she used heroin and drugs of any kind. But Taylor said it doesn't have to take that kind of near-tragedy for a person to stop using.

For many years while Taylor was on drugs, most people never knew she was hooked. She isolated herself and snuck around, afraid of the stigma.

"I had a lot of fear around people knowing, and what they might say," she said.

That fear is not unusual, and today, because of the tough times, more and more women are becoming hidden addicts.

Last summer, a Long Island, N.Y., mother, Diane Schuler, was behind the wheel on the Taconic Parkway in New Jersey when she crashed, killing eight people, including her own 2-year-old daughter. Schuler's husband insisted his wife was not impaired. But toxicology results showed Schuler had both marijuana and alcohol in her system.

According to the FBI, the number of men arrested for drunken driving is down by 7.5 percent, but is up more than 28 percent for women.

Ruth Kelly, of the Behavioral Health Services at the Dimock Center, said we live in a fast-paced society and that puts a lot of people under a lot of pressure.

"Whether it's the loss of a job, or a family member getting sick, this is a way to cope. It's a way to relieve pain," she said.

Taylor said she knows all too well those stresses, and the relief her drug use gave her, but realizes now how much harm came from her substance abuse.

"In our using, we don't only hurt ourselves, we hurt everything around us," she said.

Taylor has been clean for almost three years. And the mother of two knows she's come a long way from those dark days.

"You have to release the shame and the guilt," she said. "You have to go full speed ahead to save your life. I'm so glad that tomorrow morning, I'm not going to wake up addicted, or sick, or on a chase. I wake up clean and free."