Woman shares before and after photos to show the horrific effects of heroin

Melissa Lee Matos has been in recovery from drug addiction for almost a year and a half - and she's just done something amazing to help others who are struggling.

Matos shared photos of herself at rock bottom to help others with their recovery. “Too many people are dying. I have friends who need to see this” she writes in her Facebook post, which has had more than 49,000 shares.

She explains how, for years, she wanted to die and spent days and nights in a self-induced coma.

She wrote:

This was what I looked like, daily, for years. This is what my husband dealt with. This is what my little girls walked in on. This is what my family and friends saw, on the rare occasions I left the house. I was SICK. I was DYING. I was so far gone I thought I could NEVER recover. I was so lost I couldn't imagine a life without using. I just wanted to die. I didn't realize I was hardly alive.

Matos, who now works with a charity to help heroin addicts recover, describes herself at the time as:

A needle junkie with a habit so fierce she spent days and nights in a self induced coma on her bathroom floor. A girl who would spend every cent on dope and forget she had kids to feed and take care of. A girl who lost every single thing she ever had. A girl who was so sick she thought she would never ever find a way out, until she did.

Here's her full post:

More: Hitler was "saturated" with drugs, according to new book