Drugs take a toll on the body, but it's hard to understand the physical effects until you see them first-hand. In a recent viral Facebook post, recovering drug addict Melissa Lee Matos, of West Virginia, showed the world what it looks like to be on the brink of death -- and that no matter how far gone you are, recovery is possible.

In a Facebook post on July 14, Matos shared photos of herself while under the influence of an unidentified drug in order to show the severe physical effects drug abuse can have on the body, Attn reported.

Read: The Most Addictive Drug: Substance Abuse Ranked By Chemical And Societal Effects

“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,” Matos wrote in the post. “I was SICK. I was DYING. I was so far gone I thought I could NEVER recover.”

In the photos we see Matos, pale and covered with scabs, her eyes half closed and her mouth wide open.

Although the specifics of Matos' drug abuse are not revealed in the story, such as what type of drug she used (although she does refer to her drug as “dope,” which can refer to either heroin or meth), the graphic images convey how dangerous and ugly any type of drug abuse can be.

“This is my plea to you. Look at these pictures,” wrote Matos. “Images of a dead girl. A needle junkie with a habit so fierce she spent days and nights in a self-induced coma on her bathroom floor.”

As Matos explains, she chose to “shoot up,” or inject her drug intravenously, which may explain the scabs on her face as seen in the images. For example, IV drug use can increase the risk of skin infections by pushing more bacteria under the skin. In addition, using drugs this way can cause abscesses to form, which are basically a form of infected blister, Rehabs.com reported.

People have been abusing drugs as long as they've existed, but a recent increase in the number of prescriptions written for pain killers caused a surge of abuse among opioid-derived drugs. Once the prescriptions run out, addicted patients are forced to find a new fix, and may turn to heroin or other synthetic versions of the drug, such as fentanyl. Although many addicts start with prescription drugs, nearly 70 percent of opioid deaths are not from prescription abuse, The Daily Signal reported.

Drug abuse is taking a toll on the country - a recent report found that drug overdoses were responsible for the deaths of nearly 60,000 Americans in 2016.

See Also:

Lifetime Drug Abuse, Especially Cocaine And Meth, May Permanently Skewer Users' Moral Compass

Drug Addiction, Unmasked : The Types Of People Most Likely To Get Addicted And Why