Los Angeles ? Larry Birkhead, the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, testified Thursday he saw her taking numerous prescription drugs but that she told him she was not an addict.

Birkhead said he was so concerned about her excessive use of medications that he once hid her Methadone only to be scolded by Howard K. Stern, who said she couldn’t live without it.

“She would say, ‘I’m in pain. I’m not a drug addict,'” he recalled.

When he suggested she was taking too many drugs, she replied, “I have a high tolerance because I’m in pain,” he said.

Birkhead, a photographer and reporter, sat on the witness stand facing two people who had fought him for custody of Smith’s child: the late model’s lawyer-boyfriend, Stern, who is on trial in an alleged drug conspiracy, and Smith’s mother, Virgie Arthur, who was in the audience.