Maintaining \n characters

I have a string in flash that contains
to indicate new lines.

When i pass it to a php page I use mysql_real_escape_string on the variable, and when i echo it out before inserting into the mysql database, the string reads something like

"lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
bla bla bla etc
"

so i insert into the db and all seems well.

but when another script pulls the variable back out, it returns

"lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
bla bla bla etc
"

so it actually inserts the new lines. how do i stop this?