A FORMER heroin addict believes there are fewer people indulging in drugs today than there were 20 years ago.

The former addict, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Mid-Ocean News this week that the availability of so-called heavy drugs such as heroin and cocaine had decreased in recent years, forcing the price up and acting as a deterrent for first-time users.

Jim said he started using drugs at the age of 13 when a bag of marijuana cost $5 and dealers were literally on every street corner in most neighbourhoods.

By the time he left school at age 18, he was heavily involved in the so-called "street life" in which he sold heroin to feed his habit.

"The money was coming in fast and I was hitting heroin heavy," the father of six admitted. "I was destroying my family and pulling everyone down with me and that was very selfish."

So what has changed in Bermuda's drug culture since the 1980s?

"People are not indulging like back then, so a lot of people aren't into heroine now like back then. The drug of choice now is Ecstasy because it's something you don't have to go around the corner, or bathroom, to do. You can stand right here and pop a pill and everyone thinks you're eating candy."

Jim said he constantly talked to his own children about drugs and believed if someone had talked to him when he was 13 and warned him about the adverse effects ¿ not only financially, but also physically and emotionally ¿ he might not have gone down that route.

"It reached a point where it took a big toll on my family. It even came to a point where my sister would see me coming down the street and go the other way," he said. "Once your family turn their backs on you, you have nowhere else to go."

Jim admitted he never had any friends growing up, only drug associates, and when he joined the Methadone programme at Turning Point he literally had to learn to live again ¿ which included getting rid of all his so-called friends.

"You know I never had any friends before, all I had was drug-related associates. If I never had any drugs, they wanted nothing to do with me, but once you had (drugs), they were all around you."

He gets angry when he hears youngsters say that selling drugs is easier than staying in school or getting a real job.

"Most of them don't have the drive to learn. They want the easiest way out and that's going to be (working) on the streets. But it's not worth it," he warned. "It's not worth it and the consequences are worse now than when I was growing up."

Jim explained that most of the time buying and selling drugs, he was always scared that someone would "get him".

"You always felt like that because you never knew what was on the other guys' mind. You never know if they are going to pull a knife on you and take all your money," he said.

"My mom used to tell me that every time the phone rang she thought something terrible had happened to me because she knew what I was into."

The effect his drug habit had on his family was one of the things which eventually made him realise he needed help.

He joined the programme at Turning Point in 2003 and said it was the best choice he ever made ¿ even though he had joined and failed at the programme once before.

"The first time I came here (to Turning Point) was in the 1990s, but it wasn't my choice. I came here to please somebody else and it didn't work for me. You have to make your mind up and do it for yourself," he said.

"When I started this programme it had come to the point where I said to myself, 'That's it, it's over, I've had enough' and I didn't want to come here and waste anyone's time, not even my own."