SHE needs to take heroin "just to feel normal". So overwhelming is her craving for the drug that her habit costs $300 a day. To fund the habit, she sells her body.

Every morning when she wakes up, the craving kicks in. If she has none of the drug at home, she has to go out onto the street, find a dealer and buy some. This fix she calls "breakfast".

This is the story of a middle-aged Bermudian woman, whom we shall call Susan. She is one of Sandy Butterfield's clients at Focus and her sad story is typical of hundreds who live out drug-ravaged lives in the midst of our community.

Susan described to us some of the harsh realities of her everyday life to try to help others understand what drug addiction means.

We met in the Union Street office of the counselling service just a few hours after her last fix.

"I don't take heroin to get high, I take it because I have to take it just to feel normal," Susan said.

Going without allowed the craving to develop into physical pain, she said. An ache like arthritis in the joints was followed by muscle pains and then diarrhoea.

"I make my money to pay for the drugs from prostitution," Susan said. "I have some regular customers who pay well. I don't like doing it but I have to. I know other women who do the same.

"Women addicts get taken advantage of. I know women who have been threatened, beaten and raped. But addicts do what they have to do to get heroin. Like I said, it's a need, not a want."

Susan started taking drugs at the age of 18. She first tried cocaine, before moving onto heroin, following the example of many of her peers.

She got herself clean for a few years, but then resumed the heroin use that has been a constant and dominant factor in her life ever since.

"It's like an alarm clock every morning for addicts," she said, describing the start of her typical day. "You wake up some time between 6.30 a.m. and 9 a.m. and it's juice time. I call it breakfast.

"The dealers are out at their posts at that time, they know people will be needing it. If your credit is bad with the dealers, they don't give you any.

"But if they haven't seen you around for a time and they think you've stopped, they will offer you heroin for free to try and get you hooked again."

The supply of heroin on the street was steady in the busier months for tourism, Susan said, but there was less around in the winter.

She said she had once gone cold turkey for around a month, while she was in prison.

"The pain was terrible," she said. "And I got the sweats so bad, it was like my own personal monsoon. I couldn't even get up to bathe. The days went past and I couldn't keep food or water down. I had diarrhoea. It was the heroin coming out of my system.

"After a while my appetite started coming back and I started to fill out again. I was clean. I came out of jail and stayed clean for about three weeks before I used again."

Despite all the pain she'd been through to get clean, Susan could not resist the powerful draw of the drug.

Susan said she was profoundly grateful to Focus, and particularly to Mrs. Butterfield for giving her hope.

"Sandy makes my day, she gives me strength," Susan said.