Bermuda, Royal Gazette senior reporter John Burchall talks to a recovering heroin addict now facing the spectre of death from AIDS.

For more than 50 years, Charles has lived a life of excess.

He pushed cannabis, cocaine, crack and heroin before he became a user himself.

In some ways his life embodies Bermuda's history with drugs -- from cannabis use to LSD and heroin to the cocaine and crack epidemic of the 1980s to heroin's reemergence today.

When drugs started to enter Bermuda in the 1960s and early 1970s, Charles (not his real name) became a "strong man''. He kept the pushers in line and followed up on debts owed. He settled scores swiftly and violently.

Charles has cheated death several times in his life. He's overdosed on both cocaine and heroin. Now he knows he is going to die. He is HIV positive.

He has seen countless friends and former acquaintences die of either AIDS or an overdose of heroin but he faces the reality of his own demise with equanamity because of his deep religious faith.

Charles' face has the same ashen tone that stains all heroin users -- whether former or current -- like a dye.

Recovering addict faces spectre of AIDS He is of medium height, around five foot eight inches, with a gravelly, raspy voice.

The lines around his luminous brown eyes are souvenirs of a life packed with far too many long nights without sleep.

On this night, the light from the entrance to his home throws his entire form into high relief.

He is a beguiling and urbane man and he squares his shoulders and extends a warm handshake.

"I remember when heroin first hit the block (Court Street),'' he says. "Two white Bermudian guys who travelled to the United States nearly every month brought it back with them from one of their trips.

"They were walking up and down the block and they gave it away for free. We called it `skag' back then and it was a hit with a small group of people -- mainly foreign entertainers who would shoot it in secret.

"In the early days (1970-74) no one wanted to be near a heroin user. It was known as a heavy drug and you were seen as a low life if you tried it.

"You were labelled a junkie and that was a fate worse than death. The only way you found out if a person was a user was when they overdosed.

"Back then the herb (cannabis) smokers held sway. They had the power. They also had the moral authority because they were Haile Selassie's people. For them heroin was a creation of the devil.'' Charles said the early 1970s saw the introduction of drugs like LSD and Speed which went along with the post-Jimmy Hendrix era.

At that time he said Bermudians wanted to be "funkadelic'' and they did a lot of acid.

"Coke came on the set next,'' he continued, "but heroin was always there picking off its victims one by one.

"I started using heroin right after Jimmy Hendrix's popularity in Bermuda began to die out. I was using acid first but I got into heroin because it was a sexual drug.

"It stimulated my sex drive. I could screw for an hour and a half without breaking. Many old guys heard of this and tried heroin for that reason.

"Most people snorted heroin at this time. As far as I can remember there never were that many mainliners (shooters). I started mainlining because the high was immediate and intensely pleasurable. It was better than sex.'' By the early 1980s, heroin use receded, Charles said, because many of the shooters were contracting AIDS. To be a heroin user was to be associated with being HIV positive and "none of us wanted that''.

"We didn't know how this disease was spread so we just cut out heroin all together. All the mainliners at that time were probably HIV positive but we were in denial in a big way.

"We were all the victims of misinformation and it was felt that if you used heroin you had AIDS.'' As a consequence, cocaine, and its more powerful derivative crack, became the drug of choice for the rest of the 1980s.

But heroin has made a tremendous surge on the block since the the late 1980s -- because of the "new jacks''.

"You can walk anywhere on the block and you will see them sitting around and doing their deals,'' Charles continued. "These guys have no memory of the days when AIDS wiped out the heroin users of the seventies and early eighties.

"All they see is the glamour, the money and the sexiness of heroin, especially for the guys under 16 with their raging hormones.

"Times have changed from the days when I was out there,'' Charles claimed.

"We had honour back then. If you saw a young guy on the block you cut his ass and sent him home.

"But today dealers seek out the young bloods because they make you a lot of money. That is, until they start tasting the product.

"Heroin is back in a big way because guys are speed balling (taking cocaine which picks them up and gives them a rush, then heroin to take the edge off).

They call this evening out or levelling off the high.'' Charles, who saw drug dealing as a quick route to riches, started using his own product.

In the 1970s he would buy a hit for $5 and he says he remembers when the price rose to $25. However dealers got tired of people who would come with $21, or $24 so they decided to drop the price to $20 where it has remained.

"I got some really potent Chinese heroin one day and the smell was so strong if made me retch,'' he recalled of his first brush with the drug. "The next day I started `Jonesin' '(experiencing acute withdrawal symptoms such as watery eyes, joint aches, diarrhoea, and stomach cramps).

"A friend of mine had to explain to me that I was `Jonesin'. After that I became a regular user. I would wake up and go to sleep at night with a syringe by my bedside. One day I was so desperate for a hit that I shot up lying on the sidewalk in front of Swinging Doors.'' Charles said he finally kicked the habit after he left Bermuda for three weeks and went cold turkey.

He said he had to leave Bermuda because he had seen others try local treatment centres without success.

Now Charles is clean and deeply religious. His faith in some ways has become a substitute for the powerful drugs which used to dominate his life. At the same time, he is facing the possibility of death because he is HIV-positive.

Regrets? "Of course I wish things were different,'' he says. "Sometimes I sit back and think about how different my life would have been if I hadn't started. But it's no use crying about it now. What's done is done.

"I have no idea how I contracted this disease and it doesn't matter any. All I can do now is warn the young bloods to stay away from this poison. It's just a shortcut to hell and the journey is very bumpy.''