For 37 years, he struggled with addiction, but now he is urging others to seek treatment.

Recovering addict Adam, who requested not to be identified, spent years sleeping in parks and cars, refusing to accept that he had a problem until he attended the Salvation Army’s addiction treatment centre, Harbour Light.

However, he has been sober for several years and is working to rebuild his life. He is urging others to do the same.

“This disease will tell you that you are fine,” he said. “I see that every day. I would dress up real good, but I would get a shower in a bucket. I used to go to work having not eaten for two weeks, but when they asked if I was hungry, I would say I just ate.

“I used to drink a case of beer every day, but I wasn’t an alcoholic. That was my insane thinking.

“The main thing is to get help. Don’t be ashamed. You need to get professional help. It’s hard, but you have to. I have been sober for years, but I’m still not all right. If I didn’t get the tools that they gave me at Harbour Light, I would be dead today.”

Adam told The Royal Gazette that he first began to experiment with drugs while he was in high school, smoking cannabis as a teenager before turning to cocaine.

“When I was smoking weed, I thought I would just smoke weed,” he said. “I was hanging out with people that were doing it every day, and it went from there.

“Then I started selling drugs. I was buying bikes, I was buying records. I was living the life, but I didn’t know that drug had led me to addiction. I stole $5 from my mother to buy a bag of weed, still not knowing that weed was addictive.”

He began to smoke cocaine in his 20s after being introduced to the drug by friends in the United States, and when he came back to the island, he began to use the drug more heavily.

Suddenly, he found himself selling his belongings piece by piece to continue to fund his addiction.

“I sold my stereo set, my albums, my gold,” he said. “My brother came to get our old cedar table and when he came, it was only the cedar table in the house. I sold everything to get high.”

He recalled one incident when he sold a $6,000 bike for only a few dollars while drunk to buy cocaine; and another when he borrowed a family member’s car to pick up relatives for his daughter’s christening, but stopped along the way to buy a rock of cocaine.

“When I got home it was 1am,” he said. “I was so ashamed I threw my pipe into the bushes. I didn’t see my sister, I didn’t see my daughter. I just left the car and walked down the road.”

Eventually, he ended up living on the streets in Hamilton, often sleeping in a cardboard box in the city’s parks. Even then, however, he insisted that he was fine.

“I would get up in the morning, pack my box away and just went on doing the same old thing,” he said. “I was working, telling people I was all right and I was staying at my apartment. I had a key I found and told people it was the key to my apartment while I was sleeping in a box. I had to play that part.

“Sometimes I had to sleep in a trash bag because someone stole my blanket. And I had to drink because if you don’t drink, you can’t sleep.

“One of my friends gave me a place to stay, and he took me to his house and gave me a room in his bar. I was an alcoholic. I drank everything in his bar. I drank 40 cases of beer in a month in this guy’s house.”

While Adam attempted to get help several times during his years of addiction, it was a 2014 court order that brought him to Harbour Light and began his journey towards recovery.

“I didn’t really realise I was addicted until I got to Harbour Light,” he said. “It was there that I learnt about my addiction and what it had done to my life.

“We had treatment plans that showed us all about our behaviours. I learnt about myself, and it was nice to get stuff out on paper. I would write about myself, look at the solution and work on myself with my counsellor.

“Now, I am in transition. It’s wonderful to get to learn about life all over again. I work, have money in the bank and a room with other recovering addicts. I get to see my daughter, my brother and my sister. Now when life shows up, I have the tools to deal with it.

“It’s all because of my God and Harbour Light. That, I can say.”