For a very long time, Hyman Bartley kept his drug habit a secret.

Then married with four children, he went off to work at a hotel desalination plant each day.

No one suspected a thing until he got to the point where he was unable to do his job without getting high.

Now 65 and in recovery, he is sharing the story of his addiction through a series of photographs he took as part of an art programme for patients of the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute.

“They came out very nice,” he said. “I love the exhibition.”

Mr Bartley was loaned a camera in anticipation of the 16th annual MindFrame PhotoVoice exhibit now on at the Bermuda Society of Arts.

Shooting pictures took him to parts of the island he had not visited during his decades-long struggle with drug addiction.

“You ask me anything about Court Street and I could tell you,” Mr Bartley said. “But as small as Bermuda is, I did not go places for years.

“It was very nice. It was different and it was freeing. There was no pressure on me. It was not something I was doing for someone else.”

One of his many photographs is of a long and lonely walkway through bushes.

“That represented the path that I have been on,” Mr Bartley said. “This disease loves to keep you isolated and by yourself so it can tell you all this junk like, ‘You’re no good’ and ‘No one wants to be around you’.”

He started abusing drugs not long after he got married at age 21.

“I used to smuggle marijuana,” he said. “Then people told me if I brought in a package of heroin or coke as big as the marijuana, I could make a lot more. I ended up smuggling heroin and cocaine, and then I started using it.

“It cost me my marriage. I have three daughters and a son. My life just continued to spiral downward.”

Thirty years ago, he was sent to the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in Florida for treatment.

“When I returned to Bermuda, I thought I had the addiction beat,” he said. “I thought I worked in such a good programme out there and was doing everything like they told me.”

He soon found the hard part was not getting clean, but staying clean. He relapsed repeatedly.

“I always came to a point where I thought I did not need to go to meetings any more,” Mr Bartley said. “That might work for some people but it does not work for me. I had to switch my thinking from staying clean to staying in recovery. Being in recovery means I am working a programme. It means I am doing something different today in my life.”

At the moment he attends group support meetings six mornings a week at New Life Church of the Nazarene in Smith’s.

“Anyone can show up,” he said. “We are just a bunch of addicts seeking a better way of life. It is about one day at a time. Today, I find that I have to get up on a daily basis and work a 12-step programme.”

Bill Wilson, the founder of the 12-step programme for people recovering from substance and behavioural addictions and compulsions, is an inspiration.

“I have followed his whole story,” Mr Bartley said. “Like me, the obsession had him. He cried out to God. This man was an atheist. He said, ‘If there is a God, take away this obsession and I will turn my life around.’ A light appeared, and the obsession and the compulsion was lifted. For me, there is a power greater than me that kept me using drugs so I needed a power greater than me to stop me from doing those things.”

He has found that it helps to share his story with others.

“I am no better than anyone else,” he said. “I literally had to cry out to God and ask God to take away that obsession and that compulsion to use. I did not want to use, but when that drug gets in you, it says you go get what I need, and get it now. You won’t feel right until you have done that.”

He also finds it helps to go to church every Sunday.

The MindFrame exhibit has encouraged him to take more pictures.

“It is really nice,” he said. “Photography is one of the things I did not get to do when I was an addict. To think I am at this age now — retired and a senior — and I am getting to learn the realness of what life is really about.”

The MindFrame PhotoVoice exhibition is on until November 7.