"Drugs are everywhere, not just in Court Street. They're in schools, people are selling it at work, it's in the hotels. I've known employers who sell drugs to their employees.'' So says former crack addict Simon (not his real name). After learning to cope with the self disgust of years of thieving from friends and strangers to fund his habit Simon is full of disgust for a society that turns a blind eye to drug abuse.

"There's about 15 places that are known drug areas,'' he says. "There's 42nd Street, Court Street, Middle Town, Ord Road. They sell it out of schools.

There's Pond Hill. Every night people sell drugs there.

"There's a pattern -- someone gets five to ten pounds and everybody waits for them to turn up,'' Simon says. "Everybody's pushing and shoving each other.

"A lot of people look the other way -- that's Bermuda. For instance you have to buy Rizzlas to smoke weed and you have to buy them in ordinary shops, but people don't inquire why you need them.

"I saw a 15-year-old guy buy some and the assistant, who seemed quite intelligent, asked him why he was buying it, but then they both just started giggling like it was a joke. She just brushed it off like it was no big deal.'' Simon, 29, is living testimony to the pervasive nature of the narcotic scene.

"I was at Robert Crawford school when I started,'' he recalls. "A lot of my peers sold it and a high percentage were smoking weed.'' "I'm not saying that just because all my friends used it. When I'd go to buy I'd see all the other people who were buying it.

"My addiction was a steady progression. I had a troubled youth. It was no wonder I became an addict. From an early age I always had to have something, some mood altering substance. I took something everyday from the age of 17.'' However Simon was not prepared for the speed at which he got hooked on crack.

"I got into crack because one night I couldn't get hold of marijuana,'' he says. "I always said I'd never use it. People on it were all losers.

"But the first night I was hooked and when I ran out of money for the rocks I knocked on people's doors to borrow more. It's such a sick thing. "I ended up with someone I'd never met going to a drug area to get powdered coke from this couple with a baby. The girl and the guy were smoking crack and I continued to use it there.

"Crack was easy to get hold of. But it's very bad. It's not a fun drug. You get a head rush, but it's very intense.

"You feel like you're going to have a heart attack. I can't really explain the high. It only lasts 30 seconds but you can never have enough. It's really sick. With an addiction, the substance is as essential as water or breathing.

"I'm in recovery now. Had you said I would steal and get caught in possession I would've laughed at you. But it creeps up on you -- it's like you have no power of your own.'' Now fully aware of the illness of addiction, Simon spent his drug years in denial.

"I never thought I was an addict,'' he admits. "I just thought I had a problem with certain drugs.'' And like many addicts his illness was hidden from all but his closest friends.

"I always stayed employed,'' he notes. "I was living with my parents so all the money I earned I spent on drugs. I was a carpet cleaner and I'd work real hard.'' But however hard he worked he always needed more money.

"I'd break into people's homes or dip into handbags left unattended in bars,'' he says.

"Conning people was a big way to make money. I'd con friends and family out of money. I'd do crack for three nights a week. I wasn't physically capable of doing more.

`Will power is never enough, says young addict "On the other nights I'd do other drugs, heavy drinking and smoking grass.

When you're doing crack you can't sleep because it's an upper.

"There's also the guilt and remorse. Each day you'd promise yourself that you wouldn't take it -- but willpower is never enough.

"Then I'd lay awake at night with a feeling of self disgust. It was torture.

Never at any time was I without some sort of drug.

"I'd stop the crack for a few days and drink and smoke marijuana heavily. At work I'd have a joint in the morning and at midday. Every second I was high. I had to have something all day long.

"The first time I got caught for possession I had marijuana. The second time I had both crack and marijuana.

"It shook me a little so I'd go back to drinking like a fish. I drank to get drunk but it's legally and socially acceptable. The second time I got caught for possession I carried on with marijuana.

"I had a new job and was making good money managing a division of a cleaning company.

"The bosses' wife saw the story and I was told to go on the Employee Assistance Programme or I would be fired.

"On the first day they insisted I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting but I thought I was so different from the guys there.

"To me they were addicts, the sort of people who shoot drugs, whereas I thought I wasn't an addict. When I went on that first night I didn't feel at home at all and felt scared.

"I think I knew inside that they were just like me but I wasn't ready to get clean.

"Shortly after I lost my job -- the drugs made me tactless and I confronted my boss because he was treating the workers badly.

"But the seeds were planted that first night -- if I wanted to stay clean I could do it.

"Yet I wasn't ready to stop taking alcohol and marijuana. I was scared of total abstinence.

"Then I stopped smoking the weed but carried on drinking -- not as heavily.

"I just needed to get a buzz going every night but my life was still unmanageable, the drinking was still killing me too. I couldn't function, I was still just obsessed with getting a substance.

"There was no real ambition or love or respect -- none of those things normal to human beings. I tried religion and was prayed about many times. "Then I struck on the theory that my location was to blame and so I moved. Friends were blamed. I thought I was just hanging around the wrong sort of people. But it was them who were messing me up.

"I changed drugs, thinking it was certain drugs which were the problem. At the NA meetings I'd say I was off the drugs, but I'd use again. But the beauty of those meetings is that they don't morally judge you. They just gently help you address the issue.

"Addiction doesn't discriminate. It doesn't matter what creed, colour or class you are. There are addicts from very well-off families.'' After a lifetime of frequenting bars and drug dens as an addict, he has had to create a whole new lifestyle.

"There's a joke that addicts just have to look out for three things -- people, places and things,'' quips Simon.

"As an addict you can't be around pubs. I spend a lot of my time at the meetings and we do a lot of things as a group. We'll go bowling, to the beach or to the movies together.'' Recovering from addiction has been a long journey for Simon -- but the seeds were planted at his very first NA meeting.

"At the first meeting I saw a girl I had met on the street, one night we had gone stealing to buy drugs together but we hadn't met since,'' he says.

"She was a real hardcore drug user despite being from a really rich family.

She could have had anything she wanted but what she wanted was real hard drugs.

"She'd done everything harder, longer and to a greater extreme than I had done.

"I had thought there was no hope for that girl but there she was when I walked in. There was a different aura about her. You could tell immediately she was totally clean. I knew if she could do it, then there was hope for me.''