A RECOVERING ADDICT STEPS OUT OF HIS DARKNESS

In the vestibule of a rundown brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a cracked
window pane shook to the thumping blast of reggae music playing four floors
above:

Open up your eyes and see

What you can be

Isn't that your mentality

Open up your eyes and see

Inside of you is your future reality

Listening to those lyrics was Florent Mathurin, 39, who sat smiling on a
wooden chair, head back, eyes shut tight beneath the bill of a bright knit
cap that hid his dreadlocks.

"That's my favorite song," Mr. Mathurin said, referring to "Behold," by the
group Culture. "It means so much to me because for so long, I was in the
dark — I couldn't see."

And then Mr. Mathurin, his eyes slowly opening, pointed to the empty CD
case, and ran a finger across its title: "Too Long in Slavery."

"Yes, I was a slave," he said. "I was a slave to drugs."

Speaking with a thick Caribbean patois, Mr. Mathurin, who was born on the
island of St. Lucia, said he had spent the last 16 months breaking those
chains with the help of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Brooklyn and
Queens, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times
Neediest Cases Fund.

"I tasted the devil," Mr. Mathurin said, "and the devil's taste was sweet."

The devil was crack cocaine, which Mr. Mathurin said he became addicted to
while dating a woman from his Brooklyn neighborhood in 1993.

Two years earlier, Mr. Mathurin had left Miami for carpentry work in
Brooklyn. Living with his sister, Mr. Mathurin was saving money for the
future, until the woman came into his life.

"She had really bad habits," Mr. Mathurin said.

"Growing up in St. Lucia, I often smoked marijuana, so I wasn't shocked
when she first asked me to smoke a joint with her."

What Mr. Mathurin did not know, he said, was that the woman was mixing
crack cocaine with the marijuana, then rolling it in cigarette paper before
smoking it with him.

"I remember telling her, `Man, I never felt this kind of high before, it's
amazing,' " Mr. Mathurin said. "By the time she told me I was really
smoking crack, it was too late."

Eventually, Mr. Mathurin's world began to go dark. His addiction grew. He
lost his steady job, and his sister told him to leave.

"Suddenly, I was homeless, foodless, clothesless," Mr. Mathurin said.

One frozen morning, when Mr. Mathurin was on his way to a welfare agency in
Brooklyn Heights, he ducked into a nearby office building to warm his body.
That decision ultimately turned his life around, as Mr. Mathurin had
accidentally brought himself to the offices of Catholic Charities.

"He was in real bad shape when we first met," said Paul Lewis, a social
worker at Catholic Charities. "Florent was high and his clothes were dirty
and tattered, and the ladies in our office were a bit afraid of him."

The two men began to talk, and soon after, Mr. Lewis was counseling Mr.
Mathurin.

"I offered him a challenge to get help, to get treatment," Mr. Lewis said.
"He was talking about a rehab clinic upstate, and I volunteered to drive
him there."

Mr. Mathurin was touched by Mr. Lewis's kindness.

"For the first time in my life, someone was trying to help me," he said.
"So I took him up on his challenge."

While Mr. Mathurin was still in therapy with Mr. Lewis, Catholic Charities
enrolled him in an inpatient drug clinic in Queens, and as Mr. Mathurin
began to "open his eyes and emerge from the darkness," he enrolled himself
in a carpentry school, where he recently completed 660 hours of training.

Mr. Mathurin, who lives in a studio apartment no bigger than a large
closet, is now sending out resumes and hoping to save money for a bigger
place, as well as a family reunion and funeral Mass in St. Lucia in May.

Last February, Mr. Mathurin's mother died, but he was just getting back on
his feet and did not have the money for a round-trip ticket home.

"Only God knows how much I wanted to say goodbye to my mother, and to tell
her that I'm all right now," he said, leaning over his stereo to play his
favorite song again. "That's why he's given me this second chance."