Gloria was a woman caught in the urban nightmare of drugs and prostitution, lost to the streets in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx, New York. Once beautiful, Gloria’s body became a canvas of scabs, scars and disfigurations. She lost her own teeth and wore only upper chipped false ones, a gift from a dentist john. Addicted to heroin and crack, the converging demons of drugs, johns and violence had left her broken. “Before I was like this, there was a better person in me. I can’t tell you the times I’ve puked, shitted on myself. My taste buds are going, my eyesight … so many times I’ve had a knife to my throat … been pistol-whipped. It’s part of the profession. It shows on me,” Gloria says. Wanting out of the wretched life that consumed her, she began a daunting journey to recovery that began at Phoenix House, New York City’s historic live-in, drug treatment lifeline that she would either cling to or plummet back to certain death. Loretta Hinton, managing director of Phoenix House said, “I haven’t seen that kind of abuse of anyone’s body in 20 years.”
Susan Watts Photography
