Days of Wine & Beer opened in Charlottetown in 1992. Reggie had identified a need that wasn’t being served by other businesses on Prince Edward Island: a specialty store supplying people who wanted to make their own beer and wine at home.

The business proved successful. The shop was well received, Reggie carried a wide variety of products, and for a time he appeared to have found something that he was good at.

What I didn’t fully appreciate at the time was how closely the legitimate business and Reggie’s involvement in the drug trade overlapped.

A Business Financed by Drug Money

Reggie later wrote openly about where at least some of the money behind his new lifestyle came from.

In his words:

Eventually I moved to Charlottetown and opened my own business [Days of Wine and Beer], a retail store selling wine and beer making supplies. I was selling ounces and pounds of coke now, living the high life. I always had a roll of hundreds in my pocket. I had five cars and the money to do anything that I wanted. But nothing lasts forever … even cold November rain.

From what we now know, drug money helped finance the opening of Days of Wine & Beer. It may also have helped support the business later, although I don’t have records that would allow me to say how much money went from one into the other.

What is clear from Reggie’s own account is that the two lives existed at the same time. He was operating a legitimate and initially successful retail business while also dealing significant quantities of cocaine.

Expanding to Summerside

The Charlottetown store did well enough that Reggie eventually expanded and opened another location in Summerside.

That expansion was not successful. The Summerside market did not generate the same level of business as Charlottetown, and after a few years the location was closed.

The Charlottetown store continued.

What Was Happening Behind the Scenes

Looking back with the benefit of Reggie’s own writings, I now understand more about what was happening during those years than I did at the time.

In his personal timeline, Reggie described 1994 as the year he began using heroin. He wrote that he had cut back on what he called his “massive coke use,” began using heroin, and experienced his first severe heroin withdrawal.

By 1995, he described himself as “semi-retired from work” and said that he was spending his time “developing heroin addiction.”

That chronology helps me understand something I witnessed at Days of Wine & Beer.

I remember visiting the store and seeing Reggie in a stupor. At the time, we knew that drugs were a serious problem, but I did not understand that he would be using heroin or how deeply involved with heroin he had become. His later writings provide context that I didn’t have then.

Within roughly the same period, Reggie contracted Hepatitis C after sharing a needle. What had begun as cocaine use and dealing had developed into something considerably more destructive.

Keeping the Business Going

As Reggie’s addiction worsened, his ability to contribute consistently to the business deteriorated.

His wife’s sister deserves considerable credit for keeping Days of Wine & Beer operating. She was hard-working, good with customers and an effective manager. Looking back, I doubt the store could have continued as long as it did without her involvement.

That distinction matters because the continued existence of the business could make it appear from the outside that Reggie was still successfully managing it. By his own account, however, his life was moving in a very different direction.

Days of Wine & Beer would remain in operation for several more years, but the successful business Reggie had created was becoming increasingly difficult to separate from his addiction and the other problems developing in his life.