Like Rick James said, cocaine is a “hell of a drug.”
The first time I tried coke, I was at my friend Taylor’s house, in his basement, where we’d always get high.
Taylor had gotten his hands on an eight ball of cocaine.
I’d never tried it but had always wanted to. It seemed so fucking cool in movies.
The gangsters using switchblades to slice open plastic bags of cocaine. The gangsters, dudes in bandanas, dudes with lots of tats, shadowy dudes with knives in hand, tasting, licking or snorting white powdery bumps off their shiny silver blades.
There’d been tons of flicks with rock stars snorting lines, too, and it just seemed so fucking awesome, the ultimate party, posh drug.
The first time I snorted it, it was slightly rough, going up my nose, but the ensuing rush was like nothing else.
It made me so alive. Euphoric. Charged me up. Made me feel invincible.
But the comedown was terrible. It was the saddest, groggiest, worst feeling of shit. I’d heard that those on heroin would have nausea, painful withdrawals. I never experienced that from coke, I just would be down, out of it and grumpy.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent The crappy comedown feeling is what made me want to snort more, formulating a vicious cycle.
At the beginning of it, though, I didn’t get hooked. I could snort a little here, there. But later, as my tolerance grew, the cocaine began to take over me. It was like a demon.
The demon wanted the rush. The high. The demon would eventually seize control and would be the first thing on my mind when I’d wake up. The demon wanting me to score, snort coke...
I had started off snorting occasionally, but as the demon exerted more force, cocaine, the rush, the feeling was all I wanted, all I thought of. It was the devil, that shit. I’d gone from ME doing IT to IT doing ME.
And to feed my demon’s insatiable urge, I started to sell coke to classmates, cutting it with aspirin before I sold it so I could make more money, keep more of the coke in my own nose.
I’d smoke it too. Sprinkle coke on weed, hit it from the bong. Smoke joints laced with it.
But my tolerance grew like cancer. And I could no longer sustain my habit on sales alone, so I resorted to stealing. From myself.
I sold off and pawned my musical instruments that I’d stopped playing. I sold my guitars. I sold my TV. I’d have sold my soul, too, if I could have. I guess, in a way, though, I sorta did…
That was rock bottom, I think. Selling those instruments to feed my coke habit. I still shudder and die a little inside anytime I reflect on it.