HOW IT FEELS (#3)
TO BE ADDICTED TO COCAINE...
As told to me by Mel, 48, an addict in recovery…
“The first few times I didn’t like cocaine much. Then one day I had a hit and it exploded in my brain! If you snort it, it goes straight into your bloodstream and your reaction is immediate. You feel euphoria, power, and you forget your worries. Your brain reacts at just the thought of coke; an addict starts to get a high. You spend all of your drug life chasing your first high, but you end up taking it just to avoid the hell of coming down.
“It’s a gradual thing. You do one gram of cocaine over three weeks. Then it’s a gram a week. Then it’s a gram a day. If you’re a real addict, like me, after a couple years you’re doing five or six grams a day. At the beginning you’re laughing a lot, talking a lot. You’re the life and soul of the party. But as it takes over, you become paranoid, aggressive, and downright nasty. Sometimes you don’t sleep for days. I was spending HK$5,000 a day for the last three years I was doing it. Cocaine’s like a jealous lover. It wants every party of you. It ultimately destroyed my marriage, took away my kids, screwed up my business and interfered with my personal hygiene. I couldn’t even be bothered to take a shower at all.
“After a while, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I was spending all my time on my own. My life had become one gigantic shithole. That’s when I got onto a Cocaine Anonymous hotline. The person on the other end of the line seemed to be the first guy in years who understood exactly what I was going through. Now I’ve been clean for five and a half years. I don’t drink, do drugs, and don’t even want to go to the dentist to have novocaine.”
