Getting into coke was easy, in fact it was far too easy. I was at Uni and had a huge amount of work on my plate. Everyone was using, at least 30 percent of the Uni were on something, it just seemed natural to start. My drug of choice is cocaine and I’m a sniffer.
People talk about peer pressure but it simply wasn’t that way at all with me, I just gravitated towards it naturally and liked the way it made me feel. There’s your sign! I just decided one day to try it because everyone was into eccies and coke. I guess I didn’t want to miss out on what I could see happening around me, but there was no pressure from anyone; in fact I had to do some arm twisting to get on at first.
The rather ironic thing about sniff for me was that it got better the more times I took it; that’s to say the first few times I did it, it had virtually no effect. I did what most stupid teenagers in my position would have done – did more and more so the high would get better.
The benefits of sniff are that it gives you boundless energy and confidence. Basically that’s why it’s a yuppie drug –doctors, stockbrokers, lawyers and people with high pressure jobs need that extra edge, but all knives have two sides to every blade. The affects of too much coke are — to say the least, — easy to see.
By the time I left Uni I had lost 20 kilos and looked like a concentration camp victim. My mum was horrified and thought I had AIDS. Things broke down at home and I became homeless, first moving in with my friends, then eventually the streets or a convenient squat.
I’ve heard of orgies with cocaine, but my experience is most people simply don’t go into that sort of thing. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I have had some wild sex while using. And most coke heads I knew didn’t inject so we didn’t worry about AIDS and hep C, but I knew you could get hep C through sniffing if you shared equipment.
Obviously every action has an equal and opposite reaction and I was a drug addict, living on the streets and unable to support myself because my addiction had left telltale scars – not on my arms, but on my brain. I had taken it all too far and was using a gram a day. The result is I turned into a drooling idiot who just lay there shaking and occasionally moaning out a word or two. Then I’d get up and find/steal the money for the next fix. I had given it complete control of my life. Surrendered myself completely to the drug. Needless to say the downside ended in incarceration and thankfully sobriety.
I’ll spare you the shakes and the little green men on the curtains, but of course detox was bad, but possibly worse with coke because they simply don’t see a lot of it here and aren’t as sure on how to help with detox. Coke is still a bit of a designer drug and isn’t huge here yet. But it’s growing daily. I cried a lot, must have looked like a scared kid, skinny and crying. I got off easy in court and only did 300 hours community service, but I learned my lesson.
Looking back I am now working in my profession and I still use sniff occasionally. It’s not an everyday thing with me anymore. It can’t be, but it’s a fine line between balance use and becoming a user again. My mind is more focused and I feel more in control and have less doubts about myself. I now control the drug and my use – it doesn’t control me.
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