COKE CRACK CAINE

Cocaine—what a drug. What a wonderful, painful, beautiful drug. Yellowish-white in rock form or just white straight powder, cut up into little perfect lines on a mirror, glass plate, CD case, or the dash of my old Accord. I used to carry a little glass vial filled with this shit—a little bump here, a little bump there—but my memory always seems to take me back to when I wasn't an addict, when I was just enjoying it recreationally with beers or whiskey on the weekends, occasionally.

Does my mind trick me? Do I love this drug, or does this substance love me—love me so much that it cannot let me go? It hates to think that I might walk away from it and leave it all alone in a world that hates drugs. So for now, I will keep it company on rock bottom.

My first experience with cocaine was when I was very young—fourteen years old. I had already been smoking pot for two years and eating copious amounts of hallucinogens, mainly LSD, since right after I smoked my first joint. So when I was introduced to cocaine, it couldn't have been at a better time.

It was actually my uncle who introduced me. He and his friends were having beers and sneaking off to the garage every couple of minutes. I didn't understand until I worked up the courage to sneak a peek after they left. I thought I might follow, risking trouble, but instead they embraced me and welcomed me into their circle, poking fun and asking if I had even drunk my first beer, laughing in a boisterous manner.

"This kid doesn't even have hair on his nuts yet," one of them jeered, and he was absolutely right. I hadn't even made it through puberty. I was a late bloomer—so what?

But nonetheless, they offered me a child-sized line, perfect for a kid. Not knowing what to expect, I put the crinkled, rolled-up, coke-encrusted blue five-dollar bill up to my little nostril and snorted back with gusto and all my might. I was a natural, like I had something to prove. I really didn't know what to expect, but I felt invincible in that moment, on top of the world, and I never wanted to lose that feeling. But somehow, in the midst of all the partying and drinking along the way, it got me. It got me good and dragged me down.

Now that I have shared my unusual first experience with you, before you continue reading, I would like to share that I am a human being just like the rest of you. I had a family at one point—a wife, a mother, and a sister—but the drugs are a relentless opponent, and they will take everything, every time.

I had a deep love for my wife, and she had a deep love for drugs as well. Together we violently spun right out of control. One of my last memories before her death was spending the night holding her passed-out body in the bathroom of a gas station. This was almost a regular thing with her. We would get high and then too high, and her body would shut down so she couldn't smoke anymore, and she would be out for hours. When this hit, she would collapse.

The first few times it happened, I called 911. When she would wake in the hospital, or an ambulance, she would be furious with me, and I would apologize incessantly until she was back to normal with me. Right before she left me, she discovered heroin, and that was the beast that took her from me.

I will never forget that night. Our apartment was lit with candles, as it always was. We had no electricity because the drugs took priority. Now, I wasn't into shooting anything into my arm, but who was I to say anything to anyone about drug use? I had my own addictions. But that night was the night death came and stole her away from me.

She had just scored and started using a new dealer. I think she was used to the type of product that had been cut a million times before it reached the street, but this wasn't the case. When she cooked it up in her misshapen soup spoon, filtered it through a cigarette butt and into the needle, she seemed excited. I tightened down her tourniquet, and she raised the needle to her arm and pierced through the red-blotched skin and into a blue vein on her wrist. The inside of her elbows had been used so much she had scars and track marks that just wouldn't heal—almost impossible to find a decent vein in her arm. I had even given her the shot in her neck before, and sometimes her ankle. She pulled the tourniquet from her arm and laid back.

Within a minute, I noticed she wasn't even moving. Usually there are subtle movements leading into her high, but this was different. I propped her up promptly and steadied her head with a pillow. Her mouth started to drool and foam. I raised one eyelid, and her eyeball was rolled into the back of her head. I immediately called the ambulance. When the paramedics arrived, she had already turned blue from lack of oxygen to her brain. They did what they could, but there was no resuscitation.

Needless to say, this unfortunate turn of events led me even deeper into my addiction.

Now it became about the day in and the day out, the regulating of myself. The pipe became a daily occurrence. Last week my dealer beat me with a broomstick until I was bleeding through my ears, nose, and eyes. He found out that I had bought a couple points of heroin—and where there are crackheads, there is usually someone else equally down and out who needs their fix in a different way. He caught me trying to sell the measly amount in his place, and the penalty for that is a beatdown. Selling in someone else's house is a pretty big offense when it comes down to it.

So I caught a beating—a pretty good beating—but I feel lucky because I have seen guys get worse: broken limbs, lost appendages for less. So I count my lucky stars and load another rock into my pipe.

Now, where there are drugs, there is money, and where there is money, there is prostitution. The prostitution surrounding drugs is some of the worst. I walked into the shack one day looking to start my scheme and possibly front a rock or two until noon, but today this was not the case. My dealer was in an exceptionally sick and sadistic mood.

There was Molly, one of the many neighborhood crack prostitutes. She was my favorite. She was also looking to get her fix but had no funds to do so. Now, some of these women can convince the dealer to trade some rock for sexual favors, but Molly was definitely not attractive. She was one of the roughest women I had ever seen trying to sell her pussy. I was surprised on days when she would come through with forty bucks. On these kinds of days, she was proud, but I can guarantee the john who paid wasn't.

She had greasy dyed blond hair that was stringy and thin and stopped growing at shoulder length. Her dirty blond roots were about two inches long, and she had patches of hair missing on the back of her head from violent johns pulling on her head. At one point, I think she might have been pretty, probably even popular with the boys in high school, maybe even with the sports team in her little town of origin. In my glazed-over eyes, she reminded me in a twisted, distant way of my little sister. I was fond of her in a brotherly way.

But I think the abuse just got to her. She didn't know any other way, and when the drugs came along, her promiscuous ways became a lifestyle and a form of income. Her skin was pale and blotchy. Her eyes had sunken in so far you might think she was in her mid-fifties or even beyond, despite being around thirty-five. There was no life left behind those eyes—just gray and bleak. There was no hope, just sex, drugs, and abuse for money.

When I walked into the house that day, I knew it was bad. I had seen Molly beg before, but not like this—never sobbing while she begged not to do the tremendously terrible thing he wanted her to do for twenty bucks worth of crack. She would beg and plead, then stop for a bit, shuffle around, and search the carpet for any undiscovered remains. But that carpet was clean. Despite everything, the carpets in the crack houses were always clean. There was no cranny left untouched, because when withdrawal is knocking, you're going to look everywhere to make it stop.

She finally broke down, sobbing in a manner that could barely be understood. As she laid on the couch, she blubbered, "OK, OK, I'll do it."

The dealer left to his back room and came back a moment later with his dog on the leash. The look on his face was of sheer enjoyment and pleasure—pleasure from knowing he had the power to make anyone do anything he liked within his little realm of dominance. It was a beast of a Rottweiler with dark fur and light brown highlights on his eyes and ears, tongue hanging out, completely oblivious in his animal state.

He motioned toward the back room. Molly stood slowly, her whole body trembling, and followed him and the massive dog down the narrow hallway. The door shut behind them with a hollow click that seemed to echo through the entire house.

We all sat there in silence. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The minutes stretched out impossibly long.

When the door finally opened, Molly emerged first, her face blank and distant, like she had gone somewhere else entirely and hadn't quite come back. The dealer followed, that same sick smile on his face, and tossed a few measly rocks on the carpet near her feet. She didn't even look at them, just stared straight ahead at nothing.

That day, I left the house feeling sick, literally feeling like I needed to puke. I walked with my head down toward the nearest liquor store.

Upon entering the liquor store, I passed a fellow I knew from one of the shacks begging for change with his beet-red face and bloodshot eyes. His nose was swollen and red from years of alcohol abuse. He also reeked of whiskey and Listerine from the night before. I can only imagine that he had begged for days to get a small bottle of whiskey, and when that ran out, he probably made it down to the local pharmacy to shoplift some mouthwash so he could achieve some state of intoxication. Either way, he was of no concern of mine. I had my own issues with money and drugs.

Every once in a while, I liked to get really drunk with a bottle of vodka or two—the type of drunk where you don't remember a single thing and you wonder how long you've been passed out for in the same position. When you finally find a calendar and clock, you realize three or four days have passed. When the effects of the alcohol finally wear off, a deep, deep depression sets in. Either you need another drink to kill the pain, or the thought of putting your body through the torture of what the hangover has to offer leaves your mind reeling in horror. So you decide to rob, steal, or even sell what little dignity you have left for a single crack rock that will end the madness of the downward spiral—and thus creates a perpetual dependency on the substance.

But now that I had walked into the liquor store, it was too late. They knew me there, and some days I just didn't have the cash, so I needed to steal. They were constantly watching me. I slipped between the whiskey and brandy aisle and searched for the vodka. Perfect—I found it right on the bottom shelf, a nice plastic bottle. I acted like I dropped my hat and leaned down to pick it up while my right hand seized the bottle with a quickness only matched by a striking snake, and I stealthily slipped the plastic bottle into my trousers at the belt line. All the while, my other hand was securing the hat atop my knotted mess of hair.

I dug my hand to the deepest depths of my pocket as I made my way to the cooler that housed all the single beers. I was lucky that day because I had just enough change to purchase a single cheap beer. Most days I pretended to argue the price down and acted just crazy enough to eventually stammer out of there, the clerks none the wiser to my little scam. But that day I could afford that frothy malt beverage and walk out like I actually came in for something other than to make a scene. And that's just what I did.

Three days had passed since that horrid dog incident, and I hadn't seen Molly around. I thought she had probably hit a new low. It wasn't out of the norm for us to randomly disappear for a while, but that type of experience really could wear you down mentally and emotionally. Physically, the crack takes everything.

I was working on a scheme with a partner of mine. Well, it wasn't really a scheme—it was more like smoke and mirrors. Actually, it was a straight-up distraction while one of us would steal from the cash register and then run.

Having an addiction like crack meant you had to be an opportunist. If you saw an opportunity, you took it. You would spend every last cent you have for another rock, even sell the shirt off your back. Hell, if the devil was there at that moment when withdrawal was knocking, you would sell your very soul for one more hit, just to make it stop.

So we had been watching this convenience store with the intent of stealing the money from the register, but this was tricky. We had to time it just right so that when the clerk had the till open, we would create the distraction and take the money at the same time. This usually meant there was another customer in the store with us when it went down, and our success rate was pretty low. But there was always that off chance that we might succeed.

The customer finished paying and was about to receive his change. My partner in crime grabbed one of the chip racks and pulled it down, causing catastrophic damage to the fragile potato chips laying peacefully in their bags. Right at that very moment, I was taking the dollar bills from the register. A large Samoan man covered in traditional tattoos walked through the door and just stood there in shock, seeing that he was walking into this chaos.

He did not move. He stood there like a pillar, unwavering in his sheer size and strength. He knew exactly what was going on, and he was not about to let it happen. I just love people who have a moral sense of justice, especially when it has no concern to them. By the time I turned around to see the clerk—who was probably the owner—he was wielding what looked to be a wooden baseball bat covered in reddish-brown stains. I could only imagine how many other people this guy had beaten with that thing, and I knew it was my turn. I knew they wouldn't call the police either.

I was closest to him, so I got it first. I am glad it was me first because I wouldn't want to watch while my partner got beaten, knowing I was next. It was as if time had frozen. The movie was on pause, and frame by frame, I watched that blood-stained bat get closer and closer to my face. Then crack—I got hit so hard in the side of my head that my jaw was broken instantly and dislocated. The first swing didn't knock me out, but the second did.

I woke up in the hospital hours later. I had a broken jaw that was wired shut, three broken ribs, a ruptured kidney, a concussion, and a single finger missing off my right hand—the pointing finger, of course. Why couldn't they take the pinky or ring finger instead? It was my favorite finger, gone forever, ironically off the hand that was trying to steal from the register.

I was lucky, the nurse said. Some Good Samaritan found me in an alley, unconscious and bleeding with my pants around my ankles. I was confused about that and decided I didn't want to know or even think about what might have happened to me while I was unconscious.

I also found out that my partner was in the hospital too. They wouldn't tell me what happened to him. I'm guessing it was bad because he was in intensive care in critical condition. After that day, I never saw him again, and to this day, I have no clue what ever happened to him.

Upon my release from the hospital, I should have checked into rehab and started a twelve-step program, but I didn't. My terrible, beautiful friend crack was waiting for me at the shack.

My dealer had heard what happened to me—gossip spreads like wildfire in the drug scene. He had a pipe, a lighter, and a forty-dollar rock waiting for me at the house. I guess he was feeling generous or exceptionally nice that day, but needless to say, I would be indebted to him because nothing in this world is free.

I asked around for Molly, but no one had seen her in weeks.

I sat down on the couch and broke my rock up into smaller pieces. I wanted to enjoy it for a while. Of course, as I did this, the scavengers came right out of the woodwork. "Hey, bro, can I have a hit?" "C'mon, just one little piece." All kinds of people begging for what little I had. Normally I would share, but that day I was selfish.

I loaded the broken glass tube that had been fashioned into a pipe. One end was burnt from the flame and had a small piece of steel wool stuffed into the end to act as a filter. I heated this with a lighter, then put the flame to my off-colored white rock and inhaled gently. I felt the raw, unfiltered smoke hit the bottom of my lungs, and I held it there for as long as I could. I motioned to one of the people to come close and inhale the secondhand smoke. She came close with her weathered face and chapped lips as if she wanted a kiss. I exhaled, never touching my mouth to hers. She sucked in every last bit of secondhand smoke I had to offer.

The forty didn't last long, and before I knew it, I was back out on the street looking for anything that might bring me a couple bucks.

I found myself with a few empty beer bottles and some crushed soda cans, straggling down an alley filled with garbage and degenerated alcoholics. Even as a crackhead, I always had shoes, but some of these folks were so desperate they didn't even have shoes. I found myself disgusted with myself that I had gotten into such a predicament—broken bones and a mouth I couldn't even open.

And that's when I looked up. It's not what I wanted to see, but it's what I got—a harsh reality of living in the state I was in. I saw a foot, a toe just poking out of the top of the dumpster. It was white and dirty. I got closer to see if my eyes were deceiving me, and they weren't. It was a real human foot attached to a real human body. I moved the trash that was haphazardly strewn about and saw cold, bluish-white, naked skin. The body was laying facedown in the garbage.

I thought I recognized the back of this woman's head from her patchy dirty blond hair and brown roots. I grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to flip her over. Her skin underneath my grip slipped from her deteriorating muscle as I turned her, and to my horror, it was as I feared—it was Molly. She had been thrown out in the trash, used up and discarded like garbage. I felt sick and thought of the events that might have brought her here. I sat beside the dumpster for some time before I finally mustered the courage to get up and call the police. Normally this isn't something I would do, but I knew this woman, and she deserved better than the local landfill.

The police came and immediately arrested me as a suspect in Molly's death. This was one death I knew would never get solved. The cops don't care about people like us. They never have and never will—just a lot more paperwork for nothing. But they held me nonetheless.

When I got out, I decided not to go back to the crack house. I felt like I might finally be able to say farewell to my friend crack. Instead, I headed downtown to the mission for a hot meal and rest. From there, my plan was to fully use the resources at my fingertips. Being on a subsidized income from the government meant I could check into rehab for free, and that's just what I did.

I stayed for three months, and when I left, I felt pretty confident in myself and where I was with my addiction. I also had my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting that night. I found a sponsor and everything.

I really felt good about the direction my life was going. Stay clean, stay clean, stay clean.

I was walking home from NA and turned down an alley two blocks west of my apartment. A dark car rounded the corner in front of me. I continued to walk. The car stopped and killed the engine. I continued to walk. As I approached the car, two men opened the doors and got out. The driver was the dealer, and he was not happy, though he seemed to have a malicious smile on his face. The other man circled and stood directly behind me.

The dealer pulled out a black pistol and pointed it directly at my face. "Where you been, skinny?" he sneered at me.

"Rehab," I replied.

"And my money, you little fucking cracker?"

"I'll have it. It's only forty bucks. Give me a day and you'll have it."

He jammed the gun against my chin and said, "No, get in the fucking dumpster. You think you're better than us now? You can't just leave. GET IN THE FUCKING DUMPSTER."

My fate was about to be the same as Molly's. I slowly climbed into the dumpster, my feeble arms and legs shaking the whole time as he pointed the weapon at my head. As I stood there, tears streaming down my face, I thought about my late wife's fate and how I could have fought for her, fought for her life, gotten her out of addiction, been her rock—not just another addict wanting to get high. At that moment, I knew I didn't want to die. I finally felt free of this cumbersome chain called crack.

I hadn't spoken with my parents in years, and I thought about my mother living out the rest of her life knowing she lost her son to drugs and wondering why, because it was never like that for them when they grew up. Why had I wasted so many years so messed up? I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

Never saying a word for fear of his temper erupting, I kept silent. I felt the warm trickle of fresh urine cascade down the inside of my thigh, my thrift store jeans absorbing what they could before it reached the bottom of that slimy, stench-filled dumpster. At least I could keep my pride behind the green wall of the dumpster. They couldn't see my state of fear as I let the tears and urine run freely.

He pulled the gun from my face and laughed, saying, "Just messing with you, cracker. But seriously, get my money by tomorrow. I don't want to have to make an example of you again."

They both hopped in the car and squealed off.

Shaking, I sat down in the trash and filth. I felt a pulsating, sharp pain in my left arm, and my chest grew tight. I was gasping for air and grasping at my chest. I doubled over in the garbage. As I was writhing in pain, an empty floating white plastic bag found its way over my head, further restricting my already obstructed breathing. I clawed at my head desperately trying to remove the plastic from my face. The tunnel grew smaller and darkness surrounded me. My demons were finally coming to claim me from the trash I had been living in.

I was going to die, and I knew it now for real. Death had finally come, and it was through no deliberate action I had taken. I had survived beating after beating, drugs, and risky behavior, and now a floating plastic bag was going to send me off to meet my maker.