There was a recent Quora thread about what it feels like to be addicted to cocaine which brought back some strong memories to this former coke lover’s brain.
One user, Lee Garibaldi, wrote: When you do coke, it just makes you want to do more coke. You just keep doing more and more because you don’t want to come down. Coming down from coke is hell. A few graphs later: The worst part of using coke for me was actually using it. It isn’t even a good feeling (for me) but it tricks your brain into thinking it is so you don’t want to stop.
I’ll second all of that. I’ll also quote a joke I heard in early sobriety: “After a while, I didn’t like cocaine at all anymore. I just like the way it smelled.”
But more than either of those, I relate to the words of an anonymous user on the thread who wrote: It was love at first sniff. When you first get addicted, it doesn’t feel like an addiction. It cures boredom, it makes you feel incredibly cool and powerful, like no one around you is cool enough to be in on the joke.
Boy, do I remember the boredom cure. Finally there was a way to guarantee that a night out would be fun (the only way I’d had to gauge it back then was if I connected with a cute guy). At last I’d found a way to feel more alive and to be able to do things better than usual, as opposed to worse—which, alas, had become the norm with drinking. I could drive! I could dance! My writing improved—I wrote a spec TV script in one night the first time I did coke alone! I could converse—Jesus, could I converse. I felt like I ought to be giving seminars back then, what with the way I could veer from topic to topic so effortlessly and be so enthusiastic about whatever it was I was espousing on.
But then things changed. The excitement I’d once felt about what you were saying in those conversations diminished. I didn’t think opening a chakra shop with you sounded like a great idea anymore—I didn’t even know what the fuck that was, nor did I know why I hung out with you when all you did was yammer on and wipe your nose. And that writing ability that had seemed so magical that first night got stopped in its tracks. Suddenly, it seemed, my hands weren’t flitting across the keyboard propelled to put together genius combinations of letters but were stuck above the keyboard, unable to move—literally. Do enough coke and you feel a little too frightened to move, even your fingers. So mine would linger there. I’d stopped finding you annoying, luckily, but that was actually because I didn’t hang out with you at all anymore—didn’t hang out with anyone, really. Forget dancing and driving; I wasn’t leaving the house.
And that, you could say is when I started to relate to Garibaldi: The worst part of using coke for me was actually using it. It isn’t even a good feeling (for me) but it tricks your brain into thinking it is so you don’t want to stop.
Photo courtesy of RehabCocaine
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