Sniffles: A Decade-Long Love Affair

My one true love, cocaine.

One line is too much and 1000 aren't enough. That's how I describe cocaine whenever someone asks what it's like. I wish someone had described it that way to me, although in 2004 at the age of thirteen, I don't know that it would have made a difference. I was turned on by cocaine in a way that alcohol, weed and other substances hadn't entranced me. The opportunity to try it was something I'd always yearned for. So when I was at the Jupiter hotel on East Burnside in Portland, OR and offered a line by […..] prior to him leaving for his bands concert at the Crystal Ballroom, I accepted it. What followed my first line would be my first kiss, my first trip backstage, and my first love affair. When I say love affair I don't mean a statutory relationship with the musician twice my age – who was quickly climbing up the music charts across the globe – I'm talking about my relationship with coke. I would spend the rest of the night backstage at the ballroom, snorting lines of coke and dancing with a surge through my body that I'd never dreamed of. I would spend the rest of my life seduced by a numb tongue and a bloody nose.

Ten years have gone by and here I sit, trying to grasp the damage my twenty-three-year-old body has endured. My heart will never be as healthy as it should be, the scent of rain never as vibrant as it once was and my brain – it will always contain faulty wiring. I think about the roughly $100,000 I have put up my nose and I stare at the pile of student loan bills on my coffee table. The price of a four-year college education, disintegrated into my mucus membranes over a decade. When that first line was put in front of me, nobody told me that it would take a happy, compassionate boy and turn him into a sad, narcissistic man. Through my years of various addictions that's something I've noticed largely about cocaine in comparison to other drugs – the personality change. All drugs eventually change your personality, but drugs like heroin, methamphetamine and alcohol often leave the user feeling less than. What's problematic about cocaine is that it has the tendency to do the opposite, which makes its addiction tricky. In order for someone to be successful in battling cocaine addiction, they must admit that they are inferior to the strength of the drug, but coke in return is making them feel superior.

A drug reserved for the rich and famous – or "elite." Cocaine creates a level of elitism amongst its users. A drug commonly responsible for the creation of Narcissistic Personality Disorder amongst its users, cocaine doesn't just create an addiction to itself but oneself. A substance we start to treat like a child – we take care of it; only snorting it through gold straws and $100 bills. We only snort it off of the right mirror or book. By the time most cocaine addicts have reached this stage of blow-related-obsessions, we have made for less volume of gray matter in our left anterior insula. For those of you coked out reading this, that means that region of our brain that's responsible for things like empathy, compassion, cognitive functioning and emotional regulation is virtually shut off. Once functioning of this part of the brain is greatly impaired, we become more addicted. We care less about those we are hurting. Those we are hurting have become "responsible" for our fits of anger, our sexual impulsiveness, our financial troubles.

Here we are seeking treatment. Our anxiety and anger further perpetuate our continuously growing ego as we seek help. Whether we are in a 12-step meeting, a rehabilitation center, detox or therapy, we will remove the focus from us and cast it on those around us. The alcoholics are pathetic, the heroin addicts are fucked up, the pill poppers were too scared to try street drugs, and the meth heads and speed freaks couldn't afford cocaine. Instead of acknowledging the similarities that exist within all addicts, we choose to belittle those in the same situation as us. It's time to convince ourselves that we are better off without treatment.

The rate at which people die from cocaine is not nearly as high as heroin, alcohol or prescription medications, but we suffer a different kind of death. The death that all addicts who live experience. It's the one where we spend the rest of our lives in hopes that we will once again feel that great, that our life might one day be a constant high like when we were chasing the high. It's these hopes that prompt our physiological responses when in deep contemplation of the drug, or when we are exposed to others using it – palms sweating and shaking, mouth salivating, nose running, anxiety, fear, anger. These are things we will experience the rest of our lives as a result of having trained our brain that there is only one way to live, and that way of life is cocaine.

Allen Ginsberg once wrote, "Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine. Jiggling your knees blankeyed in the rain, when it snows in your nose you catch cold in your brain." It's true. Nothing can be saved when you're purely self-serving. Here I sit, ten years later, surrounded by bottles of anti-depressants. It's my hope that one day they will release my dopamine the way blow used to. I sniffed cocaine to make my world interesting, and to stand on top of it. Now I pop Prozac just to try and see my world in color again. Cocaine is the reason I can't hold onto a relationship… because using or not I still remain obsessed with our decade long love affair. One is too much, and a thousand isn't enough. Think about that the next time you let cocaine "make you cool." It's not just the growing hole in your nose, but it's the growing hole in your soul.