Inhaling Thrills

The first time I put a dollar bill in my nose I was fifteen. Whenever cocaine is being shared among a group of people, a dollar is as well. The bill is passed from hand to hand, as people take turns snorting lines. By the time the dollar reaches you, unless you were the first to use it, one end, if not both is wet. Not soaking wet, as if it were dipped in water, but wet from the moisture in your nose. When inhaling cocaine, it causes your nose to run, So as a dollar is being passed around, more and more noses begin to drip. Then, finally your turn has come. As you hold the dollar between your fingers, thoughts race through your head. How clean could it be to put a worn down dollar, touched by thousands of strangers hands, into your nose? Hadn’t you heard that this is how the blood borne viral disease, Hepatitis C, spreads? When the damp bill is in your hand, and the coke is on the table, practically calling out to you, “take me, you know you want me,” you disregard any thoughts of caution, and become one more wet nose on the dollar.

There is a saying that goes, curiosity killed the cat. It’s a good thing I’m not a feline, or I’d be dead. Curiosity is what led me to use cocaine. I had seen movies where it was glamorized, and I listened to music where it was glorified. The thought of experimenting had crossed my mind many times, but I hadn’t the first clue how to go

about finding it. Then, it found me.

Cocaine almost always comes in a small zip lock bag when you’re buying in grams. The first couple of grams I purchased cost me sixty dollars, and would last a few days. Trading sixty dollars for such a small amount of powder always seemed unfair. Soon though, I became a regular customer and grams became thirty dollars. It was a relief to be purchasing cocaine at half the price I had originally bought it at, the only trouble was by this time I was using twice as much and twice as fast. As my cocaine use increased, so did the size of the bag it was sealed in.

After cocaine found me, it found my two best friends, Levi and Kristen. It was a sticky hot August afternoon and the three of us were sprawled around Kristen’s room, lethargic from the heat, and with nothing to do. The subject of cocaine was raised and I took out the half gram I had left from the night before. Kristen rummaged through her messy room for a CD case, discovering Radiohead’s Pablo Honey album under a pile of worn clothes. From her overstuffed black leather purse, Levi took out her high school freshman identification card, and handed it to me. They watched in awe as I laid the card flat on the cocaine and rubbed it back and forth across the cover of Pablo Honey. The room was silent except for the sound of the rocky cocaine being ground into powder. When I lifted the student id off the powder, the picture of Levi, taken after summer while her face had a fresh tan, was now covered in white resin. Gently, I tapped the card against the case to shake off extra powder, and then used it to divide the coke in six equal lines, two for each of us. I handed the card back to Levi and gave her the honor of licking her id clean of any evidence.

When the first line enters your nose, immediately there is a rush in your brain. The rush of an immediate high. The release of thousands of your endorphins all at the same time. As the cocaine enters your blood system, a warm tingling sensation starts to spread from your head, being carried through every vein to the tips of your fingers, down to the end of your toes. Every nerve in your body is numb.

In a small sterile doctor’s office, my mother, Laurel, and I sat in silence. The windowless room felt too crowded for the both of us, and the tension in the air was so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Not wanting to look my mother in the eye, I stared at the only poster on the wall, which listed and described all the signs of diabetes. Laurel took deep slow breaths, and as she exhaled I could hear disappointment in her sighs. I’d been careless about using cocaine at my house. Scattered around my room were rolled up dollars, broken pen casings, straws cut into two inch pieces, scratched up CD cases, and glass from picture frames, all covered in white powder. My family hadn’t confronted me about the issue until now. I suppose they were at a loss of words to say to their first child, their little girl, who was using drugs. Instead of asking me what was going on, I sat in the doctor’s office, knowing without needing to be told why I was there. The approaching footsteps of a nurse walking down the hall could be heard, and then the door opened.

A young man dressed in orange scrubs, in spirit of the month of October, entered the room. Words concerning myself were exchanged between the nurse and my mother, as if I were not present in the room. Then a fresh needle was removed from its package. Into my lower left arm the cold medical steel spear was injected, and the nurse sucked the

blood from my body to fill glass vials. Once removed, a bandage was placed in the crease of my arm, and the nurse informed my mom the results from the drug test would be ready in less than five business days. I had five days left until I would officially lose the trust of my parents.

“Addiction runs in our family. It is in your genes and it is in your blood, Allie; please be careful.” Words of caution from my mother that I had heard many times for many years. I had heard the warning many times, but I hadn’t ever listened to it.

Most bathroom counter tops smell the same. Bathrooms are one of the most commonly used places to do cocaine, and a counter is the perfect surface to cut lines on. While using cocaine, I must have smelled over thirty different counters, but only one other smelled exactly like my own, and those were the counters in Kristen’s father’s bathroom.

Thomas was a good looking man, the spitting image of Kevin Costner, with his hazel eyes and sandy blonde hair. He was a hard working middle class man who owned his own tile company. He had been divorced from Kristen’s mother for several years, and was always considered the “cool dad” by our friends. Allowing Kristen to have parties at his house and providing the alcohol was not unknown for him to do. Until the day Thomas and his girlfriend Debbie invited me in, I had never been in his bedroom before, and I had been best friends with Kristen for almost two years.

Kristen was in the shower when Debbie approached me, informing me Thomas wanted to talk. I made my way upstairs, wondering with each step I climbed what Thomas could possibly have to say. When I reached the doorway, Thomas gestured with his hand for me to enter. I followed Debbie into the bathroom, where I noticed a pile of white power sitting on the speckled granite counter, glowing under the bulbs of the vanity mirror. That was the first of many times that I got high with Thomas. I never asked how he knew I used cocaine, just as Kristen never asked why her dad and Debbie always wanted to talk with me in private.

I used cocaine like an eraser. I thought by doing it, I could erase all the emotions I didn’t want to feel. I began using because I was struggling with depression and I only wanted my mind off of things. Cocaine became my solution to reality. I hadn’t wanted it to become my lifestyle, and it was never meant to be something I was so dependent upon, but it just happened.

The most money Platos ever gave me was $85.72. If not for Platos, a retail store which gives cash in exchange for new and gently used clothes, it would have been impossible to support and abuse my habit to the extent that I did. At the time, I had a job, and was working thirty plus hours a week, but every paycheck I made was spent to the last penny on cocaine. A couple of months after I started using I ran into an obstacle. I couldn’t afford enough cocaine to last me until the next paycheck. Unlike Kristen and Levi, I couldn’t run to my parents, creating new lies for reasons I needed money.

Shoplifting, however, had become the biggest fad in high school, and it seemed like the solution to my problem. After watching how easily Kristen and Levi got away with stuffing shirts into their purses, I joined them, and the three of us became partners in crime. It became a weekend activity for the three of us to participate in. We’d leave the mall with hundreds of dollars worth of merchandize between us, and head straight to

Platos. The cashiers at Platos always gave us peculiar and suspicious looks when we’d return every few days with handfuls of new clothes, but questions were never asked. The day I was paid $85.72 was my last visit to Platos. Shortly afterward I was caught shoplifting and charged with two felonies. It’s amazing how you can find the money you don’t have, for one simple white line.

Sleeping is something you give up with cocaine. Many times, I stayed out all night doing line after line, until the sun rose. I would climb back in through a window just before my parents awoke and came outside to get the morning paper. On the nights when I stayed home I was still up all night. For hours I would lay on my back in a trance and stare at the ceiling. My eyes, heavy, desperately wanting to close and rest, yet unable to because my body was so stimulated. The temples on the sides of my head pulsing as I would grind bottom molars against the top of my jaw. Paranoia would strike as a shadow crept across my walls, or when my house would let out the groaning and creaking sounds it always made.

A week would pass and I could count the hours of sleep I had gotten during seven days on my fingers. Mentally I was exhausted. Physically I was exhausted. A body can not live solely off white powder. Yet, I was giving myself no other option. Night after night, I lay in bed, the line separating dreams and reality became blurred. When I finally would fall asleep, I’d be jerked awake by another nightmare, my breathing fast and unsteady, my body shaking, wet with sweat from my high temperature. For months that is what I experienced every time the sun went down.

`It was winter and the air was too cold for Southern California. Madison and I were in her car, in the parking lot of our high school. The car was off, but the heater was on, and the music was turned low. I stared out the window at the baseball fields to the right of me. Madison, my childhood best friend, and I had spent many years playing softball together at these same fields. Growing up together, we spent every Saturday at the fields, winning games, loosing games, having cookouts, watching our friends and sibling’s games, and spending time together with our families. Until tonight I hadn’t been to the baseball fields with Madison in over three years.

Madison turned off the music and reached over and grabbed my hand. I looked at her and we made eye contact and I watched her face as her mouth trembled, her forehead furrowed, and her eyes brimmed with tears.

“Please, Allie, tell me how I can help you.”

This was the second occasion Madison had tried to intervene and reach out to me. The first was a surprise visit to my house, a month earlier. This visit was different than all the other times she had been over. This time she wasn’t there to play dress up, our favorite pass time when we were younger. She wasn’t there to talk about boys for hours on end. She wasn’t there to study or work on a group project together for school. In the middle of my room she stood, demanding I give her any coke I had, so that she could flush it down the toilet. She had tried to reason with me, offering to compensate me for what she would throw away. When I had refused, she didn’t cry or scream, just gave me a look of disappointment and pity and left.

During the ten years Madison was my best friend, I never saw her cry like she did as we sat in the car. A memory flashed into my head of the day we came home to her house from middle school, only to discover her favorite dog had been hit by a car. The sadness in her face as she was told the bad news wasn’t even half of what I could see in her face as her eyes flickered over my face. I could hear the pain in her voice, like the pain of a knife in your side, as she begged me to get help, and as she tried to explain to me how I was hurting people who cared about me, how I was hurting my family. Most of all, she explained, everyone was worried about how much I was hurting myself. I didn’t say a word. As much as it hurt to see her lose respect for me, to know I was destroying the best friendship I’d ever had, I wasn’t ready to change, and I was resistant to help.

Half the high you get from cocaine is chopping it up. Holding that razor, riddled with rust, between your thumb and index and pointer finger, trying to keep it steady, while your hand shakes uncontrollably. Half the high is watching you break and cut up the cocaine. Chopping it up until it has reached its finest form. The beating of your heart increasing as you divide the powder into lines either for yourself or for others. Doing cocaine off a mirror allows you to see your reflection, to see your face as you lean in to inhale a line, and to see your eyes as they instantly dilate. Enjoying the sensation of the first line of the day. The explosion in your brain of thankfulness for providing it with what it has been craving.

Valentines Day had just passed when I received the phone call from Debbie. Kristen was gone; her mother had sent her to a rehabilitation facility. She wouldn’t be back for at least three months. The conversation ended at that. I hung up the phone in total disbelief. My heart sank from my chest into the lowest part of my stomach. There is sat, at rock bottom. Leaning with my back against the wall, I let myself slide to the floor,

my spinal cord rubbing against the textured surface. Tears began to flow, and they didn’t stop. If I were Alice, from Alice in Wonderland, I could have filled a room with my tears.

I cried because my best friend was gone. I cried because I knew I was guilty of being a terrible best friend; I had introduced her to cocaine and as I watched her destroy her life over it. I cried because neither of us ever tried to help one another. I cried because I was happy for her she was getting the help she needed. I cried because I needed help but couldn’t ask. Most of all, I cried because I was coming down, and I had hit rock bottom.

My head was throbbing, and it felt like my brain was smacking the sides of my skull. There was a pounding in my ears from the throbbing in my head. My breathing had increased.

My heart was racing faster than I imaged possible. Thump thump thump thump thump.

I wanted to scratch and tear my way out of my own skin. I went into my bathroom and stood before the full length mirror.

My heart beating faster.

I removed the baggy shirt that concealed my emaciated figure. There before fore the mirror, I met the reflection of a girl in a red bra, I hardly recognized.

I could see my heart beating against my skin.

I stood before the mirror twenty five pounds lighter than I had been eight months ago. Where had my breasts gone? I had shrunk back to the body I once had as a thirteen year old. My skin was stretched thin like the rubber of a balloon, pulled over my bones. It

looked as though my bones were pressing with such force against my skin that they would rip through. My hair was thinning from lack of nutrition, and although regularly blood spilled from my nose, my menstrual cycles had about all but stopped. I had large rings under my eyes, the same greenish brown shade as a bruise, from lack of sleep for months. The skin on the rest of my body was pale and discolored from lack of nutrition as well I suppose. I was empty. I was done. I had destroyed and lost everything that had ever mattered.

As I stood before the mirror, wondering how I allowed this to happen, I had a sudden urge. It was an urge that fought its way to the surface, through the cravings for cocaine. The urge to find the essay I wrote as a fifth grader, that my mother had saved all these years. The essay that I won in a district wide contest, sponsored by D.A.R.E., on the reasons why I was above the influence of drugs. I needed to be reminded.