DOSE:

smoked

Crack

(freebase)

BODY WEIGHT:

135 lb

You remember your first line of coke like you remember losing your virginity. In fact, my first night of cocaine is picture clear, where the memory of my deflowered virginity is fuzzy. Cocaine was the second drug I ever tried. And I felt like a movie star after my first line. You can’t help but feel cool snorting a line, like you’re Hollywood. All of the sudden, every insecurity fades, you’re awesome. I felt cool, I loved the drip in the back of my throat. I thought I had awesome connections, like they were all big-timers that extended nationwide, roots into the underworld. Looking back, I can see how immature that feeling was, that juvenile sense of being somebody. Everybody feeling like they got a piece of the pie, like the cops wanted every junkie in the free world, like we’re all public enemy number one. I touted myself a cokehead for a lousy weekend habit. Cause it was cool. I was 19 and buying cool.

After my trip with crack cocaine, powder looks like baby-shit. I hear shooting coke trumps both, glad I never tried and don’t intend to. But whose to say, never thought I’d play with crack. The first time I got crack was by mistake really. My friend was supposed to come back with powder. Instead he came back with rock, huge against the proportions I was expecting in powder. I was pissed. I said, “I don’t smoke that shit!” But maybe it’s my American sense of value. If you bought it, get your money’s worth. Stupid reason to try crack, but what the hell, I wasn’t going to be out of a gram either.

So his buddy lit me a hit. They were instructing me all wrong. They weren’t melting down the product, simply putting rocks in the pipe, and when I lifted it, all those rocks went into the chore. They were all too happy to take my hitter and dig piece by piece, my crumbs out of the chore. No wonder I couldn’t understand why anyone got addicted to this stuff. My hits sucked. I was being taken for a fool. That was until I ended up at a crack house, with a guy interested in my sex as well as my finances. We went in it together. We got a load, probably 2 grams. I lit my pipe like I was the expert, like I had done it so many times. I was ashamed I didn’t really know what I was doing. That’s when a hooker from the far corner of the room started to get pissed. “She’s wasting all her dope!” She came right to me, and I shamefully took her directions. She melted down a good hit for me. Then melted it on the end of my pipe. Yay! No more worries about my rocks falling into the chore. As instructed, I held the lighter a small distance away, never touching the pipe, let out a few puffs, then sucked slowly in, drawing the flame a little closer to my pipe, barely touching the pipe until I let it uncontrollably. My lips were burning trying to get all the high from that heat, inhaling slowly. I held that hit in as much as I could, until I exhaled, a plume of smoke. There’s a whole other dynamic to smoking crack. It’s trial and error. Gotta have a good hit, good chore, and you gotta smoke it right. And that hooker was right. I was on Cloud 9. It was ten times better than powder. You think about how much of a wonderful person you are on powder, on crack, you think solely about crack. I could be in swimming in the great lakes of crack cocaine wondering what I’d do if I ran out.

I ran out of my grams, me and my dude in less than three hours. Maybe even less than that. I just remember mostly being aware of my sobriety as I scoped the carpet looking for crumbs. Me and everyone else in that house. If you’ve ever been to a crack house, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about. Everybody that’s out is scoping the place, looking for shards, crumbs, anything. It’s like a big crack piñata went off, except nothing came out. One time, I smoked bits of blaster in my pipe not even checking to see if it was crack. I got a lungful of chore that made me twitch. I’d push my pipe ten times seeing if I had a hit left.

In the following three months, my life was centered around crack. I could handle the come down, it sucked, but I knew payday would bring me more. I was spending every bit of money I could scrape on crack, and the welfare of the people I knew. I learned men were more generous with their hits when it comes to the ladies, but I had shame. I didn’t want to walk down that road. That’s one thing I could say about myself. Begging for crack was on par with the comedown. I was shameful enough to smoke it, but too proud to beg. Something I can say of few crack-heads. The only time I took a free hit was when I had helped the other person out or in my circle of fair-weather friends. In the normal life, nobody even knew for a while that I was smoking. I’d go out, get dirty, come back, clean up, and covered my tracks with lies. I tried convincing my sister I spent eight hours at a coffeehouse with friends from work.

It all caught up with me though, like it does for most. Finances burn as quickly as a rock. I was in thousands of dollars of debt. I lost my job and my house, trying to blame it all on partying. I moved back in with my parents. They were so proud a 19, now 20 year old could afford the house I was living in with my sister. But that faded. Six months ago, I was a 20 year old with a car, a cell phone, and a house. Something few of my age can brag about. Within almost a year, I had lost it all. The cell phone was shut off, my sister couldn’t cover the delinquent rent and bills, new renters moved in. I was still getting high. I switched off and on with drugs. Leaving work one day, I doped myself up before driving home on my sister’s painkillers. The night before, I had a field day with crack, so I was going on about forty hours with no sleep. It was no wonder than I drove my car off the road, head-first into a tree and ended up over an embankment. Foliage of shrubbery and young trees prevented my car from rolling over, or I’m positive I would have been dead. The car was totaled. Now I could walk home with officially nothing.

I still hadn’t decided to quit, though I had lost everything. I confused myself into believing my habit wasn’t a handicap. An occasional splurge, a binge, but not an active addiction. That didn’t stop me from stealing some money from my parents for a gram. To this day, they are unaware of it. That gram went fast. Doesn’t it always? I turned over to a prostitute friend of mine, we were in a dizzy haze. Half-way high, half-way coming down. I said, “I’m out. What the hell am I gonna do now?” She added, “I know this guy.” That was all she had to say. She proposed the streets, the life of prostitution. That was my turning point. For a day I considered it, calling her back. Something I’d never have considered a year ago. That’s when I stopped dead track in my thoughts, and said, “Wow, I’m an idiot.” Needless to say, I burned my connections, and erased a part of my life that was once integral to my appetite for fun and euphoria. Like I said, my pride, thankfully, was stronger than my habit. I got a new job, I make money now. The first thing I bought was new clothes, my other clothes were falling off, wearing hand-me downs. I lost a good thirty pounds between my binges and my lows, my depression. Some people don’t even recognize me. Some even have the nerve to ask me what diet I followed. Ha, that one still makes me chuckle. I should have said, “Crack, works like a charm… You never even think about food.”

All I can say is this, I’m glad I never shot coke. I might have become a prostitute. I’m glad I had a safe place to run away from the shit. Some aren’t as fortunate. If you’re depressed, hate yourself, your circumstance, etc. Don’t try crack. The weak of mind become very dependent on substance. If I wasn’t young, and crack came into my life when I actually had nothing to lose, I probably would be streetwalking. It aint worth the high, really. I’d much rather spend sixty bucks at an amusement park. Powder aint shit compared to this. I tried snorting a few lines in lieu of crack one time, and found it disappointing. Though powder used to be my favorite drug, like smoking heroin instead of shooting, it’s nothing compared to smoking. I won’t lie, I’ve gone back on my words a couple times, and had a hit. But now, with all the work I’m doing, and my future at stake, the need for the occasional “blast” has worn down. A year later, I’m still covering debt from my crack days, but better that than recovering myself from the hooker life. Respect the power of addiction. If you’re going to smoke the stuff, at least be level-headed and painfully aware. The come down sucks, but the longer you stay sober, the craving effectively wares off. I don’t get cravings anymore. In fact, I’ve almost forgotten the pipe. But once in a while for some reason, when I smell car exhaust, I get a weird craving. Not enough to make me seek a hit, but just enough to resurface a bruise on my human nature. Enough to remind me of when Choreboy made a Snowman out of me.

Exp Year: 2005	ExpID: 58834
Gender: Female
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jan 17, 2007	Views: 98,608
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Crack (82) : Various (28), Glowing Experiences (4), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11)