The Slippery Slope Into Cocaine Addiction

 

The first time I ever used cocaine was in December of 2012. I was at my boyfriend’s house, and we were drinking. Up until that point, I didn’t do what I considered “hard drugs.” He brought out a plate of cocaine. Even though I had it in my mind “I didn’t do that kind of thing,” I convinced myself one line wouldn’t hurt and decided to try it.

Instantly, I felt like my mind was going one hundred miles an hour. We had just started talking, yet I felt like I had been having an incredible conversation. I was always socially awkward and had trouble relating to people and felt like they couldn’t relate to me. When I used cocaine, all that worry about not fitting in disappeared.

I used it a few more times over the next few months and for a long time, I didn’t consider myself addicted since I would only do it occasionally. Suddenly it was as if one day I woke up and was doing it all day every day. I made excuses for myself that it helped me focus and felt like I could not stay focused on any task and when I wasn’t using it. I thought I was getting so many things done only to later realize all I ever accomplished was starting tons of projects and never really finished any of them.

As time went on, I came to see I was always chasing my first high and in doing that, used more and more cocaine. With the constant feeling of hanging on the edge of a cliff, I did line after line trying to get up off that ledge. But I never could.

Before I started on that slippery slope, life had already not been going well for me. My boyfriend and I got arrested for possession of marijuana. After that, we went through a bad breakup. I was academically doing poorly in high school and had no friends which is part of the reason I had begun experimenting in the first place since when I did drugs, I “fit in.” Cocaine simultaneously made me feel like all these problems were gone while making the issues much worse.

My parents were at somewhat of a loss of what to do with me or how to get me to stop partying and across the course of my high school career had sent me to boarding school. I would always convince them to let me come home each time. Then I would get in trouble again before going back. In retrospect, those periods seem so minor compared to how things got once I began doing cocaine.

 

After a while, the cocaine started to affect me mentally and I remember waking up and having lost time of almost a month. I couldn’t remember what I had been doing for about 20 days. I looked in a mirror and saw my reflection and thought I looked like death. That was the first time I realized I was an addict, and I could not stop on my own.

I went to treatment and got sober for several years and was doing good. There were things I had never addressed while I was at treatment though and eventually my demons began to reemerge. This time when I fell back into addiction, it happened faster and got much darker than it had previously.

I went from 0-100 in the snap of a finger. Within days of relapsing, I was back to using all day and night staying up for days at a time. Even worse was I also began to drink heavily along with the cocaine. The physical effects hit me like a truck. My nose and the bones in my face would constantly ache. I had frequent, heavy nose bleeds. I quit eating or sleeping. I lost tons of weight that I did not have to lose. I would get sharp pains in my head that would feel like needles.

The life I had spent years building for myself started to fall apart. I spent my time either using or keeping up the façade that I was still doing ok. Eventually, that too fell apart. One of the people I used with called my parents after I had an accident and injured myself. They came and pulled me out of my shambled life and got me into treatment.

I know how hard it is to ask for help or admit you are in trouble. It can seem like there are no words to tell the people who love you that you need help. Once you finally open up and admit needing help from your loved ones, things can only get better when you are at that point.

It’s not until you ask for help that you realize how many people around you care and want to see you do better.

—Narconon Graduate