Today's guest post- KB from US


I used to let my coke dealer borrow my car to make her deliveries and go about her business. Sometimes she would weigh out her bags while we were sitting in my car.
I was hurting one morning, out of blow and wasn’t going to see her until later in the afternoon. I searched everywhere in my house looking for a bag that wasn’t there, that I had hoped I had hidden on myself. After no luck in the house, I went out to my car in the off chances that she had dropped a bag of blow underneath the seat or in some other crack in my car. I looked into the back seat and saw the white powder spilled all over the fabric. My heart jumped and I grabbed a straw that I had handy in the center console. How could I be this lucky? I sat in the back, and rather than trying to scrape it together, I just leaned over and snorted the powder off the seat. I had anticipated the feeling of getting myself back to “normal”. It wasn’t until I had snorted a fair amount of it, that I realized that it was powder from the doughnuts we had eaten earlier in the week. That was a major disappointment. I felt like a fool and I was angry that I hadn’t planned better and gotten more coke the night before.
Some people would tell me that because I was snorting the coke instead of shooting it, that I was wasting the high and wasting my money. But at that time, I had not yet injected drugs and thought that if I did, it would mean that I had a problem. I considered myself a social user because I enjoyed it so much, loved how my confidence grew when I was high, and I was able to be social with strangers and friends alike. My normally shy personality would be transformed into an outgoing, fun and exuberant one. Of course to stave off any feelings of anxiousness, I would wash the cocaine down with a six-pack of beer, two bottles of wine or a couple of glasses of whiskey on the rocks. But I believed I had everything under control. The fact that I was snorting coke all day at work and would come home and snort coke all night, didn’t phase me as troublesome. To me, I was just enjoying life. I would get high, clean my house till it gleamed or sit around and listen to music that would sometimes get me up and dancing. I thought my boyfriend at the time was completely uptight and I would resent him for interrupting my high when he would get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. He would be angry with me for not sleeping in a few days and keeping him up with my music. Couldn’t he see how much fun I was having?
Sometimes though, when I was hungover and out of coke, I would feel empty inside. I would wonder to myself why I couldn’t feel that good all the time? How did the depression creep back in so quickly? How were people able to relate to one another so easily without booze or drugs? Why didn’t I have the confidence in day to day life that I had when I was high? Why was I so shy and timid when I was sober?
But then I would meet up with my dealer, lay down some fat lines and begin drinking once again. All of those questions that I had when I was sober faded into the background. I once again felt my body chemistry align and felt the endorphins kick in. All was right in the world, and I was all about having fun.
It would take me some years to realize that my behavior was problematic. Concern from my boyfriend, my friends and my co-workers did nothing to sway me into believing that I had a problem. My dwindling bank account did nothing to make me stop. I believe that people give up drugs and alcohol only when they are ready to. And at that point, I was far away from being ready. But I knew in the back of my head that I had snorted doughnut powder that day in my car. People using recreationally would never end up in a situation like that. Maybe that was the beginning of my awareness.



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