Some things are just plain poison. It doesn't matter how smart or skilled you are, or think you are, they still end up destroying everything around you.

That's how coke is. It starts out as a little weekend hobby. You yutz it up with some folks, maybe get laid. It's fun. It makes you feel like you are ten feet tall and bullet proof.

If you are a pussy, coke makes you a tiger. If you are a wimp, coke makes you a playa. If you got no confidence, coke makes you feel like the center of any room.

You talk, you laugh, even your coke-laden post-nasal drip snot drainage tastes good. Drinking is never better than when you are flying on coke. You notice tastes and textures to booze that you used to choke down. On coke you savor the lift of the vodka, the smoky taste of the Canadian whiskey or the power of the scotch.

Oh and the sex. Let's not forget the sex. You can look like Ben Stein and get your strange on. It doesn't matter how strange it is either. If you like rimming Icelandic Yaks, if you've got an 8-ball in your pocket, there will be three of them in the bathroom partying with you.

< Ben Stein, Playa

Coke is weird about making time dilate. You start in on a good coke high and BAM! It's day light. Coke binges can last as long as the coke holds out. That's why coke heads mysteriously disappear and turn up weeks later in Toranto, Tijuana or Toledo. You just never know. When the coke thing is rolling you just go with the flow.

It's not about will power. There is no will or power. There is just the high and it's an exceptional high. It's like your brain is electrified and every nerve ending are working at 150%. Your thoughts gain speed and come in parallel. Your brain is moving faster than your body or even the rest of the world. Your thoughts are deep, powerful and profound. You discover an intellect that you did not know that you had.

It's all bullshit of course. Once I had the bright idea of taping the intellectual conversations that I was a part of high and it it just sounded like a bunch of f**ked up people babbling.

Of course that shatters the illusion.

You wake up after a bender and discover that you spent hundreds or even thousands of dollars to chase the illusion. The coke whores are gone and you are the same self-doubting, pussy, wimp that you always were. You are just a lot poorer for the experience and... you want more.

More, more, MORE! You gotta chase the high. You gotta feel like a king again but you can do coke until your head (or heart) explodes and you can't catch it. It's a prick-tease: an illusion of nirvana that titillates but doesn't deliver. It is a dream that once dreamed can not be reclaimed. Words don't do the craving justice. It's like a moaning ache that starts in your soul and is felt in every cell.

It destroys. I've never seen people collapse faster than under the weight of coke (or its derivative crack). I've seen people lose it all so fast that it is frightening. That is just the economic costs.

No body wants a coke head. It causes divorces and break ups like few forces on earth.

The legal consequences can jail you for decades and the violence that surrounds it can take your life in an instant.

But you want more. You want more of that total body orgasm high. So much so that some would kill or die for it.

Soon you reach a critical crossroads. Either you step off, go mad, go to prison or die.

I chose to quit but I understand. I know how much it hurts to never see nirvana again. Although I chose not to go back to that place, I know that I will crave it until the day I die.