DOSE:

1.0 g

insufflated

Cocaine

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

10 kg

Before I start, let me say that I am writing this in the hope that anyone who might be planning to try coke for the first time, or hangs out with people who do it and might one day be offered some, will read this and understand what I have to say. Especially anyone who has the perception of coke being a glamorous, cool, fashionably expensive and trendy drug.

This is the story of my first and last experience with cocaine, and what I learned from it.

Anyway, I am 24 years old, and have a cannabis dependancy which has lasted for years, and despite knowing it harms me, been unable to stop. One day when I called my dealer, who only ever sold cannabis in the past, he said that he had some coke. I happened to have some expendable money in the bank, summer was just kicking in and I was in a good mood, so I thought sure, I'll give it a go and find out what it's like. I'd read a bit about coke on the internet in the past, heard lots of stories about it etc, I've done speed and E several times, so I felt that I knew roughly what to expect.

So I hook up with my dealer and get home with my weed and this gram of coke. I was being careful as always with any new drug, so I started with very small lines, and the effect was very subtle. After 4 of these tiny lines over half an hour, I noticed a feeling of relaxation, positivity, I was at ease. It occured to me then, that I had been expecting an obvious intoxication, like an E, rather than this subtle adjustment of my mind into positivity and confidence. Anyway, that night I kept taking those tiny lines and had a few beers and several joints, I used about 1/4 of a gram at the most, it was a mild effect and I stayed awake until 6am talking with a good friend. Eventually I got into bed, and slept for 3 hours. The next day, I snorted lines all day and then hooked up with some friends, and shared about 1/2 a gram with them, and was really wonderfully euphoric. At the end of the night, I smoked a bong and went home, with a little coke left over for the next day. The weed gave me a real bad feeling, and when I got home, the coke comedown hit me on top of this. I became extremely paranoid, on a scale unparalled by the paranoia I've experienced from weed. I knew it was a comedown, and dealt with it OK, but I had real feelings of guilt about my drug taking and wasting so many years of my young life smoking pot to the extent that it became the focus of my life for a while. It was a mildly distressing experience but it did make me realise I had been too caught up in drugs over the years and I went to sleep, determined to change my lifestyle.

When I woke up, I felt groggy and in a bit of a bad mood as I usually do after smoking and drinking all night, so I got my ritual morning caffeine dose and started work (I work at home). As is usual for a monday morning, I was finding it hard to concentrate on the work. I was thinking about the remainder of the coke and decided to take just a tiny bit to wake me up. This quickly had me alert and focused on the job. Feeling a bit more confident, I soon snorted all that I had left and I was high as a kite, amazingly euphoric, feeling physically in top condition. This was sustained for 2 hours or so, and I was drinking beer and smoking weed. When the coke wore off, I felt very drunk and stoned, which I didnt notice when on the coke. So I came down right into a hangover, and I knew there was no more coke left.

I sat in my office chair, too drunk, for a couple of hours, waiting to sober up and thinking very hard - Because there was no coke left, and I felt that the experience was incomplete, unfinished, and if I'd just had a little bit more then I would have been satisfied. Then I realised that taking cocaine compels you to take more, there will never be enough. The more you take, the higher you get, and the further you fall. What goes up must come down.

Sitting there in my chair, I deeply wished I had more coke to take. I spent the next 4 hours thinking about coke. I felt like an animal, this was not like the urge to smoke weed, this wasn't mental. It was a hard physical craving, and I did not expect it atall, this being the first time I had tried coke. I was unprepared for this, and I found it really scary. The whole thing had seemed relatively benign and good until this point. Of all the drugs I have tried in my life (MDMA, amphetamines, 2C-I, psilocybin, weed and alcohol), none had terrified me so much as this cocaine. I feared for my safety, because the craving was physical and beyond the control of my mind. I knew it was happening but I couldn't override it by being strong willed and telling myself 'its just an effect of the drug, it will stop soon'. It was a truly frightening experience, that I wasn't prepared for atall.

Mercifully, I am not a rich guy, and had no money to buy more. The thought was going through my mind that maybe I could scrape together enough to get another gram, but I got drunk to dull the craving and spent a few hours thinking of ways that I could get the money together to get some more coke. Fortunately, I spent so much time thinking about how to get the money,and got so drunk, that eventually the craving subsided and I started to feel more like myself again. Around 9 hours had passed since I took the final line, before I was back in control and able to ditch the idea of spending money I didn't have on more cocaine.

I realised I hadn't eaten for 3 days since I got the coke. I was completely physically drained, dehydrated and weak, and had to force myself to eat a decent meal. This food comforted me and I went to sleep, it was over.

I can honestly say, without a doubt, that cocaine is the scariest drug I've ever taken. The craving I felt was more terrifying than any bad trip I had experienced on any hallucinogen. The high is great - its crystal clear, and not intoxicating atall, and I think this makes it dangerous to the first time user. It feels almost as if you are not on a drug atall, once youve been doing it for a few hours. You feel great, but also normal at the same time. Then it begins to wear off, leaving you feeling dissapointed, so you take a little more to sustain the high, and this game continues until there is no more left to take.

It reminded me of when I was doing MDMA quite regularly. I would be in a club having taken a couple of pills, dancing, having a terrific time, then it begins to wear off, and you feel compelled to take just 1 more to complete the experience. Cocaine was like this for me, except that the high is so short lived and less obviously intoxicating, that its a much tighter cycle of 'up and down'. I could never take MDMA more than once a month, because I always felt really physically and mentally drained for a couple of days after it, and had no urge/craving to immediately do it again. The urge to take more MDMA stayed in the club when I was on it, and had always dissapeared by the time I got home to sleep. This certainly made me complacent about stimulants, because I had always been told MDMA was highly addictive and dangerous, and all the evidence I experienced in using it showed this to be untrue, in my case.

So I had my brush with cocaine, thinking I could cope with it easily. How wrong I was. I thought I understood the nature of addiction, because of my cannabis dependancy. How wrong I was.
I thought coke was kind of glamorous and a cool thing to try,and would be an ok thing to experiment with, just once,as I have done with other drugs. Again, I was so wrong. Nothing I had read, nothing I had experienced before, had prepared me for that terrifying, uncontrollable and degrading phsyical craving. I didn't feel like a movie star, or a high flying ferarri driving businessman. I felt like a junkie, i felt like an animal, i felt like total scum, and I was horrified and disgusted at myself but I couldn't override the craving with my mind. This was my first time trying coke, just 1 gram, and afterwards it was hell, thank god the craving went away after 9 or so hours. I am sure that as a coke user does more, develops tolerance, starts doing it for days on end, the craving must only become deeper, longer lasting and more and more embedded in their mind. I can fully understand now why people get addicted to it, how easy it must be to become a slave to cocaine, and what a nightmare their lives would become.

My dealer only ever sold cannabis to me, for years, so I am pretty sure that he just got a small quantity coke as a one-off and has none left now, and will not get it again in the future. I will not be taking it again, and now some days have passed I don't feel any desire to repeat the experience. I don't like speaking in cliche's, but really, Once was Enough. Just 1 gram of cocaine ushered me to the cliff-edge overlooking the bottomless pit of addiction and tried to coax me over the edge, and I thank my lucky stars that I was able to turn away from it and leave it behind.

Exp Year: 2003	ExpID: 24253
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Mar 2, 2006	Views: 144,798
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Cocaine (13) : Not Applicable (38), Loss of Magic (34), Post Trip Problems (8), Hangover / Days After (46), Addiction & Habituation (10), Difficult Experiences (5), Retrospective / Summary (11)