DOSE:

.5 g

IV

Cocaine

(powder / crystals)

BODY WEIGHT:

125 lb

I’m a cocaine addict. It was about six years ago that I discovered cocaine. I was bored with life, my job, and my friends. Being an occasional user of various other drugs (mostly opiates), one day I became desperate for a buzz, so I looked for something new that I knew would get me higher than I had ever been before. I wanted to try heroin. Instead of finding that, however, I found cocaine.

I had heard of all the different ways cocaine could be used, and I became a sort of mad scientist, experimenting with different routes of consumption. I loved the shit—I couldn’t get enough of it. I snorted it, cooked and smoked it, put it in my coffee, and I even put it in enemas and squirted it my ass (gross, I know). I eventually found the courage, though, to pick up both a needle, and a desire to shoot up the coke as well.

I put about a half a gram of coke in a spoon and then put about 1mL of saline into the spoon. I heated the solution to speed up the mixing process. Using a sterile U-100 insulin syringe, I sucked up the oily-looking solution. At this point, I was literally shaking with anticipation. I took a deep breath, and then slipped my belt around my arm. I used an alcohol swab to cleanse the crook of my arm of germs. My heart was pounding in my chest. I started to sweat, and I hadn’t even picked up the needle yet. Everything seemed to slow down, however, as I pointed the needle toward my vein. I slowly inserted the needle into my vein. It did not hurt at all, in spite of my anticipated pain. I knew that I had to pull on the plunger of the needle, to make sure it was in a vein. It was. I could tell because I saw my blood squirting into the syringe and mixing with the coke solution. At this point in the process I became quite paranoid, and looked around my bathroom to make sure “no one was there.” I then loosened the belt on my arm and slowly, ever so slowly, pushed the plunger of the needle.

About 45 seconds later, when there were still 30 units (a little under a third of the dose) left in the syringe, my head suddenly felt really light, and I experienced the most intense case of tinnitus of my life. I pushed the rest of the dose into my vein more quickly. I put a sterile gauze pad at the needle point as I pulled it out, putting pressure on the tiny wound. I put down the needle, and then I closed my eyes and tilted my head backwards, enjoying the rush of intense pleasure I felt throughout my entire body. It felt better than any orgasm I had ever experienced. My tongue became numb, and I could taste cocaine in my mouth, even though there was none there. My heart was beating a million miles an hour. My mind was racing, going from one random thought to another thought. Physically, however, I felt very relaxed. I stood from sitting on the edge of the tub, and walked toward the mirror. I was a little wobbly on my feet, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I grinned crazily at myself.

I soon wanted to leave the bathroom, so I cleaned up my “works” and threw away the alcohol pad and gauze. I put the cap back on the needle and threw in an empty bleach jug after I left the bathroom. I suddenly (about 25 minutes after injection) found that my high was gone, so I repeated this process—about 5 more times that day, and about 4-6 times a day after that.

I eventually found that I was addicted to it—not just the coke, but the needle, too. It wasn’t until I hit rock bottom about eight months (and $12,000) later that I got clean. I had to—I almost died, spent a few days in an ICU, lost my family, my girlfriend, my job, and I and went to jail. I also hurt more people than myself. I’ve been clean for five years now, too terrified to go back to the habit. It felt great while it lasted, but it made me lose everything and everyone that was important in my life, and that makes the high not worth picking up again.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 68053
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Aug 2, 2011	Views: 68,519
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Cocaine (13) : Alone (16), Addiction & Habituation (10), Retrospective / Summary (11)