COCAINE

“You believe that coke will increase your perceptions, that it will allow you to surpass yourself, that you will be able to control things. It’s bloody nonsense. After a while you don’t pay your bills anymore, you don’t wash yourself anymore, you give up your friends, your family. You will become defenseless and alone.” —Nigel

“With coke, you are like a moth stuck on a light. It attracts you more and more and you can’t stop it. It is not physical. It is in your head. The more you have it, the more you take it. I have injected it in myself every ten minutes. I borrowed money from the bank to buy it. One day I became unemployed. It was worse. I used to shoot up all the time. This thing made me insane. I knew it, but I continued. I became a total failure.” —Marilyn

“My friend was on drugs for four years, three of which were on hard drugs such as cocaine, LSD, morphine and many antidepressants and painkillers. Actually anything he could get his hands on. He complained all the time of terrible pains in his body and he just got worse and worse till he finally went to see a doctor.

“The doctor told him that there was nothing that could be done for him and that due to the deterioration of his body, he would not live much longer. Within days—he was dead.” —Wayne

“I had no more future. I did not see how I could escape my cocaine dependence. I was lost. I was exploding and unable to stop myself from continuing to seriously abuse cocaine. I had hallucinations that animals were crawling under my skin. I felt them each time I shot up and scraped myself with the point of my syringe until I started bleeding in order to make them leave. I was once bleeding so heavily from this I had to be taken to the hospital.” —Susan

“Don’t touch cocaine. I spent two years in jail because of this drug. And when I got out, life was so hard I started taking the drug again. I know ten girls who became prostitutes because of coke. It’s much more extreme and degrading than we believe. At the time we don’t realize to what degree it destroys us.” —Shawne