The Crack in My World

"Times Square"
Marianne Faithfull
No truer words have been spoken!

Who is an addict?

Most of us do not have to think twice about this question. We know! Our whole life and thinking was centered in drugs in one form or another—the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a man or woman whose life is controlled by drugs. We are people in the grip of a continuing and progressive illness whose ends are always the same: jails, institutions, and death.

~ Narcotics Anonymous

This was my life. Once you slip over it's impossible to come back without help. When I couldn't get pills from doctors, I started buying them off the street. Believe me they cost three times as much buying them that way so I could never get enough to last longer than a day or two. Again, I was on the phone, going to people's homes I did not know, waiting for the dealer who hadn't showed up yet. Dealers NEVER show up with product on time. It's always waiting, waiting and waiting. And sometime the pills never show up.

Would you like to hear about withdrawals from opiates? There is a gnawing in your stomach that will not go away. Your muscles ache like you have the flu. Your head hurts as if it will pop off and roll around on the floor. You cannot think clearly. It's nearly impossible to function. All you can do is lie in your bed and suffer for two days, sometimes longer. You are dope sick.

By this time I had already lost my job with a very well-known former public official at a prestigious law firm. I was calling in sick and on the days I did go in my work was shoddy at best. I mean could you make travel arrangements, type up legal documents

What do you do when you are an opiate addict and can no longer get your dope? What do you do when you cannot stand being in your own skin? What do you do when you cannot stand the feeling of being yourself any longer and you think of a implementing a permanent solution to a temporary problem? You find the first, most available drug that will take you out of yourself and the horrible way you feel. You smoke crack. Just typing those words brings back horrible memories and a chill just ran up my spine.

We had a beloved housekeeper who had unfortunately had gone down the horrible road of crack addiction. But even then she only became undependable. We NEVER worried about her stealing anything and she NEVER did. I knew she could hook me up. She fought with me over it not wanting me to start something that could very well lead to my own self-destruction. But I can be very, very persuasive. She relented and I smoked my first rock with her. She had an old piece of a car antenna with a round piece of rubber at the end that could be moved from one end of the pipe to the other in order to keep from burning your lips on the hot metal end you had just lit and smoked the rock from She taught me how to do it well.

Did you know that crack makes you paranoid in an almost schizophrenic sort of way. I never heard voices but I became extremely paranoid from the time I bought the dope in her neighborhood, to the store I stopped into to buy the “rose pipe” which are the glass pipes with a miniature fake rose in them that you've probably all seen a the convenience store and the copper Brillo pad used to to stuff in the pipe to keep the rock in place and act as a filter, all the way home I sweated bullets. Knowing a cop saw me buy the sip, saw me buy the paraphernalia and was going to burst through the door as soon as I lit my first rock. The whole time I was smoking I was peeking out the blinds because I was certain there was someone outside watching me. Any crack addict will tell you the exact same thing.

I had done it. I had become not only a statistic but also that person people would jokingly (or not jokingly) tell someone “Ya mama's a crackhead!”. The only other butt of a joke I had been was “Ya mama wears combat boots!” because I also did that on occasion. Yes, I had done it.