From "Cocaine the death of dreams" by Charles Nelson Wolf









...

No. It wasn't me.

I went to 'bucks for a smoothie for lunch. Sitting in the corner in the comfortable chairs was a couple in their mid-late 20s. He was out; his head tilted at an unnatural angle, eyes closed mouth open. A half-finished drink precariously wedged between his knees.
She was in and out; blank stare on her face, eyes rolled back in her head, half finished food-item-in-a-cup in one hand, spoon in the other.
I stared - only for a moment, but I am sure she caught me looking, at least if she was paying attention. I am quite sure she didn't care, not in the condition she was in anyways.
In that moment, I felt repulsion and disgust, and I am not sure...

Growing up, the love I got from my parents was mostly conditional. They had only the highest expectations that I do well in school, work hard, get a great job, find a beautiful, educated and hard-working wife and raise a happy family.

My parents never showed disappointment or anger when any of these things didn't materialized, but the praise and rewards were not the same; I could always tell the difference.

As a consequence, I not only kept some of my true feelings, including doubts and insecurities from others; I kept them from myself as well, using denial and eventually, drugs as an excuse for failing to meet my parent's expectations.

With a year of...

I have made a decision to take a break from DF.

This decision rests on my belief that my recovery cannot move forward until I let go of the last vestiges of my addiction to cocaine.

I have great respect and empathy towards the DF community, and especially the friends I have made here.

It is with regret that I choose to physically seperate myself from the community, but feel that my participation here is its own form of addiction, and one I must satisfy myself that I can break free from at least in the near term.

Please rest assured that I am with all of you in spirit; that I am healthy, growing, and serene; and that I will return at some...

I have an online friend in another drug forum that has shared many of the same struggles getting and staying clean that I have. He had 7+ months yesterday, but posted that he thought he was going to relapse; that he needed to get high.

He was found dead in bed by his mother this morning . . . FUCK!

Sometimes this stuff is just hard to take.

FC

Time to check in and let the rest of you know that I have been fighting severe cravings and drug dreams the past few weeks . . . and they have passed without incident.

This is really a huge thing for me. I have 7 months clean time, and had a 1-day slip the last time I had 7 months.

Things had been going great; past the holiday blues, credit card bills paid, recovered from the friends that "went out" over the holidays. Money in the bank, working out, losing weight, skiing, golfing . . . life couldn't be better! So why did I want to get high and risk all the stuff I have worked so hard to rebuild? Am I afraid of success? What I might become?

...

You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?

You know why they put oxygen masks on planes? Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you're taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It's all right here. Emergency water landing - 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate...