Please be aware of yourself when using coke!!

I wanted to share something personal on this page, because I think it’s important to understand that a drug can be “safe” to use in general, but not be safe for certain people. The same exact drug can affect people very differently. And if you’re going to get involved with this drug, you really need to know yourself and move accordingly, because it is incredibly easily to find yourself wedged in a dark horrible place that you never meant to go to.

Story Time:

Both me and my brother have struggled with a cocaine addiction. We’re 18 months apart in age. Same family and upbringing, same parents, same drug. Vastly different effects though. Both the physical effect it has on each of us, and the impact it’s had on our lives.

I’ll start with myself:

My addiction developed organically. I started going out all the time to distract myself and cope with emotional problems (later diagnosed as PTSD) that stemmed from being financially trapped in a very psychologically abusive marriage. So I had a high risk of developing addiction from the jump. At some point, I knew I was doing too much too often, but I had this careless, “why not?” attitude that blurred the lines between choice and compulsion. I didn’t realized I had a problem until I decided ”this is the last bag” and it wasn’t.

At my worst I used about 2g’s a day, and I also was skiing more than I wasn’t. I’d go for a few days and tap out when I was tired enough sleep through most of the nasty comedown. Rinse and repeat. I was functioning, but not well and I was certainly an addict. I did that for about 9 months before I got sober on my own. I did seek help, but after 6 months of reaching out to family, friends and even rehab centers, I realized that no help was coming, nobody cared, and I had to figure it out on my own. So I simply just stopped one day. That was 10 months ago.

I’ve done coke twice since then, and I do think about it a lot, but I watch myself. I space out my sessions a few months apart, get a G and when it’s gone it’s gone. I use coke as a special treat.

I’m doing pretty well for myself now. I got out of my shitty marriage, got myself financially independent and bought a house. I have a two year old car that’s now 100% paid off, I have a high income job, I have the majority of the custody of both my kids. I’m happy and I still ski from time to time and it’s a good balance.

My brother has not been so lucky in his experience:

My brother has used cocaine on and off for the last 10+ years. He can go through a ball in about 2 hours. He stays sober for 3-5 months and then gets on a 3 week train to hell. He goes into full blown psychosis. He doesn’t know the difference between what he’s thinking in his head and what’s reality. His paranoid thoughts are his reality, and it is severe. I once spent two hours convincing him that I’m his real sister because he believed I was an imposter sent by the government, made to look, talk and act like his sister in order to spy on him. He spends his whole binge in misery and fear. He is convinced that you, and everyone else is out to get him. He sleeps maybe 2-3 nights in a 3 week period, he has a sober day in the middle of it, and picks up again as soon as the lack of dopamine hits him.

My brother has two children and owns and operates a midsized company. He runs a call center that sells retail investment products, which have a very high profit yield and he employs about 25 people. His business is very successful.

He is a literal millionaire.

When he’s sober, he’s going to work, growing his business, doing news interviews, taking his daughter out to Disneyland, and giving speeches at high schools. He inspires people, he motivates people, he’s someone other people look up to.

But he loses all of that every time he picks up coke. Those binges destroy everything he’s built up. He damages his reputation by showing up to events fucked up, he has to hire an army of lawyers to get charges dismissed, and file custody motion after custody motion to try and get visitation with his daughter back each time he slips, it takes weeks of interviews to replace employees after every binge, and he spend tens of thousands of dollars on PR to repair reputational damage.

He’s paid over 400k in custody legal fees and couldn’t stop the state from taking his daughter, who is currently in foster care. He has no visitation at all with his son because of his addiction. His business used to have twice the employees it does now, it’s hanging by a thread. He has lawsuits coming from every direction and he’s losing his wealth fighting against the damage he’s done to his life with his addiction.

He knows what coke does to him, and he still does it. He reaches sobriety and still makes the choice to use again, knowing that it will make him clinically crazy and burn his life to the ground in a matter of weeks. He’s losing everything. His wealth, his company, his children. Everything good he’s done in his life, he’s losing to cocaine. He doesn’t even enjoy it anymore. He’s miserable before, during and after. He will still pick it up. He refuses rehab, he denies he has a problem.

He doesn’t lack support, he can afford to go to a premier rehab center that will give him presidential treatment. Every time he relapses, someone in my family drops everything to get on a plane to go to him.

It’s literally ruining his life and he’s sitting idly by watching it happen. His drug usage has damaged his business, taken his children from him and stolen his wealth, and he chooses to spend copious amounts of time and money on damage control so he can continue using. Despite his vast wealth, he lives a very unhappy life knowing that all of his advancements and good deeds will inevitably be wiped out by his next bender.

The take away from all of this is that what you’re doing has the potential to royally fuck up your life. And it’s very easy to fall down that rabbit hole without even noticing. Know that if you do develop an addiction, it could go either way for you. You could get out of it and end up okay, like I did. But you could also not be okay at all and ruin your life with this like my brother is.

So please use caution and be aware of yourself when interacting with drugs, especially one as highly addictive as cocaine. Drugs can be fun if you manage them right, but they can become your worst nightmare if you’re careless with them.

That’s the end. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.