the big three ·
11 December 07

Since I haven’t seen my friend in a few months, it was an opportunity to quit taking narcotics. By narcotics I’m talking of the nicotine, alcohol and non-prescribed drugs variety. Nicotine I find it easy to distance myself from. The smell, the taste, the buzz and high from it is easily reprehensible for anyone that has any taste buds or a sense of smell. It’s a vulgar, uncool habit. Well, I wouldn’t say uncool because it can still look cool to be seen smoking as long as you aren’t yacking on the floor. But smoking because it’s cool, is also more than a touch idiotic.

Alcohol is another vice that I find very easy to give up on. Although there is a variety of liquor that I like, as well as beer, I find the buzz from it to be pretty meaningless overall. You become louder, hornier and generally end up making a tit of yourself if you’re too drunk, but then you don’t give a damn. If you drink not to get pissed and just for the pleasure, you enjoy an inebriated high that could border on boring.

I would drink only with the right people now. That’s about two people I know that would be considered the “right people”. As long as one or the other is around, in amongst the other drinkers, I don’t mind drinking then. It’s when they’re not around that I lose my way with drinking and become so intoxicated I don’t know where the hell I am or I’m with. I can get drunk reasonably quickly these days. I just don’t have the stomach to drink vodka straight any more.

Cocaine I find the most difficult to quit. It’s not because I am addicted to it, nor am I dependent on it. That’s a given seeing as I have no addiction to it, but any way, my point is that there is no physical dependency with cocaine for me. There is, however, a slightly mental dependency.

It’s hard to quantify, but it can be pretty big sometimes. There are days that I just want to do cocaine all day and all night. Of course I can only do cocaine when I have it, and that’s only when I got to visit my mate. It’s the only time I can buy any to either take home, or to use at my mate’s.

Cocaine provides a strange high, one that is really enjoyable, but as is well known, it doesn’t last very long and so you start doing more of it to get the same high. But this doesn’t happen for a while, and generally speaking I use the same amount every 15 minutes to half-an-hour. Unlike smoking, I don’t need to smoke it to get high (but it’s nice to smoke it), and unlike I alcohol I don’t need to force loads of it down my throat and feel bloated.

You take it up the nose, and you’re high. It’s a clean, quick and enjoyable high. There’s no mess, no fuss. It’s certainly expensive though, at £50 a pop, and I’m not made of money, so I start to bite into my overdraft because I don’t have the actual funds to pay for it. A gram can last any where from half a day to a day, depending on how liberal you are with the goods. My usage varies as well.

Giving up these narcotics is mostly an easy business, it just becomes harder when you are in an environment that promotes those things as a “good time”, and indulges frequently. It’s only when I go to see my friend that this happens. I lose all my reasoning and cause for quitting and get off the wagon and cooperatively indulge, often in excess and to the point of being broke.

I do this because I feel safe in that environment, without fear of reprisals. It’s a safe place to be, top indulge in the narcotics. When I’m home it isn’t so safe, nor is it very easy to indulge in any of the three activities. Simply put I live in a household where all three are forbidden. I do at home in secret, befitting a cloak and dagger operation.

Before Xmas, I might go to see my mate, and that means that all three will be available to me. As I explained, I am quite comfortable doing all three, with my mate, and that poses a problem. I want to quit, but I need to be out of the comfort zone in terms of using the three. I’m going to see if I can visit and not do it, I think out of the three I may manage to abstain from alcohol and smoking, and just stick to the cocaine. I already have a mental dependency upon it. Dependency is probably not the right word, it’s more of a liking than anything else. I don’t have cold sweats or get the jitters because I don’t have any. I like it, it’s nice to use and I like to use it.

Well I guess I’ll try and visit and see what happens, otherwise this may be a problem for me and the friendship if the friendship revolves around narcotics all the time. We used to have fun before we got into all this, well the coke anyway. And there have been a few times where we’ve chilled out with the need for it, I mean we spent a week or so in Finland/Germany mostly drinking I guess, even though we wanted charlie. We also spent a couple of days hanging out at his place, without any alcohol, and just had nicotine. So it’s not like it isn’t possible. But damn, I really need to find something to break the comfort.

Will I quit? I don’t know. I think I still need to find time to build on my own confidence in myself, and try to focus on things I need, rather than things that I want. I don’t need cocaine, alcohol or smokes, but I do need to get better, move, and start to reintegrate back in to society in some manner. I need to because otherwise I’ll be living my life as an empty shell.