Dan Kimber barely recognizes one of his oldest friends, now in the throes of cocaine addiction.
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One of my oldest friends, I’ll call him Rick, is fast approaching ground zero in his addiction to cocaine. To date he has ruined a lucrative career, managed to spend several hundred thousand dollars over the past few years to support his habit, borrowed money from every conceivable source, made a shambles of his marriage and very likely shortened the time he will be here on this Earth.
In addition to his deteriorating health and appearance is a set of values so distorted, and a personality so altered, that he is barely recognizable anymore. Everything he once held sacred has been replaced with a thin line of white powder and the fleeting moments of euphoria it brings. What was once important to him—loyalty, trust, honor, dignity—all the things that bring ultimate happiness and satisfaction in this life, have been sacrificed to the ultimate shortcut to happiness.
Rick has learned to manipulate the truth quite skillfully in order to serve an all-consuming end—never to run out of cocaine. Worst of all is the self-deception that has gone hand in hand with his habit from the outset; the lie that he is a recreational user, able to snort his way through daily “pick-me-ups and “happy hours” (which have lately graduated to every hour). For a time he belonged to a community of liars who were managing to use cocaine regularly and still “maintain”. This, after all, was the drug of the high and the mighty, which by some perverted standard conferred status on those who could afford to party regularly.
My old friend’s present status is that of a desperate and degraded human being He has become like the tortured, drug-addicted youths that were the subject of those junior high films shown to us so long ago; the ones that we boomers once smugly disdained because they didn’t “tell it like it is.” We laughed at the distortions of reality and the heavy handed character portrayals, and dismissed it all, along with so many other parental cautions that sought to make our values conform to theirs.
It doesn’t seem so funny anymore. Everyone who knows Rick has been given an indelible impression of the evil of cocaine. Rick’s mother clings to the idea that a spiritual re-awakening must occur in her son’s life. “Only God can help him now”, she sighs, knowing all too well that a new god, all powerful and all consuming, has become the center of her son’s life.
We who still love Rick and pray to see him unchained from his present enslavement are resigned to waiting it out. Waiting for him to end up in a hospital or jail or, God forbid, a morgue. Hoping at the same time that he reaches bottom before his body or his mind are abused beyond repair. Hoping that he will somehow make his way back to us, and then carry with him always the memory of five wasted years as a sure deterrent against ever again creating his own hell on Earth.
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photo: acidpix / flickr
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Stop caring about him wanting to do coke, stop caring about him- unless & until he wants to not be an active junkie…..
Get on with your life and don’t let him poison yours.