Crack Cocaine - A Life on the Rocks

This is my first post on my addiction to crack cocaine. In contrast to my heroin addiction, crack was a habit I never enjoyed and didn’t want. It never made me feel good, only anxious and uncomfortable. Nevertheless, it was dragging on my heels for almost 3 years and I only shook it off on my arrival in France.

I came into contact with crack cocaine during my teen years growing up on the White City Estate in West London. First as an observer, then as a casual user and finally as an addict. I was 17 the first time I ashed a Coca-Cola can and sucked in the sickly fumes of this expensive rock.... 8 years later I would be a hardcore Crackhead, scouring the floor for crumbs of rock I knew I never dropped.

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White City Estate is a huge housing complex tucked in the pants of Shepherds Bush – it is notorious for housing problem families. It is where the worst of the worst are banished.... full of drug addicts, travellers and thieves. In White city the telephone boxes are burnt out, the lifts are public toilets and rats and roaches scurry around huge metal dustbins. It is a place from which everyone dreams of escape, but escape is rare... for in White City, the cars have no wheels.

It is there, in that pre-war maze of red brick low rise flats, that one will come across walking shrapnel... people indelibly wounded by domestic atrocities. Imagine stepping on a landmine, having a limb blown off and your head opened up... and then staggering around concussed in the aftermath of the blast... this is what exists in White city.

Paul X was one of these walking wounded... he was also a crackhead. He spent his days crouched near the lift shaft, smoking coke crystals and hiding from police that weren’t there. He was paranoid and dangerous. It was with Paul X that I first licked the rock.

My first encounter with this type was not a pleasant experience. He had taken me at knifepoint and forced me to burgle houses to fund his addiction. My way out of this was a stroke of youthful genius: on gaining entry to a chosen property, I phoned the police on myself. I was arrested and I informed on him. I spent the next 8 months in hiding, petrified of retribution. By the time we saw one another again, Paul X was in no state to be settling old scores... he was on the verge of tears, begging me to lend him 50p so as he could page his dealer. It was in exchange for this that I was given my first hit of crack.

From the age of 17 – 23 I only smoked crack on about 10 separate occasions... it was a drug that didn’t seem to affect me. I was more into buprenorphine (a heroin substitute) which I bought from a friend whose mother was dying from cancer. By the time I started smoking crack professionally, Paul X was dead, White City had been renovated into one of Londons more respectable housing estates and I was taking 5 injections of heroin per day. And I wasn’t the only victim... I wasn’t alone scouring the floor for crumbs. No, my mother and her partner had also fallen prey to this vicious drug. Mum was no longer using acetone to remove cheap nail varnish... now she used it for washing out her and her lovers crack pipes. The 3 of us, wired at 2am in the morning, burning then scraping recycle of enamel tiles. This is where crack eventually leads... well, here and prostitution.

Crack cocaine is very different to heroin. It has a different history and a different image. If heroin is thought of as an artists or musicians drug, crack is a street drug. Although it is cocaine, it has nothing to do with rich Hollywood types, fashion or high living... Crack is from the ghetto and the crackhead is a species apart.

As I mentioned earlier, I never enjoyed my crack habit. I carried on smoking it daily for 3 years due to addiction – nothing else. I just couldn’t stop. I tried... I would make it to the evening and then at the very last moment, just before the dealers turned their phones off, I succombed... I made the call. I think that my battle with white is the reason why I can always understand the heroin addict who wants to quit but can’t. In that way it served me well.

You may be thinking that it is a huge thing to be addicted to both crack and heroin, but it is more common than you’d imagine. 7 out of 10 heroin addicts I know also have a crack habit. In fact, it is often crack that leads to heroin. The crack user is left saucer-eyed and anxous after use, and often takes a little heroin to come down, or to get rid of 'the jitters' (as we say in the trade). Because crack is more expensive and doesn’t last long, the crack addict normally ends up using heroin whilst funds are low... and before they know it they have a double whammy... a twofold addiction. This wasn’t the case for me, but I’m sure there will be some readers that will identify with this.

So, how and why did my crack habit stop? And why am I not buying 'white' in France?

My crack habit stopped the day I moved to Lyon. It wasn’t difficult as I had no choice and crack, unlike heroin, is not a physical addiction. Also, and certainly the deciding factor, crack does not exist in France... you cannot get it! One can free-base coke but one cannot score crack. Still, it took me almost a full year to get over the cravings of the psychological addiction. There were times in that first year when all I wanted was to return to London. Not for a break, not to be back home, not even to see my family... no, my sole reason for wanting to return was to score some crack... to construct a little plastic pipe and to smoke myself into a fidgety paranoia.

Today as I write this, I have not touched a rock in nearly four years. I never will again either... my head is over that. When I think of crack I feel nauseous... just the thought of its sweet, sickly perfume turns my stomach. Maybe one day heroin will also turn my stomach... maybe one day I'll be writing about my third year clean of that - who knows? Like everyones, my future is undetermined... what the the wild dogs will bring to my door, I just don't know.

Take care Readers & Keep Well...

S