Cocaine

Track 13

In terms of marriage, everyone knows that tying the knot with your high school or college sweet heart is stuff of dreams. So when two of my college friends, who were dating for four straight years, decided to marry upon graduation, everyone was incredibly envious. They were indeed the loveliest couple, and I had always secretly wished to myself that I would do anything to be in their place. To find, declare and be legally bounded by love at such a young age – they seemed like they had it all.

Recently, over coffee, my friend told me they were divorced.

What??? How did this happen?

“Apparently, he changed, Muddy. He got all violent and disappeared from home for days. She just could not handle it.”

A part of me felt sick to the core because it was only a few months back when I was at their home, enjoying their spaghetti and iced tea. And they seemed so happy. It felt illogical that they are now divorced, and how could Karl be that way?

“I think it was the drugs,” my friend whispered. “He is still addicted.”

Karl was my first friend in college. We naturally gravitated to each other because we came from the same neighborhood. After class, I would often visit his room to watch movies on his PC or later talk for hours about the hot girls in our class. It was also in his room that I discovered his favorite pastime.

“You don’t mind?”

No, I responded. I sat there on the floor, still as stone, while he took out a small plastic bag of marijuana from his pocket and a plastic bottle from underneath his bed. He later deposited the leaves on this contraption made of tin foil, lit it up and sucked the smoke through a pipe attached to the bottle. The bottle gurgled. He exhaled.

“You want to try?” I shook my head. He looked at me, noticed how bewildered I must have looked and said, “I am only doing this because I can’t sleep without it. It puts me to sleep.”

I nodded and watched and slowly felt slightly intoxicated from the smoke that filled the room. This happened every night, and there were days later that I did join him because I was curious. And it was days later when I accepted his routine as normal. However, I noticed he behaved differently soon after. He missed morning class many times because he could not wake up on time. His eyes were always blood-shot red as well, and when people asked, he said he got shampoo in his eyes when he showered. There were also days when he would just be silent, ignoring me when I talked. And that’s when our friendship drifted.

When Karl got married, I thought he had changed. At his wedding, he looked healthy and had this positive glow surrounding him. When he saw me, he smiled, shook my hand and patted my back several times. “Thank you for coming,” he said, “it means a lot to me.” I smiled back, because it does feel great to know that your friend is clean and set on the right direction.

So when I got know his marriage failed because of his addiction, I was crushed.

He is not the only one I know of that has an addiction to drugs. A good friend of mine in the fashion business would often snort a trail of cocaine before he would hit the clubs. I never asked him why he does, but it was obvious that he needed it for the confidence. He was indeed very cocky when he is on it, hitting on every girl at the bar and even had the energy to dance until the wee hours of morning. “I feel invincible,” I heard him say one night.

But when he is not on it, he is different. He is quiet and according to a friend, he falls into a deep state of depression. He never let me see him in that state. He only let most of us see him when he is high on cocaine.

At the end of the day, I realized that I don’t have the power to change my friends with this addiction. They have to seek professional help and have the motivation to change for themselves. The best thing I can do is to tell them that it is wrong. I not done that just yet, and that makes me sick to the stomach.