White Demons: The Story of My Addiction to Crack

I was always looking for that new rush and tried the entire A-Z line of drugs. Reading others stories of there addictions and heartaches brought back so many feelings.

I have been clean for almost 15 years and sober for the most part.I have Hep C and am relieved I don't have aids or dying as a good friend of mine is doing as I write this. Both her kidneys have failed and her liver.

I lied, stole, lived on the street, laid my head on rumpled newspaper in vacant hallways, in vacant and uninhabitable houses. Slept in my car until it wouldn't run anymore. Got evicted from great apartments and lost many a job because I was too busy and driven by the white shadow.

Chasing the shadow the white ghost was my life. Getting the $ to do it, finding it, doing it around people that were so paranoid I couldn't understand WHY they did it. I just wanted to get high. Then of course, no more, not even a crumb, not on the floor, on the table nowhere ... no kibbles and no bits.

Then pushing the pipe until it couldn't be pushed anymore and inhaling the burnt chore boy. I remember coughing up these little round air balls. They would POP. This came from my lungs. Oh and when you held the pipe in your hand and burnt it, I had huge blisters on my hand from holding the pipe, keeping it away from my man who said I was a fiend.

We were both fiends. We finally stopped using every day, and we lived and worked for the weekend. They were bittersweet. Copping, doing and doing and copping and doing and coping until the $ was gone and there were no groceries bought and no bills paid.

Then selling our jewelry given to us by our families, keepsakes, heirlooms, but what ever we needed to get HIGH and that was it ... that was all that mattered. So tired and sick of being sick and tired but wanting just ONE more hit. Right. I remember sobbing on his shoulder, I was so tired ... but I also was so addicted.

We stopped and then drinking was the thing to take it's place. I drank myself to oblivion. Broke my foot and don't know how. Lost my mind and wondered if I would ever find "ME" again. He fell in love with another lady 10 years younger then me. I was 46 and he 36, we had been together through THICK and THIN for 10 years. Seems like after we stopped the crack we had nothing in common. The pipe was his pussy and the pipe was my dick.

Our sweet intoxicating lovers. The most insidious and powerful drug I had ever done. One hit and it owned me, It held me it's captive like no other.
Well this is actually a story that has been told and will be told again and again. Each time it is told it will sound the same, because that's what CRACK is ~ it makes everyday the same.

Now that I am free, the air smells so fresh and I notice everything and am in total awe of all that I have missed. I was a addict from 1967 to 1998. A few times I gave in to my inner demons that said just one hit, just one drink ... and I had to just finally STOP.

"Let it be what it was and let it go"