Anonymous Confession

I used to do cocaine as a teenager back in the mid-to-late 1980s. Yeah, I know how that sounds now. When I tell people, if I ever dare, they usually picture something out of a movie – glamorous excess or a grim addiction nightmare. For me, it was… different. It was just a part of growing up in my circle, in my town, in that era. Which is probably the most messed-up part about it.

I was maybe fifteen when I first tried it. It wasn’t some dark alley deal or a terrifying introduction by a shadowy figure. It was at a friend’s older brother’s party, in a basement rec room that smelled like stale beer and cheap cologne. Music was blaring – big hair bands, synth-pop, all of it. Someone passed me a folded dollar bill, told me to snort it. My hands were shaking, mostly from nerves and the sheer novelty of it. Everyone else seemed so casual, like they were passing around potato chips. I did it, and nothing happened for a second, then BAM. This rush, this incredible clarity and energy, like someone had just flicked a switch on my brain. All the social anxiety I always felt? Gone. I was funny, I was charming, I was the life of the party. Or so I thought.

That was the hook. That feeling of invincibility. It quickly became a weekend thing. Fridays, Saturdays, sometimes even a Thursday night if someone had a connect and enough cash. We’d pool our money from part-time jobs – flipping burgers, mowing lawns, whatever we could scrounge. Twenty bucks here, thirty bucks there. It felt like playing a grown-up game, a secret club that only we were in. We thought we were so cool, so sophisticated. Smoking cigarettes, drinking beers, doing lines off scratched CD cases. We were invincible. Or so we thought.

The thing is, it wasn’t always fun. The highs were incredible, but the come-downs were brutal. That razor-sharp focus would turn into frantic paranoia. Every car driving past the house, every rustle in the bushes, felt like an authority figure closing in. I’d spend hours staring out my bedroom window, convinced I heard footsteps, convinced my parents knew, convinced the cops were coming. The exhaustion was bone-deep, and the depression that followed was a black hole. But then someone would call, say they had some, and the promise of that initial rush would make you forget all the bad parts. You’d tell yourself it would be different this time. That you’d control it.

School started to slip. I was always tired, always distracted, always thinking about the next time. My grades tanked, my parents started asking questions. I became a master of deception, weaving intricate lies about late-night study sessions or hanging out with friends they didn’t know. I was good at it, too good, which just made me feel even more isolated. The friends I did it with, we weren’t really friends anymore; we were just co-conspirators in this shared secret, chasing the same fleeting high.

The turning point wasn’t a dramatic intervention or a rock-bottom moment that Hollywood loves. It was quieter, more insidious. One morning, after a particularly rough weekend, I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and sunken, my skin was pale, and there was a hollow look that didn’t belong on a seventeen-year-old’s face. I didn’t recognize myself. The “invincible” feeling was a lie. I wasn’t stronger or cooler; I was just fading, becoming a ghost of myself, constantly chasing something that only ever gave me brief moments of artificial energy before demanding a heavy price. Around the same time, one of the guys we hung out with got into serious trouble – not just with the law, but with some very unsavory people. It scared me. It suddenly felt very real, very dangerous, and not like a game anymore.

Stopping wasn’t easy. It was a slow, painful withdrawal from a lifestyle more than just a substance. I had to cut ties with most of that group, which felt like tearing away a part of my identity. There were cravings, phantom paranoia, and a deep, gnawing shame that I carried everywhere. I found new friends, got back into sports, buried myself in books. It took years to truly feel like myself again, to trust my own judgment, to not feel like I was hiding a dirty secret.

Now, decades later, I still think about it. It’s a strange, almost surreal memory. That kid, that life, feels like someone else’s story. But it was mine. I made it out, and I’m immensely grateful for that. It was a different time, yes, and maybe it was easier to ignore the consequences then, but the drug itself was no different. It took a piece of me, and it almost took a lot more. I’ve carried this secret for a very long time, and I guess, confessing it here, even anonymously, lifts a little bit of that weight.