I was a different person when I was doing cocaine. I was, well…I wasn’t Me, let’s just say that much; I was Someone Else, someone at once much bigger and much smaller than the person I knew myself to be.

I couldn’t help it, of course. That’s the thing about cocaine abuse: It’s out of your hands. If you could control addiction, it wouldn’t be addiction. So it goes with cocaine. All I wanted was to get high. All I knew was the need. Without cocaine, I was Nothing. With cocaine, I was Everything.

The rest of the equation took care of itself.

Getting clean was the best thing I ever did. It was hard, of course; harder than I’d ever thought it would be. But it was worth it. It is worth it, today, when I wake up in the morning and don’t have the voices in my head screaming to use and Use and USE. I was a different person, when I was doing cocaine. And I don’t ever want to go back.