USERS REVEAL THEIR TRIALS WITH COCAINE

Student Life

The first time he tried it, he was bitterly disappointed.

"Anyone up close to it for the first time would be surprised by how tame it
is," he said. "The first time you do it you'll be so underwhelmed, you won't
know what the big deal was."

But after trying it once, something about the thrill of "doing something
that most people aren't doing and really shouldn't be doing" led him to do
it again-- and again-- and again.

Cocaine. Although it is sometimes called the rich man's drug, and Yale has
been called a rich man's school, the relationship between the two is one of
limited acquaintance. But as the truism of Yale admissions materials will
foretell, whoever you are, you will find your niche at Yale. Now, tucked in
the shadows between the pot smokers and the drinkers, a small number of
habitual cocaine users have carved out their own domain on campus.

An undergraduate whom this article will refer to as James is a member of
that group. James estimates that he is one of about 10 people who use
cocaine regularly at Yale. He said although the initial appeal of cocaine
was breaking with the convention of more common drugs; for him it is now
purely a social thing.

"[Doing cocaine] is like anybody else who got together with their buddies
and smoked pot, drank alcohol, do as they will," James said. "Instead of
having a bong or a joint or a hookah passed around the room, everyone sits
around and you cut up lines. People come up and take their turn and that's
it."

But cocaine is also very different from marijuana and other drugs like
Ecstasy, James said.

"If you're doing stuff on the better end, [cocaine] gives you eight or nine
minutes per hit, per line," he said. "It's like this: if you do Ecstasy,
maybe you get a hit of Ecstasy for 30 or 40 bucks, that'll take care of you
for the night. You'll be euphoric; you want to help people, want to have
sex. Cocaine is sort of the same thing, except that it only lasts for a few
minutes, whereas a good Ecstacy roll can last hours."

Maury Steigman, a social worker in the substance abuse division of
University Health Services, said that when people's emotional states are
charted before, during and after a hit, they usually end up lower afterward
than they were before they got high.

"You can have a rush of euphoria," Steigman said. "[Then,] in 20, 25
minutes, you wind up below baseline. You probably feel even worse than where
you started, which makes people want to do it again immediately."

James said he can feel cocaine's addictive pull.

"The thing that coke does is that its primary function as a drug is to make
you want more," James said.

Steigman said that statistically speaking, cocaine is one of the most
difficult drugs to get off of once addicted.

"Cocaine is a powerfully addicting stimulant drug," Steigman said. "And it's
much more quickly addicting [than others.]"

In the long term, Steigman said, cocaine users often have cardiac problems.
Sometimes, he said, the drug can even induce heart attacks because of
increased blood pressure during a high.

James said he hasn't experienced many of the short-term negative effects
cocaine can cause, including trouble sleeping, frequent trips to the
bathroom, and sexual dysfunction overlapped with a heightened sexual desire
similar to the effects of alcohol.

Steve, another undergraduate who chose to be identified by a pseudonym, said
he is friends with eight or nine of the people at Yale who use cocaine
regularly, even though he has never used it himself. Steve said he has
turned down repeated offers to join in.

"[People will say,] 'We're going to do a line, we're going to blow, are you
in?'" Steve said. "This particular group that I hang out with, they aid and
abet each other by making it this cool thing, this ultrachic thing. There's
this one leader and everyone circles around him, and feeds his ego."

Steve said a smaller subset of his friends who do cocaine use it in secret
rather than making a statement.

Although James shows no regrets about using cocaine, he said he would like
to give up the drug as soon as possible. He seems so resolved in this
determination that it has become a joke within his circle of friends that
every weekend he says, "I'm not going to do coke anymore, certainly not
tonight -- unless we get some."

James said a girlfriend would be his best hope for quitting.

"I basically need a girlfriend, where I can be in bed with her at 1 o'clock
every morning and not be in that danger zone," he said.

But finding a steady relationship has proved tumultuous for Steve's friends
who use coke. Steve said the most glaring side effect of the drug on his
friends has not been that it hurt them physically, but rather that it has
wrecked their relationships.

"[Cocaine] has been one of the main reasons for two breakups that I know
of," Steve said. "Cocaine users -- are often not aware that their actions
are extremely fluctuating, that their behavior is erratic and wild, and that
they tend to take their addiction out on people around them."

James describes his high as enhancing his senses.

"I feel intellectually sharper, that I can express myself better.
Physically, you sort of get radiating waves of, I don't want to say
pleasure, but that's pretty much what it is," James said. "You feel cool."

When his friends sit around together and blow lines, James said, they often
get bleary and weepy.

"There's a lot of hugging going on," James said. "People will sit around and
interject over each other. Everybody wants to say something meaningful about
their life. -- It's not like you're getting high and thinking about picking
a fight with somebody. [Cocaine] would make me less likely to go out and be
destructive."

The economics of cocaine can be more cutthroat than with other drugs, James
said, and it's easy to get conned.

"You're basically left to the mercy of your dealer," he said. "The
prerogative of the cocaine or crack dealer, certainly in my case, is to make
money."

Steigman said a single hit can cost as little as $10, but because one line
is so short-acting, most people don't use only one at a time.

James said that when he first started doing cocaine, his dealers would sell
him "crank," cocaine mixed with other stimulants, because he didn't know any
better.

"Crank is -- all about ripping people off," James said. "[Dealers] get a
certain amount of product and cut it up with something else to make it look
like [they] have more product than [they] actually do."

But "pure cocaine" is an oxymoron, James said.

"If someone comes up to you and says, 'I have pure cocaine,' you should say,
'Unless you have a Colombian drug lab with Colombians processing this in
your dorm room, you don't have pure cocaine.'"

James said he can now tell how genuine a sample is tell by tasting the
powder and by making sure it is pure white.

Friends of Steve's have told him that if they had to pay for their cocaine
rather than blowing lines from their friends, they could not maintain the
habit.

James said the financial burden is a deterrent from using too much.

"I don't know the kind of people who have the discretionary income to do it
to the excess where it becomes a problem with them," James said.

James said the negative perception associated with cocaine bothers him at
times. He said he thinks other Yalies who judge him for using cocaine should
take a minute to think about their own behavior.

"I know for a fact there are people at this university that drink themselves
so sick they can't find their way home, [and] wake up in someone else's
bed," James said. "Anyone has anything to say about this drug should really
think about what they're doing."