APRIL 23, 2002 - THE DAY SHE QUIT CRACK

Funny thing, crack. It makes your days and wrecks your life.

And its name, perfect. Crack. Your world splits open.

Your son wants to play. You want a rock. You're warped. Your name is Connie
Giegerich and you're broke, scrounging from high to high. You remember the
toy workbench your son got for his birthday. You box it up - the sander that
vibrates, the saw, the wrenches, the little screwdrivers - and return it.
That 86 bucks buys four hits and your son's Happy Meal.

You go for the good stuff, the super-white crack. "The fire," they call it.
You hear that the fire, cooked just right, has wiped people out. You
consider visiting them in the hospital. But you never do. You get mad when
they die. Not because they died, but because you never got to ask them where
they scored.

You prefer a Brillo-pad-filtered crack pipe. But in a pinch, you aren't
above smoking from a 7-Up or a Sprite can. Too much syrupy residue in Coke
empties.

A few deep breaths and crack smoke fogs your brain. Off you float. Your skin
tingles for five minutes, like you're unconscious and awake at the same
time.

And forget thinking. The phone might ring, but you're so baked you can't
begin to navigate answering it.

The high is so sweet you trade your washing machine for three hits. And,
later, the matching dryer for $19.

In the four years you're cracked-up, you blow thousands. You swap food
stamps for drug dough and, one time, smoke away a $650 tax check in a day
and a half.

You weigh 108 pounds the day a friend drives you to the Warner Robins rehab
house that becomes your home. So what if you do a hit - OK, four hits - on
the way. They are your last.

Now, Connie G., you have a voice: "We had a barbecue on Memorial Day weekend
out here and I heard myself laugh.

"I heard my own voice, and it was laughing.

"And I wasn't on drugs."

Now in the mornings you wake up.

"I don't pass out and come to."

You can't get over it that the other day the UPS man mistook you for a
clinic employee.

"I guess I don't look like a strung-out crack addict anymore."

You've put on 35 pounds.

Your son lives with you.

You buy him things.

"My sister sent me a $20 Wal-Mart gift card - my family will not send me
money, no cash. And I went and I bought him a dry-erase board. It came with
a bunch of markers. It felt so good to spend money on my son. He was so
happy. 'Oh, Mommy!' "