Cocaine is an expensive addiction and one that I wasn’t well equipped to pay for.  Going to school all day, and partying all night didn’t allow for any extra time to work in order to pay the bills, nor to pay for my habit.  It was time to get creative. 

I’ve always had a tendency to befriend the people in my life I know can assist.  It wasn’t long after I started snorting coke that I met and became friends with my dealer.  I had been getting it through my friends at the shop for the longest time, but I realized now it was time to step it up a notch.  

In cultivating this friendship, I started to show him that despite my addiction, I still had a head on my shoulders. 

I was smart, I could be trusted, I kept quiet, and I stayed the fuck out of his way. 

He started letting me hang out at his house, and I would find ways to help him that would result in him paying me with drugs. 

I would often fold flaps for him, the tiny little paper envelopes that held the cocaine for his customers.  We would go to the bar, grab a stack of Keno cards, and bring them home.  They were the perfect size and consistency for flaps, and I would sit there for the better part of a day learning and practicing my origami skills.  Once an entire bucket was filled with these empty paper envelopes, I would receive my payment of getting high. 

He had a lot of houseplants, and being a bachelor, his house wasn’t always the cleanest.  I had a brilliant idea of cleaning his house for him, and this was graciously accepted. 

Again, I would be paid in cocaine for my diligence. 

One day, I realized that his house plants were really dusty, and one in particular needed some help in the dust department.  I grabbed a bucket of warm water and a rag and spent the day wiping each leaf clean.  

At the time, I was living with my Mom and she was paying for most of my life.  She wasn’t aware of my addiction yet, and because I was going to school full time it was enough of an excuse for her to pay my way.  However, I decided that because she had so much money, it was totally okay for me to manipulate her and steal from her.  I would find creative ways to convince her of the cash I needed so that I could support my habit.  

I had traveled down the road of addiction so severely that at this point I was going for about a week without food or sleep. 

I had lost so much weight, due to my jaw surgery, and the fact that cocaine suppresses your appetite.  I was tiny and looked very ill.  Nutrients weren’t soaking into my body because of the drugs, and I was consuming very little in the way of healthy foods.

I had given up on life and simply wanted to party it away.  I somehow still felt that I was a functioning member of society because I was still going to school, and quite successfully too.  From outside appearances, it looked like I had just lost weight because of my surgery, and very few people were aware of just how bad my lifestyle was about to become.