Crack/Cocaine
“I smoked weed since I was 17 and I smoked crack for the first time when I was 23. I didn’t drink. I had done mushrooms three times. I hadn’t done cocaine. I hadn’t done pills. I hadn’t done any of that. Everyone was like, “oh, what did you do before this?” and I was like, “I didn’t do anything” and they were just like “what the???” Even, like, hard-core addicts would be like, “Jesus.” [My boyfriend’s friend] was doing it, and [my boyfriend] kind of joined into that. Then they were doing it at my house. And I was just sitting in the corner all by myself and I was like, “I might as well.” I would only do it when he was around. I didn’t want it when it wasn’t around. But then when it was around, I couldn’t help myself. I’d have one puff and then go crazy.”
“I had an addiction to cocaine and marijuana. In Vancouver, there’d be a lot of people doing drugs right in the bathrooms. We went through detectors to get into school. There’s a lot of drugs – crystal meth was big out there, and cocaine. It just was really out of hand and [people] started really young. It was just school and peer pressure. There were a lot of people in my circle of friends that were using drugs. We’d just end up at parties on weekends and it just became every day eventually. It was completely out of hand.”
“I went to rehab when I was 16, got sober for less than a year, and started again. It got a little bit more severe, and I went to rehab in Florida. I got sober for a year and a half, then I started using again.”
“I had a young son. He was three, and he started really looking around at the fact that my life was falling apart. I had no money. I was starting to lose everything I owned. Family was pretty much turning their backs. It was just getting to the point where it was either gonna live alone and have nobody or straighten up.”
“I was really nervous of losing my son because it had been threatened to me several times from my mom. My mom was constantly telling me if I didn’t get over that, she would take him. One day I just had enough of being sick. The final time that I went to Ridgewood [Addiction Centre] I did the 30-day detox program and then when I came out, that time I found Sophia Recovery Centre.”
“I used [ecstasy] for a while in grade nine, then it was more like a party thing, so [I would use] on weekends. But after high school, I continued. I got introduced to cocaine. I always needed energy – so I was like, this is my new thing! I’ve got energy now. So I started with cocaine.”
“I realized that was a problem once my credit card was maxed, and I had no money. I had to start borrowing money, and then I lost my job… I would use it in the morning just to wake up. For a while, I was able to just do it in the morning. Then it turned into needing to do it on my lunch, then it turned into needing to have breaks in between [the workday] just to keep the motivation going. I ended up falling asleep on the job – that’s when it became a big problem for me.”