Pubdate: Sun, 01 Jun 2003
Source: Item, The (SC)
Copyright: 2000 The Item
Contact:  http://www.theitem.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1105
Author: Jon Fox
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

THE DEVIL'S DRUG

Former Addict Says Crack Made Him A Slave

Even after stints at two treatment centers and finally overcoming his
addiction, crack, he says, is still something he thinks about every day.

In telling the story of his addiction, he frequently asks, "You understand
what I'm saying," not so much as a question but more as a way to pace
himself, giving his statements room and air to breathe. After listening for
a few minutes, however, it becomes clear that what this man is saying is
almost incomprehensible to someone who hasn't struggled through an
addiction.

"I've seen people do so many things that you couldn't imagine, your mind
couldn't imagine. Before I ever did it, I couldn't imagine myself doing it,
and one thing I've noticed about it, it takes good people, I mean damn good
people that are capable and qualified of doing so much with their lives, it
hits them and it takes them down the hardest."

He refused to give his name but spoke freely about his 12-year addiction to
crack, a drug he calls the devil's drug and says made him a slave. In a very
real sense, crack took his freedom and his volition and became the focus
around which his life revolved.

In a wood paneled office, he tried to condense an on-again-off-again
relationship with a drug that he says took everything but his life. A large
man, he's thick across the chest and wears his pants slung low below his
stomach. Sitting in a creaking office chair, in a voice roughened by
cigarettes and emboldened by experience, he begins to talk about crack,
"Nothing can hold a light to it. I love it. I love it." His eyes large and
unblinking, there's no doubting the truth of what he says.

"You name it. Pot, coke, crack, crystal, any drug that you could imagine,
I've done it. Everything but heroin. And crack, all the rest of the stuff
never did take me down. I could do with or without."

In an attempt to liken the experience of crack addiction and dependence to
something outside the realm of chemical necessity, he described how crack
became a constant presence in his consciousness like a childhood
infatuation.

"Do you remember, probably when you was younger, your first love, puppy
love? It was like you liked this girl and you couldn't wait to see her when
you went to school, or you couldn't wait to talk to her ... you understand
that feeling I'm trying to describe? That's what's it's like, but it's
magnified."

If his initial fall into crack was a first love, it was a relationship that
was quickly stripped of any innocence. The high became something he was
incapable of doing without, and he began to organize his life to facilitate
the addiction.

"Your body's never had this drug before, and it's got to have it. It's so
powerful that you'll kill somebody over it; you'll do whatever it takes to
get it. I mean, do you understand what I'm saying? You will do whatever it
takes."

The fact that crack drives an addict to any length to find his drug and
perpetuate the cycle of highs reappears in this man's story like a refrain.

"You do what you can do to get what you want, what you need. You go to any
ways or means to get what you got to have."

The question was never if he'd be able to score his crack, but how.

Plowing through money, his life was engulfed by a cycle of consumption.
"I've spent as much as $6,000 in four days," he said. But despite the
growing cost of his addiction and the almost maniacal devotion to the drug
crack engenders in its addicts, he said, "I've never stolen to support my
habit. I've always worked."

He described the way work became a means only to buy crack. "I would be high
all night long. I would sit there and smoke until I didn't have no money
left. I would do without eating to buy the dope. I would smoke and then I
knew when daylight would come I'd get out of the crack house and I'd go to
work and I would work all that day. I'd work and make me some money, and I
knew as long as I kept working I could make money and I could get high. A
continuous cycle, you understand what I'm saying. It would never end. There
was no beginning, and there was no end."

He portrays an addiction that he says destroyed his life, but amazingly, he
was always able to function in a basic way.

"I worked the whole time. I was like a weekend warrior," he said. He somehow
managed to compartmentalize his addiction and cram it into his off time.
"You know how some people feel, I've worked hard now I'm going to get me a
six-pack of beer? I ain't never drank a six-pack of beer in my life. I don't
drink. I don't like it. I want my rock. I'm going to buy me three, four
hundred dollars worth of rock for the weekend."

Even if he was able to confine his drug use to the weekend, crack eventually
broke him. "It's like I was fighting a battle I couldn't win. I've lost so
much, but God he looks out for fools and babies, and I'm no baby. I'm one
hell of a fool," he said.

The claim that the experience of crack addiction is incomprehensible to
those who have never used the drug doesn't seem too extreme in the face of
the way the drug seems to grip the lives of its addicts. The complete nature
of the addiction and the lengths to which addicts go to get their drugs
leave those close to a crack addict baffled in the face of an alien
situation.

"My brother one time told me he couldn't understand why I was the way I was
on it. He said he just couldn't understand it in his mind, he couldn't
comprehend. He said he wanted to try it to see what it was like. I said to
him, you don't want to try it. It'll take everything you have. It'll take
everything. It'll make a woman sell her - - -. It'll make a man turn into a
punk. Whatever it takes, that's the extreme degree you would go to to get
what you want. I mean if you had something I wanted, there's no way you
could keep it from me because I would take it from you. I promise you, back
in the day. Just to get what I wanted. Just to get the drug, it's so
powerful. And, see, these people in this town don't understand what they're
getting into."

"You want to take a drive?" he asked.

In a ride through Sumter's south side, this man offered a look at an area he
experienced as a crack addict. His truck's darkly tinted widows rolled all
the way up and a loaded handgun lying on the armrest, he drove the streets
of South Sumter conducting a guided tour of streets his addiction brought
him back to again and again.

"You see him, he's slinging right there," he said as he pointed out one man
whom he said was dealing crack. At 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, there
seemed to be someone posted on almost every street that this man said would
sell crack to anyone who approached. As the truck rolled slowly down a lane,
a man would look at the truck and make a hand signal, a wave the driver said
was an invitation to buy.

"They'll be out here from 3 p.m. until about 3 o'clock in the morning," he
said. "They'll even deliver it to mailboxes like a Dominoes pizza." He
pointed out a white mobile home he said was a frequent destination, a crack
house he said he'd been to numerous times. If someone was looking to buy
drugs, they apparently did not have to look far.

As he drove, he began to discuss the barter system dealers seem to have
wholeheartedly embraced. Almost any object can be turned into a tradable
commodity. If it can be brought to a dealer, it can probably be traded for
crack.

An intermediate stop at a pawn shop isn't even necessary. He said he's
traded a Weed Eater for crack. He traded his wedding band for crack, a trade
that bought him only $20 worth of drugs. He said he's even worked for crack,
receiving drugs in direct return for his labor. In a more bizarre instance,
he described buying crack with fish.

"I've swapped catfish for dope," he said. Coming back from a fishing trip,
he said he'd stop in Pinewood and see a dealer. Trading his cooler full of
catfish for drugs, he'd continue on with his crack and the dealer would be
spared the inconvenience of having to catch or buy his own fish.

Sumter's law enforcement officials faced with combating crack describe the
same situation from the other side of the law.

"We've seen people sell everything in their homes, and then they start
stealing and breaking into other people's houses and pawning or selling it,"
Capt. Allen Dailey with the Sumter County Sheriff's Office said. "We had an
arrest down here last year and took truckloads of stolen merchandise that
was traded for crack."

"Over $10,000 worth," Lt. Donny Vickers added. "Brand new generators still
in the box, four of them."

There seem to be few bounds and little judgment. "Last year a guy stole a
television from a hotel and tried to trade it for crack," Dailey said.

"While we were doing a sting we wrecked three cars. Well, actually one of
the guys tried to get away, and he wrecked three SLED (State Law Enforcement
Division) vehicles. While the ambulance and the Highway Patrol were down
there with their lights going, the gentleman drove down with the stolen TV.
We asked him what he was doing down there, and he said, I just stole this TV
and need to get some crack," Vickers said.

Charged with combating the sale of crack and controlling its spread, Vickers
likens his job to sticking his finger in a leaky dam and trying to stop the
flow of water.

"It's making a difference, but a lot of times just the names change. We take
care of one area, it'll stop for a while, but eventually somebody will take
the place of the person that was dealing there and it'll start back up," he
said.

Fighting what seems to be a losing battle, law enforcement is left just
trying to contain the drug's sprawl.

"It grows like a disease. You know we can arrest 50 people a day, but the
manpower situation being what it is, you can't do but so much. So we pick
this area today, and tomorrow we move to another," Dailey said.

Despite perceptions of crack as a drug confined to economically depressed
communities and urban areas, it is clear that it has moved beyond any
economic or social divisions.

"South side, Cherryvale, Wedgefield, and on the other side of I-95 in a
farming community, you got it everywhere," Vickers said, and Dailey added,
"You know, it's not just your average middle class, it's upper-class people
too."

As law enforcement pushes against an encroaching tide of drug use, there
seems to be few advancements in the battle against an insidious drug that
the federal government has identified along with powdered cocaine as the
primary drug threat in South Carolina, and the words of a man who battled
through an addiction to crack for 12 years offer little hope.

His advice for dealing with the growing crack problem and the ranks of
dealers:

"Start hanging them on Sunday afternoon. You're not going to stop it. You're
fighting a losing battle."
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