Hi – I’m Graeme – and here to tell my story.
As I said my name is Graeme. Pretty much an ordinary sort of guy –had a house in the surburbs, car and two kids – you know what I mean – I was even mowing the front lawn at weekends. Weekends -used to drive me mad really -one Saturday night at my parents, the other at my in laws.
Seemed to me I had no say, no rights in my own house but I wasn’t bothered about that too much. I was busy enough at work making a living to feed their hungry mouths, pay the school fees and a second mortgage. You would think that the family would have given me more help but that’s another story. – I guess I was pretty angry about it all inside – but I wasn’t bothered about it too much – I suppose you could catch the scent of burning martyr (me) coming from our house.
One day Jack (the Ripper we used to call him in college) called me up at work and we decided to go for a drink. It was quite a posh bar by my standards though I never went out for drinks with anyone any more. Jack was in fine form and I was impressed when a real high quality girl came over to Jack making no secret of their intimacy. After a few cuddles and squeezes, the lovely lady was gone and Jack and me kept on talking. When it was time to leave, Jack urged me to come with him to the can and I was shocked to see him use cocaine. Wanna come on to the party he said, but I grimly shook my head – curfew was at midnight in my house, this one night I was off the leash. I think Jack saw the anger, the resentment, the enviousness in my eyes – he wrote down a note of the lady’s phone number. Give her a call sometime he said – that’s if you want to make a connection.
All the week I mentally rehearsed the fantasy of calling the lady’s number. I never would of course, except that of all things my wife and kids were going with her parents the following week for a family holiday. I had not been home more than a few minutes the day they went away – I gave the lady a call – the rest is history.
Five years later I still do cocaine almost every day, I don’t know what I’m going to do when my share of the divorce settlement money is finished. Some of Jack’s mates call me a pretty boy but that’s the last thing I would want to do. The job I had literally went up in smoke when I got caught using cocaine at work. That bastard the boss after all my hard work – earning him profits for years – wouldn’t even give me a reference. In fact he said he was glad to have an excuse at last to get rid of a layabout worker without risk of an unfair dismissal claim. I was marched out of the building late the same after noon – with people staring at me, in between two of the biggest security guards I have ever seen.
I’ve never really been in trouble about my cocaine use – this is probably because I am not really a cocaine addict, just a regular user. Probably when I run out of money, I will decide to stop.
I wish it was that simple… Stop when the money runs out. Somehow I never though I would be an addict but here i am, struggling. It’s the escape of the experience, I just cannot stop.