Cocaine Addiction

I’m a returned vet and I haven’t worked since I came back from the war. My family didn’t know me – they kissed goodbye to an office boy – I came back as a frontline combat soldier.

My marriage didn’t last too long – nothing I could put my finger on. Things that my wife kept making a fuss about seemed pretty pointless to me. I lost interest in sex, stopped jogging round the park. Was drinking a few cans of beer a day – my psychiatrist said I had anhedonia.

I remember one evening in front of the tv I saw a vein pulsing in my wife’s neck in the soft glow from the screen. I rapidly calculated how to best to shift myself over to stop the pulse in the artery. It was a shock when I came to myself and realized that I had just made a field assessment on my wife.

One day I was complaining at my mother’s house. She was a widow now. She simply said if it will help you out – come and live with me. So I moved in with my mother and things worked out quite well. She doesn’t mind how much beer I drink as long as I put the empty cans in the sink for her rinse through and recycle.

Was one incident early on when mother tipped a full bottle of scotch whiskey into the kitchen sink. When I realized what she’d done – I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around to face me. Don’t ever do that again I growled – and for emphasis followed it up with – and that’s a direct order. It was about this time that I started to use cocaine with a group of ex army pals – this incident with mother had confused me – I didn’t want issues between us about whiskey drinking again.

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