My story with cocaine...

I do think that I was born with this disease. I believe I had addictive characteristics from a very young age. I always found something new and got obsessed with it. Whether it was a game or... it (whatever the obsession at the time) always overtook everything...

Like most addicts I come from dysfunctional home. My dad is gay and he left home when I was two.

It had a strange effect on my family. I think it effected me more because at that stage it (being gay) was not accepted in society. My self-confidence got less and less. I used to idealise my dad and he used to let me down a lot. It knocked my confidence.

When I was about twelve years old, I was at a braai at my uncle's house and my father and I had a fight. He started to make comments that I was his worst possible daughter and couldn't do anything right. I remember wandering outside and started to put everything (alcohol) I could find in one glass and start downing it, every bit and piece of anything - just downed it.

Just remembering that warm feeling and then that completely like numb oblivious feeling. It was the most, what I believe, freeing thing I could ever experienced.

I couldn't have given a fuck about what anyone thought about me. I couldn't give a fuck about my dad .The feeling I thought I was searching for my whole life. Even though I was badly ill the next day, that become a habit. My dad avoided financial responsibility, my mom a workaholic.

She was never at home and the liquor cabinet was never locked.

It didn't start as a daily thing for me, but at the age of twelve... if I had a bad day at school, I got drunk. If I had the opportunity, I got drunk. Then I wanted affirmation from men and I sought it out in unhealthy ways.

When I did something with a guy then I would try to forget about it by drinking and this was when I was only twelve.

When I was about fourteen, I didn't have a lot of friends at school and again that whole rejection thing that I'm not pretty, I'm not popular. I started to hang out at the ice rink in Johannesburg and met a whole lot of people that were a lot more like me. Who came out of similar backgrounds etc. I mean the school that I went to was very wealthy with very influential people's children, lots of money etc. I just felt I wasn't on the same level as them.

In this (new) group I felt more at home and in this group it was quite the norm to drink a lot and of course I got introduced to dope. I thought it was nice but alcohol was still my baby. But then my drinking just accelerated to the extent that I had boyfriends' telling me:

If you don't sort out your drinking problem I don't want anything to do with you".

This was the first time I approached my mom about my drinking problem. She took me to speak to someone at AA, and it went into the one ear and out the other. And I just carried on drinking and it just got progressively worse.When I turned fifteen one of my best friends died in front of me.

He was hit by a car in front of me and that made it even worse. I had to drink on a daily basis to numb the pain.

Just before my friend died I landed in hospital for attempted suicide and nervous breakdown because I was so unhappy and nothing would make it go away. When I got out of hospital I found out my dad was HIV+. So I had like a really bad run of three months. So drinking became all I had and there was the dope on the side. Then I was sent to Cape Town to live with my aunt for six months. By that stage I had a bottle of vodka in my cupboard.

I really looked down on all the straight kids, I saw them as "buying into society", while I thought we were dreaming up and new society.

At first it was just on the weekends, or at parties, but soon I was smoking every afternoon. Dope was pretty cheap so it was never really a problem to buy. My parents were pretty strict and I guess I got used to lying to them at a young age, so adding a few more lies to that was no big deal.

Soon our smoking was pretty obsessive, every afternoon, on the weekend, sometimes even on the way to school. My parents never really caught on, mostly 'cos I was still doing very well at school, also, I never smoked cigarettes so, my parents thinking, was if I didn't do cigarettes I wouldn't smoke dope. I couple of times I came home really fucked, but then I just blamed it on booze which was a huge freak out, but okay in the end. I was pretty good at covering it up. I must have smoked seriously for about 2 years.

I guess the first time I realised that maybe what we were doing wasn't so cool, was one afternoon. We were at a friends smoking, me, my boyfriend, the usual crew. And we were talking about getting stoned. Suddenly I realised that every time we got stoned all we talked about was the last time we got stoned.

It was like we were in this horrible time warp, living in the past and talking about nothing but drugs. It freaked me a little. It was like all our passions and belief and ideals were squashed by dope. Nothing else really existed.

After that I went to Varsity and stopped. I guess mostly because I realized how stupid you get on dope. I remember being straight one day and listening to some stoned kids and thinking, fuck, do I sound that dumb, that slow?

I never really saw my boyfriend from school again. Last I heard a friend ran into him and said he was seriously into buttons, then a few months ago, I heard he was dead. He killed himself. It came as a real blow, I'd always wanted to look him up, but I guess I'll never be able to now.

I started seeing somebody(romantically). He said he thinks I must stop drinking. I stopped drinking for him. And I know today that's not a healthy way to do it, I have to do it for me, not for anybody else. And for ten months I didn't drink, didn't smoke any dope. But how I know that my disease is a progressive disease. If I sustain for a certain amount of time and I go back it will be ten fold(worse).

I did pick up (a drink) again at the end of that year. The first time I picked up, I drank a six-pack of beers, a bottle of wine and I smoked two bottle necks. This got worse. I got involved with another guy who was into the rave scene. He started to do drugs. I wanted to do it with him. I don't blame him. I started Ecstasy, ketamine, acid to things mixed together, mandrax... anything. The drugs that appealed to me was the racier drugs like speed the amphetamines that kept me awake, kept me dancing. Then suddenly alcohol was not appealing any more. If during the week I needed to get fucked, then I would drink, because I was still at school, but every weekend it would be uncontrollable.

I started to get money in the most ridiculous ways like to sell my clothes at the maids quarters. I felt I really did have a drinking problem but I did not have a drug problem. At the end of that year I went to a rave and my dad and his boyfriend was going to come with.

That was the first time I was introduced to cocaine. He gave me my first line. And then my ex. I remember, I hated it. I was too stoned and I felt like very uncontrolled and I didn't like what it did. I thought he was acting completely out of line and talked a lot of shit, and I thought I never want to become like that. We went out and got fucked on Ecstasy and that continued. At school I faked sickness all the time because I had a hectic weekend. Still managed to keep my marks all right. Then to the middle of the year we went to Grahamstown and that was the first time we bought a gram of cocaine each, a whole lot of pills, dope and alcohol. I still thought coke was overrated, but it was better this time and when anyone offered me a free line, I would jump for it, but would still say I would never buy it again.

Then the worst thing that could ever happened to me, I finished school. We went away and for two months my life's pretty much a blur. I woke up in the morning to a joint, to a line of coke. Every opportunity we took hard drugs. For New Years Eve, we bought me and my ex a gram each and three pills. From that day it was like the curtain was lifted, it was like my eyes were opened to what I thought was the most amazing thing I've ever discovered. It was this drug, and I don't know what made it for me, something from mediocre to the best thing I ever happened to me. But that night it did. The next day we were at the dealer and the next day, and I was in Hillbrow three times. And it was any which way we could manipulate people, friends, borrowing money. I just absolutely loved this drug. Me and my best friend .

Suddenly I became this really, really horrible vicious person. Three years with my ex and I just dropped him, because I suddenly didn't need him any more. I had him crying on my doorstep late at night, telling me "I love you" and I just said "Fuck off. Stop being so pathetic." I believed I was beautiful finally, it was amazing I had all this confidence.

He left and I got involved with a very big coke addict. Suddenly I could not function if I don't take drugs. Couldn't go to work if I'm not snuffed-up. I could not speak to people if I was not on coke and by this time I was back to alcohol, because alcohol went so nicely with it. About seven double Scotch on the rocks an hour. And my bad behaviour with guys came back, cause the coke dealer and I broke up after a month. And I really couldn't survive without it. Stealing things, selling things like my CD player. My best friend since I was eleven, who I was living with, kept all her money in a box in her room. And I would go in there and slip out money. And if she question about it, I would have no idea. I suddenly couldn't pay. Phone my mom tell her the restaurant is not making any money and I'm devastated and I've got no food. She would send me money and I would blow it all in an hour. I started to steal from work for it.

Wake up late afternoon, score, go to work, snuffed throughout at work, get drunk, carry on snuffing, carry on shnaafing, until we run out of money.

I remember one night trying to go out, and I was sitting with my third tall glass of straight whisky in front of me. Screaming to this friend of mine, saying "I can't fucking sit here if we don't get some. If we're not going to get anything I'm just going to go fuckin home." I just became uncontrollable. Slowly all the people who cared about me got tired and said, "Jules you've got a coke problem. Do something about it." And I went, "Fuck off, you don't know what you are talking about."

I wouldn't accept at any stage that this thing was destroying my life, everybody around me and I was basically left with one friend who was doing as much as I was doing and we were destroying ourselves.

One night I sold the last thing I had to sell and went out. The money ran out and I remember that fear of not having any more. I remember getting four strange men in my car to take them to a bank, find them a dealer just for one free line. Eventually we went home because we couldn't get more. We went to bed and I couldn't sleep. I was in enormous pain. After a hour I tried to get up, but couldn't because my body was to sore. Sitting down in front of the mirror and I was borderline anorexic, so ill.

Had nothing left and nobody to turn to. I went to my friend and said I can't see you anymore and I can't do this anymore because I'm going to kill myself if I carry on doing this.

Then I did the hardest thing I think I ever had to do; to phone my mom. So I phoned her and said, "Mom I must tell you something. The drinking got out of hand again." She said, "How out of hand?" and I said, "Really out of hand." And I just started crying and said "I've got to tell you something else." I don't think I could ever understand what I did to her when I said, "Mom I'm a cocaine addict." Then I sort of manipulated the situation and said I'm going to get clean on my own and I'm going to a rehabilitation programme.

At this stage my dad's boyfriend was six months in rehab and they insisted that I go into rehab. I refused. And I was sent there against my will. I think I knew that I had a problem but was not ready to face the step I had to take. I signed myself out after four days and I went to live with this very destructive person. Who was obsessed with me and treated me like a possession. And because I was desperate, I shifted my addiction in other ways. So I tried to focus on this guy's friend instead of drugs. He just used me really badly - abused me emotionally and used me sexually. After two weeks of staying with this guy I convinced him that I should drink again. It got to a stage where he would leave me alone at home and I would break into the drinking cabinet again. But it was OK because I wasn't doing cocaine, so it was fine. So then I manipulated him to let me take an Ecstasy tablet once, but I kept thinking it was OK because I was not doing cocaine. Then when I moved out of his house he got all hectic and I had to threaten him with the police.

My ex came back from London with 500 pounds in his bank account and after two hours I convinced him to go and buy us a couple of grams and three days later sitting in his parents cottage with the bathroom mirror on our laps, with lines from the one end to the other. After three days I went to my father and said now I'm ready to go to the rehabilitation centre.

'Cause I was broken again. I realised that I couldn't blame anyone anymore. It was the drugs and I couldn't avoid the problem anymore.

I went into a rehabilitation centre for a month and then to a secondary rehab place for three months after that. This was the most painful time of my life. All those nasty characteristics when you take drugs don't go away when you put the drugs down. I was still a manipulative, deceitful little bitch and still very self-involved.

It got to a stage when I was in rehab that no one wanted to speak to me because I was so full of shit. And it is a very painful experience to realise that you are not a nice person. It's also not only the drugs its also you. But when you come out of the other side when you finally come out of the water , when you realising that you are not drowning. It's the most freeing experience. I was introduced to the narcotics anonymous organisation . I started to work very hard on myself - making amends to the people I've hurt. I found a group of people that are really helpful. Who really care and know what they are doing.

Every day I have to convince myself, "Why is it, that I want to live my life like this now?" I find it very difficult to go to a friend's birthday and not being able to have a glass of champagne. It's my 21st this year and I can't drink or celebrate.

Recovery

It's not easy, no one ever said it was easy, life is not easy. The biggest thing with addicts is that they want things to be easy and they want instant gratification and they want everything now and if it doesn't work like that, it is incredibly painful and difficult. Recovery is a journey. Its not a destination. You are not going to wake up one day and say, "Wow I'm cured. I can't go back to having one drink again." People who know I was into drugs go, "Like you are going to be able to drink again, aren't you?"

And I go "I'm not, I'm not! I can't." When people ask me why I don't drink, I say, "I'm allergic to it." It's very hard and very painful. Especially at my age I'm so young and it's normal for people my age to drink. And there is a lot of pressure from my boyfriend because he often feels he can't drink because of me. I don't want him to feel like that. They say the best day of using (drugs and alcohol) is still ten times worse than your worse day in recovery. Because in recovery, it's a choice of freedom and the choice that you have. If you want to pick up drugs again you can. But when you are on drugs all you want is more and you don't have the freedom. But now, do I really want to go back to that cold, dark, horrible terrifying place where I'm so alone and there is nothing more for me but more destruction and more damage?

Recovery is hard but my life is so beautiful - it is so worth it. There are maybe things wrong with me but I'm working on them. I'm a person that I love and respect, and I'm worth it. I know if I pick up (drugs and alcohol) again there is a good possibility that I would die. It's hard but its worth it.