AFTER THE PARTY

STICK HEROIN in your veins or speed in your mouth and people call you a junkie. But put cocaine up your nose, and you’ve got status. With a price tag of $2,300 to $2,800 an ounce-four to five times the price of gold -coke is the drug of the rich, the powerful, the elite. It’s no wonder that cocaine has invaded Dallas-Texas’ status city -in a big way. Dallas is power, big business and money.

And cocaine is big business. Nationally, the cocaine industry is estimated at between $26.8 billion and $32.2 billion. If listed in the Fortune 500, coke could rank as high as seventh – below Ford Motor Company. You won’t find an investment with a better price-to-earnings ratio: From the original purchase of South American coca leaves to the white powder that hits the street, the price of cocaine increases 8,000 percent for a price-to-earnings ratio of 800-to-l. No doubt the increase has more to do with greed than with the product itself. On the legal market -in which cocaine is a topical anesthetic used primarily for nose surgery -an ounce costs about $105.

Dallas has its share of the market. Law enforcement officials estimate that 3,000 to 3,600 pounds are brought into the metropolitan area annually. By the time the cocaine is adulterated with look-alike powders to increase the profits of each dealer, the street value is more than $1 billion. Looking at it another way, the amount of cocaine brought into the area each year would turn on about 120 million people with a hefty snort apiece.

Cocaine’s investment potential and image draw a different breed of dealer. Traditionally, drug traffickers have been street people, already closely associated with prostitution, burglary and other criminal activities. The police already know about them. But cocaine dealers travel in different circles. They’ve gone to college, gotten good jobs and are looking for a way to supplement their incomes. And they’ve got the means. For a kilo (2.2 pounds), you’ve got to be able to produce between $52,000 and $65,000 at a time. Even the language of trafficking reflects the corporate mentality. A dealer’s source for cocaine may be called a broker; the coke itself, property. Dealers aren’t pushers; they’re businessmen.

Because these businessmen travel in circles that law enforcement traditionally hasn’t monitored, they’re tough to catch. Often they’re caught only when someone develops a bigger habit than he can afford or gets angry, burned or scared. The Russell Webster trial is a case in point. Somebody got scared, picked up the phone and called the U.S. Attorney’s office.

You won’t recognize a coke dealer on the street. Beady eyes and a weak chin are not his hallmarks. His only identifying characteristic is that he looks like the guy next door. And he may well be.

Dealing drugs is scary business. But cocaine, in large doses, makes you downright paranoid. Everyone begins to look like a cop, a snitch or a two-bit dealer who wants to rip you off. You don’t open the door to anybody you don’t know, and you always keep a gun close by.

Law enforcement is scary business, too, especially when you’re dealing with a coked-out paranoid. You never know whether or not the buy you’ve arranged will turn out to be a setup. Or whether those two men sitting outside the club are hunting for you or just checking out the women. You always travel with one eye focused over your shoulder. Consequently, you won’t find the names of undercover narcotics officers in this article. Even the ex-vice squad officer we talked to still lives in the shadows, fearing that one of his busts may come back on him one day.

But even with all the danger, cocaine dealers have no problem attracting customers. Dallas users, with their collective nose to the wind, have picked up on the latest way to use cocaine. Many people now freebase (smoke) a far more potent processed cocaine. The rush from freebasing is the fastest available-bar none, including injection. Repeated high doses can lead from recreation to hospitalization in no time at all. In fact, Dallas leads the nation in the percentage of cocaine-related hospital emergency treatments that involve freebasing.

And yet, cocaine is the social thing to do. Someone picks up a gram – an amount equivalent to about three-fourths of a restaurant-size sugar packet – for between $100 and $150, and has a few friends over for the evening. Or maybe the group goes to a bar on Upper Greenville for a few hits. Cocaine crops up in conversations and makes good joke material.

But coke isn’t all it’s tooted up to be. Behind the laughter and the fast-lane image is a world of drug trafficking and the suicidal depression of withdrawal. “I’ve used everything but PCP, and cocaine is definitely in a class of its own,” says Allan Rosenthal, chief clinical therapist at Beverly Glen Hospital in Los Angeles and founder of a cocaine treatment program. “It does what it’s billed as doing. It does give you that rush -that feeling of euphoria. It often gives you a sense of grandiosity. You are more than you were.”

A coke snorting gathering has become the equivalent of the cocktail party. Instead of stocking a good bar, the good coke host makes the necessary connections to procure coke. A proper table is set: A mirror (a surface on which every speck of coke can be seen and none is lost) becomes the tray on which coke is served. A single-edge razor blade (sometimes gold-plated), a credit card or a key is set out to chop up and fluff the coke into a fine powder, then arrange it in rows so it can be tooted. (Some people prefer a chopper/sifter available at head shops.) Short straws, tiny brass cylinders or perhaps a greenback (preferably a C note) rolled ritualistically so that it doesn’t come apart is provided to sniff through.

“Everybody’s sitting around, and someone will pull out a gram of coke,” Rosenthal says. “Suddenly everyone focuses on that -even people that it’s not a big deal to. Cocaine has that kind of power, that aura, that immediacy.”

As in most social circles, a strict etiquette is observed: “There used to be a song, ’Don’t Bogart that joint, my friend. Don’t hold on too long. Take your hit and pass it on.’ It’s the same with cocaine,” Rosenthal says. “If cocaine is being offered to you, you take it, get your line and get it moving. You don’t make people sit around and wait.”



TOOTING COKE may be the most common recreational use of the drug, but the fastest growing way is to freebase it. Cocaine is actually cocaine hydrochloride, a salt. Freebase cocaine is coke from which the hydrochloride has been removed, a process that makes the coke a lot more potent. The rush is more intense, shorter-acting and is the fastest possible- the route from the lungs to the brain takes just eight seconds.

As one user/dealer put it: “Almost instantly your head begins to ring -kind of like that twangy sound your voice has in a tunnel. Then you get this intense rush-swoosh. You flush hot, and your heart and breathing gets faster. It’s kinda like that guy in the commercial that gets in the turbo Porsche and takes off. Ohohoh vroooooom. It speeds you up, slows you down and flips you out all at once.”

Users remove the cocaine from the hydrochloride in a multistep process that essentially involves dissolving the cocaine hydrochloride in water, then shaking it with an alkali; the cocaine base is then extracted with a volatile solvent. Once the solvent (usually ether) evaporates, the now-crystallized coke is put on the bowl of a water pipe, lighted and smoked. Some people use a lighter, but connoisseurs prefer a Q-Tip or cotton ball (held with a hemostat) soaked in a high-proof liquor or alcohol or a butane lighter that resembles a small propane torch. The flame is more even, and the risk of getting burned is lessened.

Freebasing requires equipment, but with a little knowledge, anyone can legally purchase the necessary tools. “Everything you need’s available at any head shop,” says one user. “If you walk in and ask them tor a freeoase Kit, they’ll tell you they don’t have any. But if you know what to call it, it’s easy to get. Some of the head shops are getting real slick about it. They don’t have the kit. You have to know what you need. But it’s all there.”

The ritual of freebasing is far more intense than that of snorting. In some circles, the preparation -called cooking -is a shared job. One person does the shaking, another is responsible for scraping off the petri dish and so on. In other groups, the person with the coke does the honors.

Injecting cocaine into the veins (called rigging) is a less popular way to get high. The rush takes slightly longer than free-basing, and some users describe the intensity as slightly more “solid.” The distinction between the two has more to do with social taboo than with the effectiveness of the delivery system. If you use a needle, you’re considered a junkie; but you’re okay -even “in” -if you freebase.

Syringes, needed primarily by people with allergies and diabetes, are available without prescription in pharmacies. Some pharmacies keep them out on public shelves while others keep them behind the counter and may conveniently run out if they suspect the intended use is not legitimate. It’s not always easy for pharmacy personnel to tell, however. As one user says, “If you look respectable, you don’t have any trouble going in any place and getting a syringe. I used to do it for people I used to cop [get cocaine] for. The guy would give me $5. I’d go in and pay $2.27. Profit. If that’s what they want, that’s what I’ll do.”



DESPITE ITS illegal nature, cocaine dealing and use aren’t always confined to the privacy of someone’s home. The ultimate status trip among many users is to snort coke while touring the town in a long, sleek limo. Though some drivers conveniently turn their heads to what’s going on in the back seat, at least one North Dallas driver makes the coke connection for people he knows as part of his service.

Says one small-time user who pays for this service: “We just call up and ask him [the driver] if he thinks he can get some. It takes a few hours, but he can usually come up with it. Then we just drive -it doesn’t matter where -until the coke’s gone. Sometimes we stop by a club and swing open the door when the chicks come by. It’s a big enticement for the women. Plus you can recluse out in a limo. You just pull up those little black windows and nobody sees in.”

For some people, having a little toot while drinking in a club is just part of an evening’s entertainment. A group of friends may snort in the car between clubs or toot right in the club. If you’re a close observer, you may be able to spot them by their frequent trips to the restroom, a popular and convenient public place for a quick toot.

Because of its size and lack of smell, coke can be snorted without attracting any attention. You just slip into a stall and put the coke up one nostril with a tiny spoon (or perhaps a $6 gadget sold at head shops that gauges the intake and is inserted much like nose spray). Sniff. Into the other nostril. Sniff. Check the mirror to see that there’s no residue, then step back out into the world.



AS A CASUAL observer of the club scene, you won’t see the coke, and you certainly won’t see the deals. But there’s a cardinal rule of drug trafficking: Where the crowd goes, the dealers go. For those who use coke, Greenville Avenue and some clubs in the Oak Lawn and McKinney areas have become cocaine marketplaces.

“You can go to a million and one places to get coke,” says a user/dealer. “It’s at the clubs, basically any of them along Greenville. . . . Some of the dudes [in the clubs] were so stupid they’d hit up on the chicks when they went to the bathroom. ’Hey, wanna get high?’ Stupid. I don’t deal to anyone I don’t know.”

One undercover narcotics officer has no argument about the prevalence of cocaine in the clubs: “You can figure that any place that caters to the so-called North Dallas-type is going to have it there. In just about any of the singles bars, you can run into people who at least know somebody who’s got it. Most decent people just don’t believe it.”

The exchange of money and cocaine may take place in the parking lot, though some dealers carry cocaine on them and deal in restrooms. In most cases (particularly if the purchase involves more than a gram), a club is a place to make a connection-get a name, a number or a location. Some bartenders are good at dialing the phone for folks they know. One dealer provides a 24-hour “hot line” for those who can’t make it through the night without their supply. Only select runners – people who make the connection, then carry the money and coke between the source and buyer -are privy to the seven secret digits.

Most of the actual dealing -except by the most brazen of the small-time dealers who frequent nightclubs -is done out of houses and apartments. The smart operators deal only with those they know or those who come with impeccable references.

Unlike some drugs, cocaine use spawns a disproportionate number of small-time dealers for the number of users. For many, dealing is viewed as more of a social event than an illegal way to make a quick buck.

The high price of cocaine combined with a growing habit propels many people into the marketplace. An ounce dealer may buy his supply for $2,400, then sell it in gram portions (28 grams to an ounce) for $ 125 each – a quick $ 1,100. Others sell each gram at slightly below weight-say, one-tenth of a gram shy. The dealer may sell the 28 “grams” for $125 (making $1,100), then have 2.8 grams left over for his own use. The heavy user, however, usually snorts his entire profit -and then some.

Cutting or stepping on the cocaine – adding adulterants to it to increase the amount and thus the profit -is the most common way dealers make money. Lido-caine, a topical anestheticlike cocaine that numbs the nose but doesn’t produce the big rush, is the most common cutting agent in this area, according to laboratory analysis of coke seized by police. Procaine and benzocaine, other topical anesthetics, also are frequently used to step on the coke, as are mannitol (a mild laxative), lactose (milk sugar) and inositol (a B vitamin). These look-alike white powders are sold in head shops or can be ordered from chemical supply houses by anyone- legally. On the more dangerous side, some dealers cut coke with caffeine (which can be purchased in large quantities legally) and amphetamines.

Without expensive and elaborate laboratory testing, there’s no way to know what cutting agent has been used. Contrary to popular opinion among users, testing materials available at head shops don’t tell the degree of purity of the cocaine and cannot distinguish cocaine from other topical anesthetics.

By the time the cocaine reaches its buyer, it may have been adulterated from four to eight times, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. In the Dallas area, the cocaine that has been seized averages 15 to 30 percent purity. The degree of adulteration varies in proportion to the greed and the drug habit of the person selling it. “Down in South Dallas, you get some that’s at 12 percent,” says an undercover narcotics officer. “But come up to North Dallas, and you may see it as pure as 85 percent. Some confiscated recently was stolen out of a pharmacy. It was pharmaceutically pure-which would have wiped someone out.”

Injecting cocaine of an unknown level of purity is particularly dangerous: A user who is accustomed to adulterated cocaine may quickly reach a lethal dosage by using too much if he gets a batch of high-purity cocaine. In a recent bust at an area high school, one batch of cocaine seized was 88 percent pure.

But some white powders sold as cocaine don’t even contain the drug. “Kids get high all the time on the fake stuff,” says the undercover narcotics officer. “Some jerk sells them powdered caffeine, and they toot on it and get high. Sure, they get a certain high feeling. There have been kids who’ve died from overdoses of caffeine.”

AS THE AMOUNT of coke purchased increases, trafficking becomes a deadly serious business. Grams and ounces turn into pounds and kilos. The cash outlay upfront for a pound would be roughly $36,000 to $39,000; a kilo, from about $52,000 to $65,000. In multiple kilos, deals are in the six digits and above. Anyone in the Dallas area who deals in multiple pounds is considered a major supplier.

Cocaine trafficking and dealing is, in many ways, similar to any product distribution system: There are manufacturers (farmers and laboratory technicians -primarily in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru), importers (smugglers), wholesalers, distributors, dealers and consumers. On paper, it appears as if the cocaine goes through a simple chain, but it’s really far more complex. Though it may be organized at the top, the cocaine business is not one in which directives come down from the boss about how the product is to be priced and distributed or how the business is to be structured. Look at the organization, instead, as a collection of independent entrepreneurs, each operating at his own level.

According to one undercover narcotics officer, people enter the organization at the level their money will take them. “If I could come up with the funds and wanted to be a distributor,” he says, “I can just meet somebody and make a connection. They’re going to test me to see how much I’m willing to spend. I may be hitting them up for three or four kilos [between $200,000 and a quarter of a million dollars]. They’ll start me at a smaller amount. But then, if I show them I’ve got that kind of money, I deal.”

The ripoffs in cocaine dealings are notorious and only exacerbated by the secrecy and insulation of the various levels of dealers. The street dealer is generally the only person who’s directly exposed to the public. A person selling up to an ounce in grams and partial grams usually deals face-to-face with his buyer. “The higher up you get, the more insulated the guy’s going to be,” says an ex-vice squad officer.

In many cases, the small dealer doesn’t ever meet his supplier. He only knows someone who knows the bigger dealer. The runner or courier who connects the two and carries the money and coke between them is a crucial link. But, in truth, the courier is often the weakest link, particularly if he’s a user.

Desperation often turns to destructive behavior when someone’s habit outstrips his bank account. Even the most casual user -someone who snorts half a gram during the weekend with friends -can drop $3,000 a year. When a cocaine habit is big, the cost mounts up fast. One Highland Park youth, for instance, spends $2,400 every few days, creating a monthly habit of roughly $36,000. Not many people have that kind of money.

Though most dealers accept only cash upfront, some will accept personal goods as collateral or even payment. The value of the goods usually far outweighs the cost of the coke. In the Webster trial, one person told of paying off a $3,000 coke debt with a Corvette. Others sell their belongings to get the needed cash.

“I was making good money for a big shipping company,” says a heavy user. “There was no way I could spend it all in the three days we were in port a month. I bought a brand new Toronado. 1 bought a motorcycle. I bought a boat. Within a year’s time, I lost all of it and the job to pay for my cocaine. I ended up with a Volkswagen and nothing else.”



LIFE IN THE cocaine culture is grim. Yet cocaine is the fastest growing and most “in” drug in Dallas today. Its social acceptability and elite image alone can’t account for that growth or for the fact that people are willing to pay $1,400 for half an ounce of white powder. Ultimately, the growth can be ascribed only to the drug itself.

“This drug is like no other that I’ve worked with. Cocaine is the key that fits a lock in the brain that tickles you in a way that no other drug does,” says Dr. Alan Brovar, medical consultant at California’s Beverly Glen Hospital and chairman of the California Graduate Institute’s School of Behavioral Medicine.

Scientists don’t know for sure what cocaine does to the brain, but some theorize that it stimulates the action of the neuro-transmitters (chemicals that facilitate the electro/chemical workings of the brain) at the heart of the brain area that controls emotional pleasure and depression.

Some people can handle this little tickle as long as they’re snorting infrequently and in small amounts. To some degree, snorting has a built-in governing mechanism, though some people have been known to overdose while snorting. Since cocaine constricts the blood vessels, there’s a limit to just how much cocaine can be absorbed into the blood system through your nose at any one time. But many folks don’t settle for just a little bit.

“In small amounts, cocaine has what you might think of as ’useful’ effects,” Brovar says. “It does wake you right up. If you want to buy a few more hours of up time, you can buy it with this drug. If you’re feeling down in the mouth, cocaine can buy you a little cheerfulness.

“Then you start reaching… .You think, ’If a little bit’s good, then more is better.’ No, not with this drug because what happens, you see, is that once you start reaching with cocaine, it turns on you like a snake. And it’s a treacherous betrayal.”

If national statistics are an indication, increasing numbers of people are reaching – and cocaine is turning on them. In federally funded centers, admissions for cocaine treatment jumped 358 percent in five years. During the same period, the rate of cocaine-related hospital emergency treatments increased six-fold. Deaths from cocaine quadrupled in just three years. In Dallas, overdoses haven’t shown any significant rise, though the number of deaths attributable to cocaine use are equal to those for drugs such as heroin and phenobarbital – two drugs long labeled as dangerous.

Cocaine is subtle. It doesn’t start out with a big bang, just a tiny whiff. Even the amounts taken -20 to 50 milligrams – seem deceptively harmless. You get more dust up your nose when the winds come in from West Texas than you get when you take a quick toot.

And the cocaine high is over in a flash. You snort a couple of rails, get a bit of euphoria and extra energy for a couple of hours and that’s that. Cocaine doesn’t keep you up and jittery for hours like amphetamines or for unknown periods like LSD. But the short-acting nature of cocaine has a subtle and wicked twist: The short-lived high actually enhances the compulsive need for more. Many people find themselves thinking, “Just one more. It’s no big deal. I’ve got plenty of time for another.”

With cocaine, one more can be a big deal. “When you start jacking up the dose, when you start becoming less of a weekend warrior and more of a ritualized, routine user -and particularly when you have your first experience with smoking the vapor of cocaine [freebasing], then you’ve crossed a very dangerous path. At these higher doses, you’re about to get bitten,” Brovar says.

With most drugs, one dose is sufficient until the peak effects are over. But it’s not that way with cocaine. People who’ve used cocaine-some for even a relatively short time -typically do another rail or take another hit before the coke reaches its full effect in the bloodstream. No other drug is known to create this kind of redosing compulsion.

Look at the time frame involved in typical freebasing: The effects can be felt for about 40 minutes with the coke reaching its peak in the bloodstream after 20 minutes. Most users will take another hit within 10 minutes to maintain the intensity of that initial rush. Yet every time you take cocaine, you build a tolerance to the drug – a fact only recently documented. You need more and more in order to recapture the same intensity of the high. But because of the nature of tolerance, you can never recapture that feeling.

Here’s how one user describes cocaine: “After the first rush, your body feels sorta relaxed. Then you get this little tingling that wakes you up again. You tense up, then the craving starts. It’s worse than any sex craving. You think, ’I’ve gotta have another hit.’ You want more right away. As long as it’s in front of you, you’ll want to keep smoking, You think, ’Well, I’ll wait another 10 minutes.’ But you won’t. You’ll do it again and again and again until the coke’s all gone. I’ve stayed up three days doing it.”

This kind of bingeing – known as a coke run -is no isolated phenomenon. Often, coke runs and freebasing go hand-in-hand. Even as recently as the mid-Seventies, coke had a nice-guy image. After all, the argument went, it’s not physically addictive like heroin. It’s only psychologically addictive. Some experts are now questioning the belief that coke is not physically addictive. More and more experts-those who’ve been bad-mouthing LSD, amphetamines and heroin for years – are now calling cocaine the most psychologically addictive drug yet.

“I was curious to know just how wholesome a habit cocaine might be,” Brovar says, “so 1 trained a monkey to press a bar for cocaine. It wasn’t hard to do. Monkeys love cocaine. I wanted to know just how long I could tease the monkey for a single dose-how many times he’d press that blasted bar. I left him over the weekend, and when I got in Monday morning, the counter read 12,800. That monkey was willing to press a bar to the point of exhaustion without ever receiving a single dose.”

Monkeys will go to almost any length and focus on essentially nothing else once they’ve become accustomed to sufficient amounts of cocaine. Offer a starving monkey a banana or cocaine, and he’ll choose cocaine. Put a male monkey in a cage with a receptive female, and he’ll press the bar for cocaine. Give a monkey a choice of getting shocked but getting a large dose of coke and receiving no shock for a small dose; he’ll take the shock. Man has willpower and a brain, but his response to larger doses of coke appear to be no different from those of a monkey.

Cocaine suppresses the centers of the brain that control sleeping and eating and does not, in high doses, live up to its reputation as an aphrodisiac. In fact, according to Allan Rosenthal, large amounts of cocaine can make a man temporarily impotent.

The compulsive redosing of cocaine also results in an aftereffect that light users rarely experience. After only a few snorts, the body and mind return to normal, except perhaps for a mild headache and/or nausea. But then, once again, the cocaine turns on the user: As the dose increases, users find themselves a bit irritable and drained when they come down. But at high doses, euphoria is replaced with deep depression. One more hit is taken, not just to recapture the initial high, but to avoid the letdown.

“When the nervous system is attacked with a chemical and that chemical is removed, it has a kind of rebound effect to the opposite,” says Dr. Mark Unterberg, head of the substance abuse program at Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital in Dallas. “So when you come off a drug such as cocaine, you crash. The higher you get and the more you use, the worse the crash.”



BUT WHEN THE cocaine snake bites, it bites fast and its venom is quick-acting. The time table between casual user and heavy user is much different from many drugs such as alcohol, which can take 10 to 20 years to do its damage.

“The damn thing happens so fast,” Bro-var says. “Between first use, intensified use and bonkers is three, maybe four years. That’s the natural history of cocaine dependence. You burn out in a relatively short time if you get on an intensified spiral.”

Before the most noticeable signs of cocaine dependence show, you may get some indication that a friend is headed for trouble. Cocaine means more to him or her than to the casual users you know. He may watch lines being drawn more intensely – making sure he gets as much as the next person. He may get irritable and impatient if someone dallies over the coke or takes too long cooking the freebase. He may lose weight, appear drained and show somewhat dramatic mood swings.

If the person is heavily into snorting, he may have the classic sniffles and runny eyes. If use continues, the nasal septum (the membrane wall between nostrils) may ulcerate and eventually perforate. Without surgery, your friend will be whistling while he works.

The first major warning sign that your friend is heading for a fast downhill slide -one that may take no longer than six months -is the experiencing of short-term memory loss. At first, it’s subtle. He may forget a name or phone number or just not seem to be able to come up with a simple word. The memory deficits gradually become more noticeable. Don’t waste time in getting help: As more symptoms begin to appear, your friend is quickly losing touch with reality. Untoward behavior now is persistent; it occurs even when the person is completely free of cocaine.

“Cocaine is shaping up as a totally adequate model for what paranoid schizophrenia is,” Brovar says. “Previously, the closest we could get were the amphetamines. But some of the data just wasn’t quite right. With cocaine, I think we’re talking about a drug that literally causes paranoid schizophrenia in high doses. We’ve never known this before because no one’s ever taken so much [before freebasing].”

Your friend will become increasingly paranoid – checking the windows for police or whomever, hiding his cocaine to keep someone from stealing it (or catching him with it and arresting him) and closing out anyone who doesn’t use coke to the same degree. The world is divided into us (users) and them (nonusers).

Then the hallucinations begin. “Coke bugs” -a feeling that tiny bugs are crawling under your skin – are extremely common at this stage. Brovar remembers one such case: “We had a man come into the emergency room with a baby-food jar full of these dried up, indistinguishable pieces of tissue. He had scars all up and down his arms and legs and a couple on his chest and he was saying, ’See, I told you there were bugs.’ He’d actually pried out of his own skin – sometimes with his fingernails -these ’bugs.’ And what was he bringing us? Little pieces of himself. That was what was in the jar.”

Auditory hallucinations also are common and often center on the cocaine or the basing pipe. Comedian Richard Pryor described the hallucinations well, Rosen-thai says: “The cocaine or the pipe becomes animate. It becomes a person. You begin to have conversations. ’Don’t worry. We don’t need to have anybody over tonight. . . . I’m the one who takes care of you. You just keep me filled and I’ll keep you happy.”

By the last stage-delusions of grandeur – reality is long-gone. A kind of twisted reversal on the paranoia has set in: “Everybody else is cutting me down, trying to get me to stop because they’re jealous. They just can’t get happy like I can.”

Cocaine has one last trick: With intensified use, the dangers of overdose increase dramatically. Before freebasing became popular, few people overdosed on cocaine. But since it’s possible to absorb almost limitless quantities of cocaine into the bloodstream through freebasing or injection, overdosing has become a real danger.

At current Dallas prices, it takes about $300 to $350 and one hour of your time to kill yourself with cocaine. That’s only about three grams if the cocaine is about 30 percent purity. If it’s top-quality cocaine, you can kill yourself with a little more than a gram. And cocaine overdose isn’t pretty: It’s not the slowly drifting off to oblivion that you hear about with sleeping pills. Instead, you die in convulsions and seizures, gasping for breath as the respiratory system shuts down.

There’s another-virtually instant – way to go with cocaine. A lethal dose isn’t even necessary. When someone freebases, the blood pressure surges upward with each hit. With repeated spikes in blood pressure, an inherent weakness in a circle of blood vessels in the brain (called the Circle of Willis) can produce a weakening and pouching at a point along those vessels, resulting in an aneurysm. Then it’s only a matter of time before one of those surges bursts the aneurysm. Because of its location, the bleeding created by the aneurysm compresses the brain area that regulates heartbeat and respiration. The result: sudden death.



IF YOU HAVE a friend who seems to be in trouble with cocaine, a psychiatrist or outpatient drug program may be sufficient if the person is caught early enough. But if your friend (1) binges on coke,(2)uses it daily (even if it’s just snorting),(3)appears to use the drug just to feel normal or just to get through the day or (4) arranges his schedule around getting and using cocaine, hospitalization usually is necessary.

Though there are many good local facilities you’ll want to investigate, one Los Angeles hospital (operated by a Dallas firm) is worth consulting. Beverly Glen Hospital, a small, private center for treatment of chemical dependency, was one of the nation’s first hospitals to establish a special program for cocaine dependency.

If you’re interested in a local hospital, it’s best to tour a few facilities and talk with the medical directors of the chemical dependency (also called substance abuse) programs. Be sure the hospital includes specific therapy designed to help the person understand and deal with the problems that initially led to the abuse. Reentry into the world should be stressed: A complete change of lifestyle should be emphasized, as should total family involvement in the therapy.

Some local centers with reputations for good substance abuse programs:

Timberlawn Psychiatric Hospital, 4600 Samuel Blvd., Dallas, TX 75228; 381-7181.

Brook haven Hospital, 12100 Webbs Chapel, Dallas, TX 75234; 247-1000 (ask for 3 West).

Unit II, East Town Hospital, 7525 Scyene Road, Dallas, TX 75227; 388-4813 or metro 263-3776. For adolescents and young adults, ages 13 to 25.

Chart ton Methodist Hospital, 3500 Wheatland Road, Dallas TX 75237; 296-2511 (ask for chemical dependency program).