Cocaine Line Quotes

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home — and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed — breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert… Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music… All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

Religions emerged too early in human evolution — they set up symbols that people took literally, and they're as dead as a line of totem poles. Religions should have come later, when the human race begins to near its end. Sadly, crime is the only spur that rouses us. We're fascinated by that "other world" where everything is possible.

I remembered about the pharma coke, went outside and nailed a line so pure it was like getting yelled at by God. Yorkshire tea, Mrs Campbell’s Black Forest, Bayer cocaine – the lunch of champions.

Wide-eyed with nostrils flaring, Mom fumed. She looked as if she'd just snorted a line of cocaine laced with Tabasco sauce.

The night has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where two A.M. changes to six A.M. You know this moment has come and gone, but you are not yet willing to concede that you have crossed the line beyond which all is gratuitous damage and the palsy of unraveled nerve endings. Somewhere back there you could have cut your losses, but your rode past that moment on a comet trail of white powder and now you are trying to hang on to the rush.

If Pakistani cities were caricatures, most would be easy to draw. Lahore is corpulent and languid, stretched out in a shalwar kameez, twirling its moustache over a greasy breakfast. Islamabad cuts a more clipped figure, holding court in a gilded drawing room, proffering Scotch and political whispers. Peshawar wears a turban or a burka, scuttling among the stalls of an ancient bazaar. But Karachi is harder to sketch. It has too many faces: the shiny-shod businessman, rushing to the gym; the hardscrabble labourer who sends his wages to a distant village; the slinky young socialite, kicking off her heels as she bends over a line of cocaine.

Drug addicts, especially young ones, are conformists flocking together in sticky groups, and I do not write for groups, nor approve of group therapy (the big scene in the Freudian farce); as I have said often enough, I write for myself in multiplicate, a not unfamiliar phenomenon on the horizon of shimmering deserts. Young dunces who turn to drugs cannot read “Lolita,” or any of my books, some in fact cannot read at all. Let me also observe that the term “square” already dates as a slang word, for nothing dates quicker than conservative youth, nor is there anything more philistine, more bourgeois, more ovine than this business of drug duncery. Half a century ago, a similar fashion among the smart set of St. Petersburg was cocaine sniffing combined with phony orientalities. The better and brighter minds of my young American readers are far removed from those juvenile fads and faddists. I also used to know in the past a Communist agent who got so involved in trying to wreck anti-Bolshevist groups by distributing drugs among them that he became an addict himself and lapsed into a dreamy state of commendable metempsychic sloth. He must be grazing today on some grassy slope in Tibet if he has not yet lined the coat of his fortunate shepherd.

She’d poked my arm. “How was the bathroom?” I poked her back. “An adventure to check off my bucket list. I sailed the golden seas and cleansed myself in the Greek sinks. I’m quite proud.” A line marred her forehead. “You keep getting a little bit weirder the longer school goes on, you know?” I shrugged. “It’s like crack cocaine.” “Wha—never mind

In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly. Once, after my fourteenth birthday, crouched between the seats of an abandoned school bus in the woods, I filled my life with a line of cocaine. A white letter “I” glowed on the seat’s peeling leather. Inside me the “I” became a switchblade— and something tore. My stomach forced up but it was too late. In minutes, I became more of myself. Which is to say the monstrous part of me got so large, so familiar, I could want it. I could kiss it.

What the Addict is seeking (though he doesn’t know it) is the ultimate and continuous “orgasm,” the ultimate and continuous “high.” This is why he rides from village to village and from adventure to adventure. This is why he goes from one woman to another. Each time his woman confronts him with her mortality, her finitude, her weakness and limitations, hence shattering his dream of this time finding the orgasm without end—in other words, when the excitement of the illusion of perfect union with her (with the world, with God) becomes tarnished—he saddles his horse and rides out looking for renewal of his ecstasy. He needs his “fix” of masculine joy. He really does. He just doesn’t know where to look for it. He ends by looking for his “spirituality” in a line of cocaine. Psychologists talk about the problems that stem from a man’s possession by the Addict as “boundary issues.” For the man possessed by the Addict, there are no boundaries. As we’ve said, the Lover does not want to be limited. And, when we are possessed by him, we cannot stand to be limited.

When you were strung out and I kissed you I imagined your mouth a mound of cocaine, inhaling your breath like powder as I pushed into you and you pulled me with your bruised thighs. Some nights we fucked so slowly I dissolved like a Quaalude in a glass of vodka, and you drank me down. We kept the room dark, so we could not see each other with our eyes rolled back - or was it because we did not want to see ourselves. It's taken me too long to think of that, the way we never thought the other would go, and then one night I woke up sober and yes, still there.

New Rule: You don't have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach "intelligent design" alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is "just a theory." Then the president renewed his vow to "drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth." Here's what I don't get: President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He's the man who proved you could mix two parts booze with one part cocaine and still fly a jet fighter. And yet he just can't seem to accept that we descended from apes. It seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys that you have to make up fairy tales like "We came from Adam and Eve," and then cover stories for Adam and Eve, like intelligent design! Yeah, leaving the earth in the hands of two naked teenagers, that's a real intelligent design. I'm sorry, folks, but it may very well be that life is just a series of random events, and that there is no master plan--but enough about Iraq. There aren't necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an opposition party. And an opposition party would point out that even though there's a debate in schools and government about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by the guys on line to see The Dukes of Hazzard. And the reason there is no real debate is that intelligent design isn't real science. It's the equivalent of saying that the Thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold because it's a god. It's so willfully ignorant you might as well worship the U.S. mail. "It came again! Praise Jesus!" Stupidity isn't a form of knowing things. Thunder is high-pressure air meeting low-pressure air--it's not God bowling. "Babies come from storks" is not a competing school of throught in medical school. We shouldn't teach both. The media shouldn't equate both. If Thomas Jefferson knew we were blurring the line this much between Church and State, he would turn over in his slave. As for me, I believe in evolution and intelligent design. I think God designed us in his image, but I also think God is a monkey.

We are supposed to consume alcohol and enjoy it, but we're not supposed to become alcoholics. Imagine if this were the same with cocaine. Imagine we grew up watching our parents snort lines at dinner, celebrations, sporting events, brunches, and funerals. We'd sometimes (or often) see our parents coked out of our minds the way we sometimes (or often) see them drunk. We'd witness them coming down after a cocaine binge the way we see them recovering from a hangover. Kiosks at Disneyland would see it so our parents could make it through a day of fun, our mom's book club would be one big blow-fest and instead of "mommy juice" it would be called "mommy powder" There'd be coke-tasting parties in Napa and cocaine cellars in fancy people's homes, and everyone we know (including our pastors, nurses, teachers, coaches, bosses) would snort it. The message we'd pick up as kids could be Cocaine is great, and one day you'll get to try it, too! Just don't become addicted to it or take it too far. Try it; use it responsibly. Don't become a cocaine-oholic though. Now, I'm sure you're thinking. That's insane, everyone knows cocaine is far more addicting than alcohol and far more dangerous. Except, it's not...The point is not that alcohol is worse than cocaine. The point is that we have a really clear understanding that cocaine is toxic and addictive. We know there's no safe amount of it, no such thing as "moderate" cocaine use; we know it can hook us and rob us of everything we care about...We know we are better off not tangling with it at all.

I never knew cocaine to improve anything. When the white lines came out, it was time to call it a night: the music could only get worse. If I joined in, the next day's playback would provide clear evidence of the deterioration of both the performances and of my critical ability to judge them. I suspect that the surge in cocaine's popularity explains - at least in part - why so many great sixties artists made such bad records in the following decade.

Well, couldn’t, really—the deli was packed to the gills again, with a line so far out the door that when Grandma Belly saw it from the window of the apartment, she asked if people were waiting to get raptured. “They’re here for your grilled cheese,” I told her. She fixed me with a look, crossing a leg on the massive armchair she spent most of her time in and raising a single eyebrow at me. “Not unless you changed my secret ingredient to cocaine, they’re not.

least.” “I don’t remember you complaining.” “Yes, well, I’d only been fantasizing about it for ages.” “See, there’s a thing,” Alex points out. “You just told me that. You can tell me other stuff.” “It’s hardly the same.” He rolls over onto his stomach, considers, and very deliberately says, “Baby.” It’s become a thing: baby. He knows it’s become a thing. He’s slipped up and accidentally said it a few times, and each time, Henry positively melts and Alex pretends not to notice, but he’s not above playing dirty here. There’s a slow hiss of an exhale across the line, like air escaping through a crack in a window. “It’s, ah. It’s not the best time,” he says. “How did you put it? Nutso family stuff.” Alex purses his lips, bites down on his cheek. There it is. He’s wondered when Henry would finally start talking about the royal family. He makes oblique references to Philip being wound so tight as to double as an atomic clock, or to his grandmother’s disapproval, and he mentions Bea as often as Alex mentions June, but Alex knows there’s more to it than that. He couldn’t tell you when he started noticing, though, just like he doesn’t know when he started ticking off the days of Henry’s moods. “Ah,” he says. “I see.” “I don’t suppose you keep up with any British tabloids, do you?” “Not if I can help it.” Henry offers the bitterest of laughs. “Well, the Daily Mail has always had a bit of an affinity for airing our dirty laundry. They, er, they gave my sister this nickname years ago. ‘The Powder Princess.’” A ding of recognition. “Because of the…” “Yes, the cocaine, Alex.” “Okay, that does sound familiar.” Henry sighs. “Well, someone’s managed to bypass security to spray paint ‘Powder Princess’ on the side of her car.” “Shit,” Alex says. “And she’s not taking it well?” “Bea?” Henry laughs, a little more genuinely this time. “No, she doesn’t usually care about those things. She’s fine. More shaken up that someone got past security than anything.

Looking for this?” V held up a vial full of powder and tilted the thing back and forth, all tick-tock. “Mmm?” It was pathetic the way the fucker’s eyes latched on and bugged out. But V knew what that was like—how you needed the very burn you didn’t want, how it became all you could think of, how you withered from the not having of it. Thank God for Jane. Without her, he’d be walking that stretch of gnawing and ever-empty still. “And he doesn’t even deny how much he needs it,” V murmured as he approached the bed. Dayum, as the poor bastard reached out, it was clear that Assail’s hands were shaking too badly for him to hold on to anything. “Allow me, motherfucker.” Twisting the black top off, V turned the little brown bottle over and made a line down the inside of his own forearm. Assail took that shit like a pile driver, snorting half up one nostril, half up the other. Then he fell back against the hospital bed like he had a broken leg and his morphine drip had finally kicked in. And yup, from a clinical standpoint, it was a sad commentary on the SOB’s state that a stimulant like cocaine was bringing him down. But that was addiction for you. No damn sense. “Now, you want to try this again?” V muttered as he licked his arm clean and tasted bitterness. The buzz was not bad, either.

I thought about the aftermath of the 1862 war, when thirty-eight hastily condemned warriors had been hung in Mankato, in the country's largest-ever mass execution. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves and then dug up for study by local doctors, including Dr. Mayo, who kept the body of Cut Nose for his personal examination. I thought about my father losing his teaching job, about his struggle with depression and drinking. About how angry he was that our history was not taught in schools. Instead, we had to battle sports mascots and stereotypes. Movie actors in brownface. Tourists with cameras. Welfare lines. Alcoholism. 'After stealing everything,' he would rage, 'now they want to blame us for it, too.' Social services broke up Native families, sending children like me to white foster parents. Every week, the newspapers ran stories about Indians who rolled their cars while drunk or the rise of crack cocaine on the reservations or somebody's arrest for gang-related crimes. No wonder so many Native kids were committing suicide. But there was so much more to the story of the run. What people didn't see because they chose never to look. Unlike the stone monument in New Ulm, built to memorialize the settlers' loss with angry pride, the Dakhota had created a living, breathing memorial that found healing in prayer and ceremony. What the two monuments shared, however, was remembering. We were all trying to find a way through grief.

Yep! I was twenty-six years old and an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America, and that’s all that most people knew about me. But beneath the surface, I was full of secrets: I was an addict, for one. A pillhead! I was also an alcoholic-in-training who drank warm Veuve Clicquot after work, alone in my boss’s office with the door closed; a conniving uptown doctor shopper who haunted twenty-four-hour pharmacies while my coworkers were at home watching True Blood in bed with their boyfriends; a salami-and-provolone-puking bulimic who spent a hundred dollars a day on binge foods when things got bad (and they got bad often); a weepy, wobbly hallucination-prone insomniac who jumped six feet in the air à la LeBron James and gobbled Valium every time a floorboard squeaked in her apartment; a tweaky self-mutilator who sat in front of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, digging gory abscesses into her bikini line with Tweezerman Satin Edge Needle Nose Tweezers; a slutty and self-loathing downtown party girl fellatrix rushing to ruin; and—perhaps most of all—a lonely weirdo who felt like she was underwater all of the time. My brains were so scrambled you could’ve ordered them for brunch at Sarabeth’s; I let art-world guys choke me out during unprotected sex; I only had one friend, a Dash Snow–wannabe named Marco who tried to stick syringes in my neck and once slurped from my nostrils when I got a cocaine nosebleed;

WHY ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE In its present-day form, the disease model of addiction asserts that addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. This disease is evidenced by changes in the brain, especially alterations in the striatum, brought about by the repeated uptake of dopamine in response to drugs and other substances. But it’s also shown by changes in the prefrontal cortex, where regions responsible for cognitive control become partially disconnected from the striatum and sometimes lose a portion of their synapses as the addiction progresses. These are big changes. They can’t be brushed aside. And the disease model is the only coherent model of addiction that actually pays attention to the brain changes reported by hundreds of labs in thousands of scientific articles. It certainly explains the neurobiology of addiction better than the “choice” model and other contenders. It may also have some real clinical utility. It makes sense of the helplessness addicts feel and encourages them to expiate their guilt and shame, by validating their belief that they are unable to get better by themselves. And it seems to account for the incredible persistence of addiction, its proneness to relapse. It even demonstrates why “choice” cannot be the whole answer, because choice is governed by motivation, which is governed by dopamine, and the dopamine system is presumably diseased. Then why should we reject the disease model? The main reason is this: Every experience that is repeated enough times because of its motivational appeal will change the wiring of the striatum (and related regions) while adjusting the flow and uptake of dopamine. Yet we wouldn’t want to call the excitement we feel when visiting Paris, meeting a lover, or cheering for our favourite team a disease. Each rewarding experience builds its own network of synapses in and around the striatum (and OFC), and those networks continue to draw dopamine from its reservoir in the midbrain. That’s true of Paris, romance, football, and heroin. As we anticipate and live through these experiences, each network of synapses is strengthened and refined, so the uptake of dopamine gets more selective as rewards are identified and habits established. Prefrontal control is not usually studied when it comes to travel arrangements and football, but we know from the laboratory and from real life that attractive goals frequently override self-restraint. We know that ego fatigue and now appeal, both natural processes, reduce coordination between prefrontal control systems and the motivational core of the brain (as I’ve called it). So even though addictive habits can be more deeply entrenched than many other habits, there is no clear dividing line between addiction and the repeated pursuit of other attractive goals, either in experience or in brain function. London just doesn’t do it for you anymore. It’s got to be Paris. Good food, sex, music . . . they no longer turn your crank. But cocaine sure does.

On the drive over, Richards kept marveling at the transforming power of having a felony to commit. His brother looked more like his "normal" self now than at any time in the previous weeks, that is, like a calm, basically reasonable individual, a manly sort of fellow with a certain presence. They talked about Richards' daughter and along other noncontroversial lines. At the airport Richards stood by quietly, if nervously, while Joel transacted his business at the ticket counter, then passed a blue daypack, containing the kilo of cocaine among other things, through the security x-ray. Richards had planned to stop right here--just say good-bye, go outside and start to breathe again--but for some reason he followed his brother through the checkpoint. In silence they proceeded down a broad, sparsely peopled corridor; Joel, with his daypack slung casually over one shoulder, a cigarette occupying his other hand, had given Richards his fiddle case to carry. Soon they became aware of a disturbance up ahead: a murmurous roar, a sound like water surging around the piles of a pier. The corridor forked and they found themselves in a broad lobby, which was jammed now with Hawaiian travelers, prospective vacationers numbering in the hundreds. Just as they arrived, a flight attendant, dressed like a renter of cabanas on the beach at Waikiki, picked up a mike and made the final announcement to board. In response to which, those travelers not already on their feet, not already formed in long, snaky line three or four people abreast, arose. The level of hopeful chatter, of sweetly anticipatory human excitement, increased palpably, and Richards, whose response to crowds was generally nervous, self-defensively ironic, instinctively held back. But his brother plunged right in--took up a place at the front of the line, and from this position, with an eager, good-natured expression on his face, surveyed his companions. Now the line started to move forward quickly. Richards, inching along on a roughly parallel course, two or three feet behind his brother, sought vainly for something comical to say, some reference to sunburns to come, Bermuda shorts, Holiday Inn luaus, and the like. Joel, beckoning him closer, seemed to want the fiddle case back. But it was Richards himself whom he suddenly clasped, held to his chest with clumsy force. Wordlessly embracing, gasping like a couple of wrestlers, they stumbled together over a short distance full of strangers, and only as the door of the gate approached, the flight attendant holding out a hand for boarding passes, did Richards' brother turn without a word and let him go.

On the drive over, Richards kept marveling at the transforming power of having a felony to commit. His brother looked more like his "normal" self now than at any time in the previous weeks, that is, like a calm, basically reasonable individual, a manly sort of fellow with a certain presence. They talked about Richards' daughter and along other noncontroversial lines. At the airport Richards stood by quietly, if nervously, while Joel transacted his business at the ticket counter, then passed a blue daypack, containing the kilo of cocaine among other things, through the security x-ray. Richards had planned to stop right here--just say good-bye, go outside and start to breathe again--but for some reason he followed his brother through the checkpoint. In silence they proceeded down a broad, sparsely peopled corridor; Joel, with his daypack slung casually over one shoulder, a cigarette occupying his other hand, had given Richards his fiddle case to carry. Soon they became aware of a disturbance up ahead: a murmurous roar, a sound like water surging around the piles of a pier. The corridor forked and they found themselves in a broad lobby, which was jammed now with Hawaiian travelers, prospective vacationers numbering in the hundreds.
 Just as they arrived, a flight attendant, dressed like a renter of cabanas on the beach at Waikiki, picked up a mike and made the final announcement to board. In response to which, those travelers not already on their feet, not already formed in long, snaky line three or four people abreast, arose. The level of hopeful chatter, of sweetly anticipatory human excitement, increased palpably, and Richards, whose response to crowds was generally nervous, self-defensively ironic, instinctively held back. But his brother plunged right in--took up a place at the front of the line, and from this position, with an eager, good-natured expression on his face, surveyed his companions.
 Now the line started to move forward quickly. Richards, inching along on a roughly parallel course, two or three feet behind his brother, sought vainly for something comical to say, some reference to sunburns to come, Bermuda shorts, Holiday Inn luaus, and the like.
 Joel, beckoning him closer, seemed to want the fiddle case back. But it was Richards himself whom he suddenly clasped, held to his chest with clumsy force. Wordlessly embracing, gasping like a couple of wrestlers, they stumbled together over a short distance full of strangers, and only as the door of the gate approached, the flight attendant holding out a hand for boarding passes, did Richards' brother turn without a word and let him go.

was sick of people in the program quoting the principles of the Big Book. I wanted to scream when I heard, “But for the grace of God.” What fucking grace had God given me? And don’t get me started on the gratitude list. I had no gratitude. The distress and loneliness made me again consider ending my life. I thought the program was a trick to psychologically prevent me from slicing my wrists. Quotations like “Easy does it,” “This shall too pass,” “Thanks for sharing,” “Keep coming back,” did nothing for me but induce intestinal illness. Holding hands and watching people go out of their way to do anything and everything for me made me extremely uncomfortable. I loathed the closeness and companionship of the people who were working hard for my benefit. The disgrace of not having my own form of transportation, career, dignity, and independence made me resent everything this horrible existence had to offer. I held these feelings inside and operated like a robot going through the motions of living. I contemplated how to extinguish my mental anguish. Death is what first came to mind. I'd fantasize driving at a hundred miles an hour into a tree, taking a full bottle of Valium or Trazadone, or, better yet, taking a full bottle of both drugs and then doing it. But something inside woke me up, convincing me there was a certain merit, some reason worth living for on this miserable planet. From there, my determination and drive to attain dignity and independence kicked in. I wanted to believe there truly was a good person inside. I wanted to find him. Insidious images of relaxation flashed through my mind like bright pictures. It was as though all my tension was being released after inhaling a fat line of cocaine while watching porn. The excitement of reliving the act seemed so real that my heart palpitated erratically. I'd get furious with myself for even thinking about going back to that sinister part of my life. When I returned to the Oxford House after the retreat, I was introduced to a local priest who was in the fellowship for treatment. When I first found out he was a priest, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. It disgusted me that people gave him respect because he was a man of the cloth. The fellow addicts thought it was cool they had one of God’s errant angels among them confessing his sins of addictions. Little

I got the shock of my life when I looked and saw that Ciara had the powder from the candy lined up on the little table that was in the den and then started sniffing it up her nose as if it was cocaine. When

Going from the jungles of Zimbabwe to the streets of Kathmandu was like doing a line of cocaine and then getting hit in the face with a frying pan.

Sleet had changed to snow, which fell steadily as I drove. White powder filled the hollows in the land, erased the gutters, piled on the fir trees like lines of cocaine. Everything—buildings, sidewalks, lights—turned blurry as snow enshrouded the city. Denver went silent under the soft, murderous weight.

26. In intimate relationships is your inability to linger over conversations an impediment? 27. Are you always on the go, even when you don’t really want to be? 28. More than most people, do you hate waiting in line? 29. Are you constitutionally incapable of reading the directions first? 30. Do you have a hair-trigger temper? 31. Are you constantly having to sit on yourself to keep from blurting out the wrong thing? 32. Do you like to gamble? 33. Do you feel like exploding inside when someone has trouble getting to the point? 34. Were you hyperactive as a child? 35. Are you drawn to situations of high intensity? 36. Do you often try to do the hard things rather than what comes easily to you? 37. Are you particularly intuitive? 38. Do you often find yourself involved in a situation without having planned it at all? 39. Would you rather have your teeth drilled by a dentist than make or follow a list? 40. Do you chronically resolve to organize your life better only to find that you’re always on the brink of chaos? 41. Do you often find that you have an itch you cannot scratch, an appetite for something “more” and you’re not sure what it is? 42. Would you describe yourself as hypersexual? 43. One man who turned out to have adult ADD presented with this unusual triad of symptoms: cocaine abuse, frequent reading of pornography, and an addiction to crossword puzzles. Can you understand him, even if you do not have those symptoms? 44. Would you consider yourself an addictive personality? 45. Are you more flirtatious than you really mean to be? 46. Did you grow up in a chaotic, boundaryless family? 47. Do you find it hard to be alone? 48. Do you often counter depressive moods by some sort of potentially harmful compulsive behavior such as overworking, overspending, overdrinking, or overeating? 49. Do you have dyslexia? 50. Do you have a family history of ADD or hyperactivity?

Bottom lines are addictive behaviours that we make a conscious choice not to repeat. For example, a recovering cocaine addict would create a bottom line that they will not use a mind- or mood-altering substance to deliberately get high. A recovering sex addict might create a bottom line not to watch pornography or not to have sex without any emotional or spiritual connection. Bottom lines are a symbol of our intentions and are very useful at a practical level to address addictions. In many recovery communities, twelve-step fellowships and addiction rehabs, there is also a concept called ‘top lines’.

It makes me want to walk into Patricia’s trailer and take one of the knives from the kitchen block and slit Roger’s throat when he snorts a line of cocaine off of the dirty glass of the coffee table.

Good morning, mother.” I sat myself down in front of her. “How was your journey yesterday?” She eyed me as if I’d just offered her a line of cocaine.

Elizia Shuttleworth had been a member of the Young Conservatives, and had allegedly once done a line of cocaine with the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Michael Gove. Although, people were more outraged about her political leanings than they were the drugs.

Nothing could have prepared him for this night, and if he survived, nothing would ever live up to it again. Not ten tours of Iraq. Not a hundred lines of cocaine. Death was watching him from every angle and yet he did not care. Jackie knew he was staring into the abyss, and yet he did not flinch.

She blossomed from the moment I wrote the first line of Cocaine Blues, and after the first five chapters, I had no further control over her. I feel like I discovered Phryne, rather than invented her.

Tables are laid out with glittering lines of cocaine, but don’t worry: Nellie’s put these huge vases of red roses in the middle of them so it’s klassy with a motherfucking K.

As drugs flow up into the United States, all kinds of people make money off them. People are subcontracted to ship, truck, warehouse, and finally smuggle the product over the border. To complicate this, drugs are often bought and sold many times on their journey. People actually handling these narcotics will often have no knowledge which so-called kingpin or cartel ever owned them, only knowing the direct contacts they are dealing with. Ask a New York cocaine dealer who smuggled his product into America. He would rarely have a clue. All this helps explain why the Mexican drug trade is such a confusing web, which confounds both journalists and drug agents. Tracing exactly who touched a shipment on its entire journey is a hard task. But this dynamic, moving industry has a solid center of gravity—turfs, or plazas. Drugs have to pass through a certain territory on the border to get into the United States, and whoever is running those plazas makes sure to tax everything that moves. The border plazas have thus become a choke point that is not seen in other drug-producing nations such as Colombia, Afghanistan, or Morocco. This is one of the key reasons why Mexican turf wars have become so bloody. The vast profits attract all kinds to the Mexican drug trade: peasant farmers, slum teenagers, students, teachers, businessmen, idle rich kids, and countless others. It is often pointed out that in poor countries people turn to the drug trade in desperation. That is true. But plenty of middle-class or wealthy people also dabble. Growing up in the south of England, I knew dozens of people who moved and sold drugs, from private-school boys to kids from council estates (projects). The United States has never had a shortage of its own citizens willing to transport and sell drugs. The bottom line is that drugs are good money even to wealthy people, and plenty have no moral dilemmas about the business.

Talk about Them It shouldn’t be surprising that the thing people most like talking about is themselves. If you’ve ever gotten dating advice or corporate networking advice, it’s probably started with something along the lines of, “Ask them about themselves.” Not only does this make sense, but neuroscience tells us that it’s true. The average person spends 60 percent of their conversations talking about themselves, and the reason for this is simple—it makes them feel good! Remember how we discussed that when someone hears their own name, an MRI will show parts of their brain lighting up? When people talk about themselves, some of the same areas of the brain tend to light up. In addition, areas of the brain associated with feelings of reward are activated as well. These are the same areas of the brain that respond during sex, when ingesting cocaine, and when eating high-sugar foods. In other words, talking about yourself is practically an addiction. And by asking people to talk about themselves, you are feeding their addiction. Makes sense that someone will like you when you do that, right? So, whether you’re on a date, networking at a business event, or trying to build rapport with someone at the negotiating table, asking the other person about themselves is a great way to strengthen the relationship.

Peak performers engage the caudate nucleus to keep themselves in states of flow. They “throttle down” emotions such as fear and anger so they can engage fully with the task at hand. When meditators use the caudate nucleus to throttle back their negative emotions repeatedly, the process becomes automatic, like riding a bike. This makes them resilient in the face of stress. We encountered the nucleus accumbens, another important part of the striatum, in Chapter 2. It’s associated with rewarding experiences and the reinforcement that reward produces in the brain. It’s activated by pleasurable experiences, during which it secretes large amounts of dopamine, the brain’s primary reward neurotransmitter. This reward system plays a role in addiction. Drugs like alcohol, heroin, and cocaine trigger the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. It also kicks in when you find a $20 bill on the beach, have an orgasm, or help yourself to a generous portion of cherry pie. But when a meditator contemplates altruism, her nucleus accumbens lights up. She gets the same rush of dopamine that an addict gets when he sniffs a line of cocaine. Same for the chocoholic unwrapping her Ferrero Rocher truffle. Meditation makes meditators feel good using the exact same neurotransmitters and brain regions active in the addict, as we’ll see in Chapter 5. This reward system explains why long-term meditators maintain a regular practice. They’re addicted to feeling wonderful!

I was well aware this wasn’t a word most lethal operatives like myself would use, but I had always marched to the beat of my own drummer. “You paint quite the scary picture, Professor,” I continued, raising my eyebrows. “Why do I have the feeling this isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this?” Singh smiled. “Not quite the first time, no,” she replied. “I guess I have gone into lecture mode. And it’s a lot to absorb. So let me wind this down. The bottom line is that the rates of substance and behavioral addictions have skyrocketed. Our levels of stress and neurosis have too. The furious pace of our advancements, and the toxicities and manipulations I just described, are outstripping our psyches, which were evolved for a simpler existence.” “Do you have statistics on the extent of the problem?” asked Ashley. “It’s impossible to really get your arms around,” replied Singh, “but I’ll try. In 1980, fewer than three thousand Americans died of a drug overdose. By 2021 that number had grown to over a hundred thousand. More than thirty-fold! And it’s only grown since then. “And these are just the mortality stats. Many times this number are addicts. Estimates vary pretty widely, but I can give you numbers that I believe to be accurate. Fifteen to twenty million Americans are addicted to alcohol. Over twenty-five million suffer from nicotine dependence. Many millions more are addicted to cocaine, or heroin, or meth, or fentanyl—which is a hundred times stronger than morphine—or an ever-growing number of other substances. Millions more are addicted to gambling. Or online shopping. Or porn.” Singh frowned deeply. “When it comes to the internet, cell phones, and other behavioral addictions, the numbers are truly immense. Probably half the population. The average smart phone user now spends over three hours a day on this device. And when it comes to our kids, the rate of phone addiction is even higher. Much higher. In some ways, it’s nearly universal. “Meanwhile, many parents insist their children keep this addiction device with them at all times. They’re thrilled to be able to reach their kids every single second of their lives, and track their every movement.” There was a long, stunned silence in the room. “I could go on for days,” said Singh finally. “But I think that gives you some sense of what we’re currently facing as a society.” I tried to think of something humorous to say. Something to lighten the somber mood, which was my instinctive reaction when things got depressing.  But in this case, I had nothing. Singh had called the current situation a crisis. But even this loaded term couldn’t begin to do it justice.

purse. As she opened it, she saw a small edge of plastic poking out of the inner pocket. Pulling it out, she saw it was a small bag of cocaine from a party a few weeks ago, the night she had signed the contract for Socialites in the City. Looking at it for a moment, she rushed into the kitchen and, after tapping out a small amount, pulled out her credit card and cut it up, quickly and expertly. Making a thin line, she opened a drawer in the kitchen and pulled out a packet of drinking straws. Cutting one in half and then half again, she bent over and snorted the line up her nose. She then turned on the tap, sniffing hard, and then ran her fingers under the water. Taking a few drops of water onto the back of her hand, she snorted the water into her nostril and massaged either side of her nose, stretching the skin and letting the drug absorb into her system. Violetta shook her head and felt the buzz begin. She checked her nose in the mirror and then smiled at herself. ‘Showtime,’ she said, plastering a smile on her face as she left for the party. *

It also pays to wield money with a light touch. The starkness of the bottom line, of reducing complex ideas to dollars and cents, has a way of shutting down debate, blowing away nuance, and narrowing horizons. Neuroscientists have shown that the prospect of making money has a similar effect on the brain as cocaine, which hampers that deeper System 2 thinking.

1 The line separating habits and addictions is often difficult to measure. For instance, the American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry….Addiction is characterized by impairment in behavioral control, craving, inability to consistently abstain, and diminished relationships.” By that definition, some researchers note, it is difficult to determine why spending fifty dollars a week on cocaine is bad, but fifty dollars a week on coffee is okay. Someone who craves a latte every afternoon may seem clinically addicted to an observer who thinks five dollars for coffee demonstrates an “impairment in behavioral control.” Is someone who would prefer running to having breakfast with his kids addicted to exercise? In general, say many researchers, while addiction is complicated and still poorly understood, many of the behaviors that we associate with it are often driven by habit. Some substances, such as drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol, can create physical dependencies. But these physical cravings often fade quickly after use is discontinued. A physical addiction to nicotine, for instance, lasts only as long as the chemical is in a smoker’s bloodstream—about one hundred hours after the last cigarette. Many of the lingering urges that we think of as nicotine’s addictive twinges are really behavioral habits asserting themselves—we crave a cigarette at breakfast a month later not because we physically need it, but because we remember so fondly the rush it once provided each morning. Attacking the behaviors we think of as addictions by modifying the habits surrounding them has been shown, in clinical studies, to be one of the most effective modes of treatment. (Though it is worth noting that some chemicals, such as opiates, can cause prolonged physical addictions, and some studies indicate that a small group of people seem predisposed to seek out addictive chemicals, regardless of behavioral interventions. The number of chemicals that cause long-term physical addictions, however, is relatively small, and the number of predisposed addicts is estimated to be much less than the number of alcoholics and addicts seeking help.) *

I know I belabor this analogy, but I have come to see these teenage years as a construction project. I tell my young patients, and my own children, that this is not their life. Not yet. What they are doing now is building a house. It is a house they will have to live in for the rest of their lives, so they’d better get it right. They will be able to remodel, redecorate, and repair. But they can never rebuild. Everything they put into this house, every emotional scar from a bad relationship, every sexual perversion they give in to, every opportunity they secure for themselves, every drug they allow to interrupt the maturing of their growing brains, will be forever in the foundation of that house. The neuroscientists keep moving their conclusion, but the human brain winds down its developing around age twenty-five. What happens between puberty and the midtwenties in the brain, while it is finishing its development—its hardwiring—involves increased risk taking and peer influence. The reward center is trying to sort out what behaviors lead to rewards so it can lay down some wires, some bricks. Those bricks become part of the foundation, and they are there to stay. If those bricks tell you to like alcohol or cocaine or deviant sex acts, you will be fighting those cravings for the rest of your life. And of course, a child who blows off her grades and winds up at a subpar college will have to move to the back of the line when it comes to finding a job. It all matters.

Don’t fall for it, my friends. Lies are like magnets, drawing us in. If you don’t resist, you will get dragged in. If you’re passive, you will lose. If you’re not careful, you will be fooled. Oh, but I’m too smart. Really? There’s nothing that blinds us more than our own ego. There’s no drug, no shot of whiskey, no line of cocaine with more of a hit than our own pride.

Addiction was a consequence of being raised by street thugs and dealers, where the only substitute available for a mother’s love came in the form of a line of cocaine or, worse, a needle in the arm.