“
He had tried to explain the way he felt to Danny once, about compulsive behavior and time rushing too fast and the Internet and drugs. Danny had only lifted one of his slender, mobile eyebrows and stared at him in smirking confusion. Danny did not think coke and computers were anything alike. But Jude had seen the way people hunched over their screens, clicking the refresh button again and again, waiting for some crucial if meaningless hit of information, and he thought it was almost exactly the same.
”
”
Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box)
“
What would you rather have?"
"Cheeseburger and a small fry. Coke classic. Better yet, dope classic."
"Sure. I'll take a milkshake. What's the special flavor this week, chocolate Jack Daniels?"
"Strawberry scotch."
"Stick one of those paper umbrellas in mine."
"Shove a syringe in mine. And a plastic tombstone. RIP, baby. He was born a rock star. He died a junkie."
"Rock in peace."
[...]
"He wanted the world and lost his soul. [...] Sold it all for rock and roll. Lost his heart in a needle. Found his life in the grave. The road to hell is paved in marijuana leaves. Now he rocks in peace.
”
”
L.F. Blake (The Far Away Years)
“
This was worse than a coke binge. Worse than black tar or the thrill of E. This was the devil himself snaking his way inside of my heart and bending me to his will. This was addiction, quickly morphing into obsession. And somewhere in the clouded fog that was my brain, I knew this was a game I was going to lose.
”
”
A. Zavarelli (Echo (Bleeding Hearts, #1))
“
Of course, using cutting to deal with depression is like snorting coke to cure cancer. The cocaine will make you feel great for a while, but now you're addicted to coke and you have cancer.
”
”
Shaun David Hutchinson (Brave Face)
“
Have you ever been to a funeral where the preacher stands before the friends and loved ones of the deceased and talks about how shitty the person was? How he fucked around on his wife? Or spent his family’s life savings to feed his gambling addiction? How about during his bachelor party when he snorted coke off a hooker’s ass? Me neither. Why is it that we’re fucking saints the moment we die?
”
”
Shantel Tessier (I Dare You (Dare, #1))
“
Define a lot of coffee . . . ,” I said, knowing that my caffeine consumption would probably make Juan Valdez pack up his donkey and run for the hills of Colombia. I was almost embarrassed to admit the amount of coffee I would drink in one day, for fear that he would 5150 me and send me off in a straitjacket to the nearest Caffeine Anonymous meeting. I had recently come to terms with this addiction, realizing that maybe five pots of coffee a day was slightly overdoing it, but I hadn’t accepted the dire consequences until now. Unfortunately, I’m THAT guy. Give me one, I want ten. There is a reason why I still to this day have never done cocaine, because deep down I know that if I did coke the same way I drink coffee, I’d be sucking dicks at the bus stop every morning for an eight ball.
”
”
Dave Grohl (The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music)
“
I have done coke off the porcelain backs of public bathroom toilets, but mirrored trays lend some faux class to inhaling cartilage-eating drugs up your nose. The idea becomes alluring and a little more acceptable when mirrored trays are involved. "Excuse me, sir.. I will have some of that high class cocaine".
”
”
Helen Knott (Becoming a Matriarch: A Memoir)
“
it's been almost twelve years since I took a drink, and I'm still struck by disbelief when I see someone with a half-finished glass of wine near at hand. I want to get up, go over, and yell 'Finish that! Why don't you finish that?' into his or her face. I found the idea of social drinking ludicrous - if you didn't want to get drunk, why not have a Coke?
”
”
Stephen King (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)
“
Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had read a headline about Diet Coke once, which was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.
”
”
Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1))
“
Over the years, Skye sampled every drug she could find, and like many addicts, had a working knowledge of pharmacology. She snorted coke and swallowed pills. She took downers—orange and red Seconal, red and ivory Dalmane, Miltown, Librium, Luminal, Nembutal, and Quaaludes. Blue devils, red birds, purple hearts. Enough of them sank her in a kind of coma, where she watched her own limbs suspended in front of her in syrup. For a party, there was Benzedrine, rushing in her veins and making her talk for an hour in one long sentence. Day to day, she carried yellow tablets loose in her pockets, Dilaudid and Percodan, and chewed them in the back of classrooms. But her favorite was the greatest pain reliever of them all, named for the German word for hero.
”
”
Frederick Weisel (Teller)
“
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.
”
”
Holly Whitaker (Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol)
“
That first year in L.A., Richard became addicted to cocaine. It was 1978, and coke was the “in” drug, selling for $100 per gram. This was prior to the Colombian cartels applying modern corporate techniques to the importation and distribution of cocaine in the States, which brought the price of a gram down to thirty-five dollars by the mid-eighties.
”
”
Philip Carlo (The Night Stalker: The Disturbing Life and Chilling Crimes of Richard Ramirez)
“
There are two kinds of drug addicts, the ones who want to go up, and the ones who want to go down. I could never understand the coke guys—why would anyone want to feel more present, more busy? I was a downer guy, I wanted to melt into my couch and feel wonderful while watching movies over and over again. I was a quiet addict, not the bull-in-a-china-shop kind.
”
”
Matthew Perry (Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing)
“
I once read the most widely understood word in the whole world is ‘OK’, followed by ‘Coke’, as in cola. I think they should do the survey again, this time checking for ‘Game Over’.
Game Over is my favorite thing about playing video games. Actually, I should qualify that. It’s the split second before Game Over that’s my favorite thing.
Streetfighter II - an oldie but goldie - with Leo controlling Ryu. Ryu’s his best character because he’s a good all-rounder - great defensive moves, pretty quick, and once he’s on an offensive roll, he’s unstoppable. Theo’s controlling Blanka. Blanka’s faster than Ryu, but he’s really only good on attack. The way to win with Blanka is to get in the other player’s face and just never let up. Flying kick, leg-sweep, spin attack, head-bite. Daze them into submission.
Both players are down to the end of their energy bars. One more hit and they’re down, so they’re both being cagey. They’re hanging back at opposite ends of the screen, waiting for the other guy to make the first move. Leo takes the initiative. He sends off a fireball to force Theo into blocking, then jumps in with a flying kick to knock Blanka’s green head off. But as he’s moving through the air he hears a soft tapping. Theo’s tapping the punch button on his control pad. He’s charging up an electricity defense so when Ryu’s foot makes contact with Blanka’s head it’s going to be Ryu who gets KO’d with 10,000 volts charging through his system.
This is the split second before Game Over.
Leo’s heard the noise. He knows he’s fucked. He has time to blurt ‘I’m toast’ before Ryu is lit up and thrown backwards across the screen, flashing like a Christmas tree, a charred skeleton. Toast.
The split second is the moment you comprehend you’re just about to die. Different people react to it in different ways. Some swear and rage. Some sigh or gasp. Some scream. I’ve heard a lot of screams over the twelve years I’ve been addicted to video games.
I’m sure that this moment provides a rare insight into the way people react just before they really do die. The game taps into something pure and beyond affectations. As Leo hears the tapping he blurts, ‘I’m toast.’ He says it quickly, with resignation and understanding. If he were driving down the M1 and saw a car spinning into his path I think he’d in react the same way.
Personally, I’m a rager. I fling my joypad across the floor, eyes clenched shut, head thrown back, a torrent of abuse pouring from my lips.
A couple of years ago I had a game called Alien 3. It had a great feature. When you ran out of lives you’d get a photo-realistic picture of the Alien with saliva dripping from its jaws, and a digitized voice would bleat, ‘Game over, man!’
I really used to love that.
”
”
Alex Garland
“
Of the Poet’s Youth"
When the man behind the counter said, “You pay
by the orifice,” what could we do but purchase them all?
Ah, Sandy, vou were clearly the deluxe doll, modish and pert
in your plastic nurse whites, official hostess to our halcyon days,
where you bobbed in the doorway of our dishabille apartment,
a block downwind from the stockyards. Holding court on
the corroded balcony, K. and I passed hash brownies, collecting
change for the building’s monthly pool to predict which balcony
would fall off next. That’s when K. was fucking M. and M. was
fucking J., and even B. and I threw down once on the glass-speckled
lawn, adrift in the headlights of his El Camino. Those were immortal
times, Sandy! Coke wasn’t addictive yet, condoms prevented herpes
and men were only a form of practice for the Russian novel
we foolishly hoped our lives would become. Now it’s a Friday night,
sixteen years from there. Don’t the best characters know better
than to live too long? My estranged husband house-sits for a spoiled
cockatoo while saving to buy his own place. My lover’s gone back
to his gin and the farm-team fiancée he keeps in New York.
What else to do but read Frank O’Hara to my tired three-year-old?
When I put him to bed, he mutters “more sorry” as he turns into sleep.
Tonight, I find you in a box I once marked “The Past.” Well,
therapy’s good for some things, Sandy, but who’d want to forgive
a girl like that? Frank says Destroy yourself if you don’t know!
Deflated, you’re simply the smile that surrounds a hole.
I don’t know anything.
”
”
Erin Belieu
“
The United States of America has now reached a whole new level of patriarchal absurdity. You mean they massacred the Indians, enslaved the Africans, cut down all the trees, poisoned all the rivers, and extinguished or imprisoned all the animals for THIS, this hellhole of bombast and hamburgers and opioid addictions and cardboard-box houses and pretend ideas? You mean they used up all the oxygen on 4th of July firecrackers and forcing kids to pledge allegiance to the flag every goddam day, drank Coke till they choked, spat tobaccy till they puked, fought cancer (but only for people with lots of money), nestled in Nestlés, slurped slurpees, burped burpees, handed on herpes, Tasered the wayward, jailed the frail and tortured about a million billion chickens (then fried and ate them), just so people can drive around and shoot each other and create GoFundMe sites to pay the hospital bills?
”
”
Lucy Ellmann (Things Are Against Us)
“
ghost. No way am I gonna get bullied by anyone or anything—especially ghosts. “Mattie, you okay?” Mrs. Olson is eyeballing me with concern. I haven’t moved to get out of the car. “All good, Mrs. O,” I smile weakly at her. “Just tired.” Taking a deep breath, I open the door and force myself out. I am not afraid, I chant over and over. The other kids are still at school, so the house is pretty empty. Mrs. O had told me earlier we had a new foster kid in the house, but I’m betting he’s at school too. She sends me upstairs with the promise to bring me a sandwich and a glass of milk. The doctors said no caffeine for a while, so my favorite drink in the world, Coke, is off limits. At least until I can escape and get to a gas station. I need it like an addict needs crack. My room is exactly as I left it, the bed turned down and my clothes thrown into a corner. A simple white dresser and mirror, desk, and a twin bed covered in my worn out quilt decorate the room.
”
”
Apryl Baker (The Ghost Files (The Ghost Files, #1))
“
I felt like a coked-out sloth. Can sloths do cocaine? It’s made from a jungle plant, right? What if sloths figured out the recipe and started making it? We’d have an epidemic of drug-addicted sloths. We’d have to change their name from sloths to fasts. We’d also have to invent sloth rehabilitation centers complete with beautiful waterfalls and sloth sharing circles of trust.
”
”
Bunmi Laditan (Confessions of a Domestic Failure)
“
You know how some people develop addictions to manage their overwhelming emotions? Some people become alcoholics, coke fiends, potheads, pill-poppers, over-eaters, sex addicts or meth-heads. Well, Ann seemed to have a similar addiction to anger, he concluded. Feeling angry served the dual purpose of keeping others at a safe distance while drowning out all other competing and overwhelming emotions.
”
”
Sage Steadman (Ann, Not Annie)
“
Whatever, sure, on the surface, Novo had taken his vein, and that hadn’t been the first time a female had done that to him. And hello, she was in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines. The experience, though? The feel of her lips on the skin of his wrist, the subtle pulls, the lick of her tongue when she was finished? Fuck his drug addiction. Give him a lifetime of that and he was never going to need another line of coke again.
”
”
J.R. Ward (Blood Fury (Black Dagger Legacy, #3))
“
I quickly placed the coke back down on the table and glanced at the others. “Did someone want diet coke?” I asked, wondering whose drink I’d ended up with by accident. As much as I argued against Geraldine getting our food and drinks all the time, she insisted on doing it and never forgot our preferences so I doubted she would have made that mistake.
Before anyone could respond, Geraldine and Angelica burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, drawing our attention away from Diego’s display of self pity.
“I g-g-got you diet!” she cried, barely able to force the words out between her laughter.
“What?” I asked in confusion.
“The mayo in your sandwich was half fat too!” Angelica added, clinging to Geraldine as she wiped tears from beneath her eyes.
“Why?” I asked in confusion.
“H- h -hell week!” Geraldine spluttered through her laughter, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
My lips parted and I threw an extra dose of false outrage into my expression in response to the ridiculous prank, placing a hand over my heart. “How could you, Geraldine?” I gasped. “I thought we were friends!”
Her laughter turned to howling and it was actually kinda addictive, forcing a laugh from me as I exchanged an amused look with Darcy.
(tory)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (The Reckoning (Zodiac Academy, #3))
“
When you say you were a crack whore,” a therapist once asked. “No, no, no, coke whore,” I replied. Big difference.
”
”
Christine MacDonald (Face Value: From Working the Pole to Baring My Soul)
“
Ten or twenty or thirty years of addiction—it doesn’t matter. Every fiend in the street is trying to re-create that first perfect shot of dope or coke, the one that told him this was what he wanted in life.
”
”
David Simon (The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighbourhood (Canons))
“
Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had once read a headline about Diet Coke that was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.
”
”
Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club)
“
Isn’t everyone angry? If they’re not, they should be,” Robert said. “Not like you. You’re a fucking rageaholic. You don’t have to be, you know.” Robert saw a glimmer of something. Ted had lots to be angry about, but he was calm. “What about you? Weren’t you ever angry?” Ted nodded. “Yes, I spent the first forty-four years of my life in a rage.” “What changed? You’re not like that now.” “I realized that it was killing me, almost literally, but surely figuratively. Anger is an addiction, just like all those other things we do.” “That’s crazy. Anger isn’t a substance. You can’t be addicted to it.” “You just keep telling yourself that, Bob.” Ted’s use of the diminutive jarred Robert. For a moment he felt a swell of rage and wanted to punch Ted. But Ted just stood there, calmly, not quite smiling, but relaxed. The urge to hit him deflated. “Okay, so supposing that, as you say, I am addicted to anger? What do you mean?” “It’s the same thing as being addicted to booze, or blow. When you’re angry, you don’t have to see the sadness in your kid’s face or hear your wife sighing as she thinks about what a mistake it was to marry you. When you’re angry it consumes everything, just like the booze did for you or the coke did for me.” Robert had the sense of a door cracking open, and just for a moment, a tantalizing vista beyond. “So . . . how did you get past it? What is it like to be . . . calm?” “What is it like? It’s fucking peaceful is what it is. It’s like leaving stormy seas and coming into a safe harbor. The noise is gone. The red haze is gone. Even though my wife left me, she was the catalyst. A while after she remarried she came to visit, to give us both closure, I guess. I saw something in her I barely recognized. After all the crap I did to her, she wasn’t angry; she was just happy to be on to a new life. We had fed each other’s rage but now she was happy. It completely threw me, but it made me think. “It was hard, because once I stopped being angry I had to learn new habits and I had to face up to everything my rage destroyed.” “So . . . why did you do it? It sounds painful.” “It is painful, but listen, you stupid fuck. Just because it’s painful doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Yes, it was hard. It hurt to own up to what I had done to my wife and child. The reward is that I’m alive now in a way I couldn’t be when I was doing coke and angry all the time.
”
”
Jennifer Lesher (Raising John)
“
The only problem I had with Ashley’s ass is that she had a serious addiction to sniffing coke.
”
”
Mz. Toni (Lil Mama From The Projects 2: Love In The Ghetto)
“
A Mulholland Backflip consists of the following: a hit of Ecstasy, followed by a speedball, followed by a handful of Lunesta, followed by a crushed Plexidil—a drug that was only briefly on the market in 2012 and that was designed to treat restless leg syndrome but also accidentally ignited dormant and sometimes nonexistent gambling addictions as a side effect—placed under the tongue. Chase with a Coke Zero. If the Coke Zero is not available, then a Mountain High Super Plus Turbo Charge Blue or a Bombinator Leaded Super Neurofreeze Orange Explosion (only sold in some parts of the Rockies) will work, but not (repeat: not) a Bolt Fahrenheit 1000 Blue-Strawberry Bang Bang Rainbow, which will interact with the Plexidil and perhaps lead to an ischemic event, as is indicated on the long list of contraindications on the Bolt Fahrenheit can. If the Mulholland Backflip is executed correctly, what it does is light up the pleasure centers of your brain so that you are a veritable slot machine of flashing lightbulbs and energetic noises, which is almost enough to drown out the signs of your burgeoning irrelevance and also the cold war that your wife has been waging upon you for reasons that you cannot determine, since you know that the potential number of reasons for this is so vast that you cannot ask a direct question about it without incriminating yourself.
”
”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Long Island Compromise)
“
Star businesses needn’t be anything to do with technology. Only one of my five stars is a technology venture. The longest-running star business is surely the Coca-Cola Company, incorporated in 1888 and a consistent star business until the 1990s. For over a century, despite two world wars, the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression, Coca-Cola remained a star. The global market for cola increased on trend by more than 10 per cent every year and Coke remained the dominant player in that market. The value of the company increased with remarkable consistency, even bucking the trend and rising from 1929 to 1945.The company used World War Two to its immense advantage. After Pearl Harbor, Coke boss Robert Woodruff pledged to ‘see that every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is and whatever it costs our company’. The US administration exempted Coca-Cola that was sold to the military from all sugar rationing. The US Army gave Coke employees installing plants behind the front lines the pseudo-military status of ‘technical observers’. These ‘Coca-Cola Colonels’ were exempt from the draft but actually wore Army uniforms and carried military rank according to their company salaries. General Eisenhower, a self-confessed Coke addict, cabled urgently from North Africa on 29 June, 1943: ‘On early convoy request shipment three million bottled Coca-Cola (filled) and complete equipment for bottling, washing, capping same quantity twice monthly . . .’2 Coke became familiar throughout Europe during the war and continued its remarkably cosy arrangement with the US military in Germany and Japan during the postwar occupation. From the 1950s, Coke rode the wave of internationalisation. Roberto Goizueta, the CEO from 1980 to 1997, created more wealth for shareholders than any other CEO in history. He became the first CEO who was not a founder to become a billionaire. The business now rates a value of $104 billion.
”
”
Richard Koch (The Star Principle: How it can make you rich)
“
was on my fourth cup of coffee, so while my body felt dead, my mind was racing. I felt like a coked-out sloth. Can sloths do cocaine? It’s made from a jungle plant, right? What if sloths figured out the recipe and started making it? We’d have an epidemic of drug-addicted sloths. We’d have to change their name from sloths to fasts. We’d also have to invent sloth rehabilitation centers complete with beautiful waterfalls and sloth sharing circles of trust. I pulled out my phone.
”
”
Bunmi Laditan (Confessions of a Domestic Failure)