Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [41]
The 10:30 smoke break on my first Tuesday night in Charleston marked the first time in my life that I had ever seen any hardcore drug: I saw a guy holding two rocks of crack-cocaine in his hand. At first I didn’t know what they were—they looked like over-sized bits of Chiclets gum—but then I saw him make a trade off with another guy, and I was able to draw my own conclusion. Frightened almost, I was filled with feelings difficult to put into words. I was remorseful and angry and, for some reason, guilty, all at the same time. I hadn’t even touched the rocks, but I felt so ashamed that a drug trade had happened right there in front of me. Wow. Right there in front of me.
But that’s how it works. I’d read plenty of articles and books and seen movies. It’s one thing that drugs are everywhere in the media, but not until you see it firsthand or until someone you know is affected by a hardcore drug like crack that you really start to realize the reality of it all.
Wait a minute. Hold on a second. Was that…? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Holy shit. That was crack!
Even the stories I’d heard up to that point were taken with a grain of salt. Easy E’s drug addiction was just that: an illegal, life-sacrificing drug addiction. I hadn’t taken it seriously. “Those streets. Man, I tell ya, those streets are crazy. Hey, would you mind passing the ketchup?” I never took what I heard as serious as it really was. I’d read plenty about guys like him. Good life, faces adversity, turns to drugs as a means to vent his frustrations. But, for whatever reason, it wasn’t until I actually saw those two crack rocks in that guy’s hand that it hit home, that it began to really register with me as a real threat.
And it didn’t help my mental state after witnessing the transaction that crack is the worst drug of them all: highly addictive, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture. It’s just too easy. For $5, crack will get you as high as Ben Franklin’s kite and wanting to go back for more a half hour later. You can’t get enough. You have to have it. So you smoke it or inject it in your body for a week and then you find yourself hooked. And that’s that. Not much you can do from that point. Prolonged use means severe personality disturbances, inability to sleep, appetite loss, and paranoid psychosis, all symptoms that I would see plenty of during my seventy days in the shelter. Crack ruins lives before people even realize they’ve been ruined.
Seeing those two crack rocks sitting so nonchalantly in that guy’s hand, wishing that Sarge had poked his head outside by chance to witness the exchange, also brought home my preconceived notion that many of these guys had more than just a problem that a swift kick in the behind could cure. I knew going into my project in Charleston that alcohol and drugs and mental disorders ran rampant on the streets and in the homeless shelters of America, disorders that require rehabilitation and medicine and counselors. The only revolutionary discovery I was able to make for myself was that a lot of those guys with those problems didn’t even seem to really want help. They were content with the release that drugs and alcohol gave them. A five-dollar high was worth much more than facing the difficult task of going through a rigorous rehab program. Forget the chemical imbalances that these drugs create in the user. In a completely sober state of mind, a lot of guys didn’t even want to quit. While some looked forward to their weekly meetings with their case managers at Crisis Ministries, others dreaded the idea of having to meet with them. All they wanted