THE SECRET LIFE OF....CASUAL COKE USERS

Dabbling In The White Dust

When then-senior Marcus Mattingly was arrested in the spring for
cocaine possession, the campus lost a major supply line of the drug.
But apparently it wasn't enough to stamp out use. Students on campus
admit to varying degrees of use of the stimulant. And though we all
saw the egg-splatter anti-drug commercials years ago, some students
maintain that it's possible to be a casual coke user without
developing the stereotypical drug habit.

"I do it maybe once every two months," said Patrick*, a senior. "I
went through a period [when I wasn't at Tufts] where I did [cocaine]
more often because it was one-third the price that it is here. It's
not that terrible. Freud wrote a lot about it."

"I've done it maybe four times in the last year," said Kim*, a
senior. "I know I have enough self-control not to get in too deep with it."

Sarah*, another senior, echoed Kim's sentiment. "At first, it's not a
drug that's easy to get addicted to - unless you have an addictive
personality, which I don't have," she said.

But Sarah has heard horror stories of addiction. "With an addictive
personality, I've heard you can do it only one time and become
addicted," she said.

Like Patrick, Kim and Sarah, senior Dawn* entered the world of
cocaine use with more of a stumble than a jump.

"I used to think coke was pretty heinous," Dawn* recalled. "My excuse
was that I was worried I'd like it too much. But I got over it and
tried it. I can't exactly remember why; I think I just figured I'd
never know until I tried."

When she tried cocaine for the first time, she found the experience
to be somewhat surreal. "I thought, 'Man, I'm doing blow! This is
kind of funny, looking back on what I thought about coke before,'"
Dawn said. "I didn't really feel like I was doing something bad; it
was just kind of unexpected. I liked it."

Sarah first tried the drug when she spent a semester abroad her
junior year. "I met this guy while I was abroad who was really
wealthy and into clubbing and stuff like that," she said. The friend,
a former professional athlete, used cocaine on a regular basis along
with most of his former-athlete friends.

"One day we were out at some club, and he offered it to me, and I
tried it," Sarah said. From that point on, she used cocaine nearly
every time she went out with the friend - which was almost every
Saturday for three months.

Kim made a more gradual move to cocaine. "I tried snorting Ritalin
once, and it was an enjoyable experience," she said. "So that made me
more comfortable with the idea of trying coke."

She used the drug for the first time her junior year. "I was drinking
with my boyfriend and his friends," she said. "It was one of their
birthdays, and someone had some. I was drunk, so I wanted to try it."

Most students who dabble with the drug do not think they will become
addicted. They cite two deterrents to developing a habit: the price
tag and the "hangover."

"It's way too expensive to be addicted to it," Patrick said. "The day
after you do it, you don't crave it. [Cocaine's] not something you
can function on. I see myself as a person who likes to function."

"I do it so rarely because of how expensive it is and because of how
terrible it makes me feel the next day," Kim said. "And because I
don't want to like it too much."

"I can see how it would be an addictive drug the night of using it,
and I really enjoyed the way it made me feel that night," she added.
"But I literally got a cold and was sick from doing it for a week
[after the first time]. The hangover from it is really bad."

Sarah found that the drug had a permanent effect on her immune
system, which has been weak since she contracted pneumonia twice
before she was eight months old. After years of healthy living, and
with lots of help from her mother, Sarah was able to strengthen her
immune system.

"Once I did coke, I shot that back down again," Sarah said, adding
that after her first time using cocaine, she was sick for three days
and "felt dead."

Since returning to the United States, Sarah has stopped using
cocaine. "Doing [cocaine] wasn't worth what it's done to my
immunity," she said.

Dawn's perspective on cocaine addiction is different. She stopped
doing the drug ten weeks ago after going through a period in which
her drug use got "way out of hand." She was using cocaine every
weekend, multiple nights in a row.

"I never used to buy coke myself, but then I really started to buy my
own this summer, all the time," Dawn said. But at the beginning of
this semester, friends of hers who had gone abroad - and who were
also frequent cocaine users - returned to campus.

"When the whole gang got back together again this year the proverbial
shit hit the fan," she said. "Once I ran out of Adderall, and I had a
shitload of work to do. So I railed a few before class, which was a
really bad idea."

Dawn decided to quit the drug - and she had a monetary incentive to
do so. "I also made a cash bet with my friend that I could quit, so
that kind of helps as motivation," she said. "The bet is on until senior week."

Despite her hiatus, Dawn admits that the drug remains on her mind. "I
think about it all the time... I get really tempted," she said. "I
just went to L.A. for Thanksgiving, and my friend was railing some of
the best blow he'd ever had, and I wanted to so badly. But I know if
I do have a little bit, it'll be, like, the end - I'll just want more."

The drug's illegality doesn't seem to be a major concern for most
students who use it. "It was always hammered in my head that coke is
bad; coke will get you killed," Dawn said. "But then I realized that
people are hypocrites, and that there is a big fat slice of the
population who subscribe to all types of addictions. Me dabbling with
some yeyo isn't going to make anything worse."

"It's like other drugs or alcohol - [the legal repercussions] cross
your mind, but you're thinking more about the drug and what it's
going to feel like once you start doing it," Sarah said. "Plus,
everybody there was doing it."

"Being abroad is like Las Vegas," she added. "Hopefully, whatever
happened there will never come back to America."

*Names have been changed.