ADDICTS NOT ALL UNIQUE

Lyle was a cocaine dealer. He told people he didn't use his own
product because it didn't make economic sense, but he was lying. He
told people he'd used a little in the past but had never been a
regular customer. This was a lie, too.

He gave up trying to fool his parents about the money. They gradually
figured out that he wasn't making a car payment on the new Camaro
with the money he made delivering pizzas. They finally figured out
everyone that showed up to "visit" him at night wasn't part of his
close social circle. They figured out that he must be doing something
illegal, but in the beginning, they weren't sure what it was.

Lyle had always been a pretty good kid. He hadn't been in trouble
with the law in high school, but he and his brother had never had
much good to say about school. By senior year Lyle quit, he said, to
join the military only to find that they wouldn't take him until he
finished anyway. Disappointed and bored since all his friends had
left for college, Lyle found a new set of friends and started to
party regularly.

Within the year, Lyle had started using cocaine and other assorted drugs.

Coke was his favorite and easiest to get, but expensive, so he
started selling small quantities to offset the cost. To sell, he had
to have "product" around all the time.

As time passed, he was less and less able to keep much coke around to
sell, because it all ended up going up his nose. In order to maintain
his stocks, he began to purchase larger quantities from a higher
level distributor and became indebted up to his eyeballs for the coke
he needed to sell. He needed to sell more coke because he was using
more coke and because he had more around to sell he ended up doing more coke.

As his parents got wise, so did Lyle, and he moved in with his
closest coke buddy to avoid confrontation. By now, the police in his
town were watching him closely, and the local narcotics task force
was preparing to pounce. Lyle didn't know if he was paranoid or if
they really were out to get him. In his confusion, he was totally
unprepared for the arrest.

His lawyer told him to get into a treatment program as soon as
possible, preferably before his first court date.

Lyle continued to insist his problem was dealing not using, right up
until his first unannounced drug test. His positive result for
cocaine metabolites blew the lid off his cover, and it wasn't much
longer before Lyle was able to admit he was a drug addict like the
rest of the people in treatment.