I’m currently 20 years old and attending college in California. I absolutely love it here except for some aspects and struggles I go through daily. When I was a freshman in college, I was thrown into the party life and meeting new people, which I took to liking quickly, like most fresh college kids. I was completely adapted to my surroundings, partying majority of the week by getting drunk and blowing off class. I was going downhill, but I was still passing my classes, so I assumed I was completely fine.

Starting around November however, my partying went from drinking and occasionally smoking to harder drugs. I was being reckless, occasionally trying ecstasy and then cocaine. I will always remember the first time I ever tried coke. It was probably a Tuesday night and I was hanging with some other girls in a guy’s dorm room in a different building than mine. The guys were absolutely, I’ll admit, hot and I wanted to impress them and try to make an impression to get invited and party with them more often. Soon after arriving, they pulled out a bag of which they explained was coke, and then started making lines for themselves completely casually.

I tried to hide my shock and all my friends and I exchanged glances with each other, trying to maintain our cool. None of us had thought about cocaine before or trying it, but here we were thrown into the option of it. After we told them that none of us had tried coke before, the guys said they would give it to us for free in honor of it being our first times, which then they said was a very good offer considering how expensive it is.

All of us girls were hesitant, but eventually my friends did lines and so I was pushed right along, and before I knew it, I had tried my first line. It hit me seemingly instantly and after that I was purely happy. I knew I was on it and I didn’t care, I was absolutely carelessly happy. It felt like I had so much energy and happiness stored up that was being released all at once. I’ll never forget the feeling of my first line.

After that night we all went back to our lives, laughing the next morning at our “crazy college lives” and acting like taking the coke was nothing. One of the guys from the night before took a liking to me and we starting talking and texting. He invited me over back to his room to hang out. I had no intention of doing coke again, but when I got there, it was right there in front of me again. I was alone this time with him, my friends hadn’t come. Before I knew it I was doing it again, acting like I was already pro, and once again I felt that heaven. I remember begging for more and more lines though, and he was turning me down, smiling and saying how expensive it was and that I should slow down. So I gave up that day, but I knew I wanted more.

Before I knew it, we had a relationship going, informal friends with benefits, but we still had feelings for each other at the same time sort of thing. This tended to happen all the time it seemed in college. I would have gladly committed to him, but he wanted his “single” status. I didn’t care, I knew deep down he cared for me, sort of. Soon we were getting closer and closer, and I became known as his drug buddy, constantly sleeping over and doing coke with him. I started paying for the drugs too, I felt bad and my use had gone up significantly. My friends kind of warned me, but they didn’t want to seem like they were controlling me or anything, so they kind of let me do my own thing. They just told me to be careful. I ignored them. I could stop anytime I wanted, I told myself. Then suddenly, I couldn’t.

I craved it all the time, and before I knew it, I realized I had an addiction. This scared me shitless, and I completely went dry, stopping all my use and trying to fight the addiction. I was withdrawing a little, but not too much that it really impacted my life, and I went on for a week miserable. Eventually, mostly because I really missed hanging out with Ricky, I started going back over to his room and once again, the coke was thrown at me. I ignored it once, but the next time I came over I didn’t have enough willpower and had to take a little. Coke was too mouthwatering to my brain to handle.

Ricky didn’t care that I was addicted; he was more than I was, and he only worried when I would freak out when I couldn’t get more or he didn’t have any for me when i would hit him up for some. My plan to stop the addiction failed. I started ignoring the fact I had a problem, yes denial took me over, and by summer break I was so completely hooked that everyone knew and called me a druggie. My friends were still there, but I could tell they were fake and almost fearful towards me, the only person still in my life was Ricky. He was however, less interested in me as time went on. He became to me a drug dealer more than boyfriend and soon he was treating me like the junkie I was. We stopped sleeping together based on feelings and I’ll regrettibly admit I basically did use my body and seduce him for free coke. I really was that downhill. I had blown through a good portion of my savings and I was seriously loosing myself. My grades suffered incredibly and so did my well being.

When school finally ended I was absolutely and completely screwed. I went home scared; I had no idea what to do. Surely my family would notice my problem and I worried how I would find drugs. I debated coming clean to them and I debating finding a drug source to keep my problem secret for three months. My parents noticed almost instantly I was messed up. I had changed who I was, more edgy, and twitchy. I tried so hard to keep my calm, but they knew I was hooked to something pretty easily. My parents confronted me the second day home and I broke down to my mom, telling her everything. Instantly they were angry, sad, scared, embarrassed, everything. It was living hell. Plus, I was withdrawing for not having coke or a source of getting it. I told my parents I honestly needed help and that I simply wasn’t strong enough to get through this by myself. 

I was admitted to Vista Hill in San Diego, they specialize for cocaine addictions, and I was absolutely terrified and embarrassed I was actually doing this at age 18. VH, Vista Hill, was absolutely insane. Some people were worse than me and some were better, I got along with some girls and were terrified of others. The ones that had been addiction to coke for years made me realize I could never ever let myself get to that point. I made a good friend named Georgia easily, she was exactly like me, college girl that gone astray. We had the same group counselor, for mild addiction use, and Ruth, our group leader and main therapist was absolutely amazing. When it seemed like everyone had given up one me, as in I was failing to come through with therapy and my detox successfully, she never once changed how she thought of me or how she valued me as a person. She had the upmost faith in me and without her I simply would not have come through. After summer, I was pretty much fine. I was definitely still addicted to coke, I craved it constantly, and my brain would wander to thinking about memories of doing lines more than anything else in my entire life, but I ignored it. I actually took up tumblr to ignore my feelings for coke. I was out of rehab after four months, Georgia also, and she had actually come from Arizona, so we cried and said goodbye and we still talk often to this day. I went to a local community college for my sophomore year because I needed to maintain stability and not be reminded of my old school. My high school friends were good kids and those were the ones I grew back to being close with, I really appreciate them, they were a good influence on me. 

Currently, I’m attending the same school I did freshman year as I made it my personal challenge to do well at the school I had gone so wrong at and I wanted to fight away all my freshman year memories. I have purposely ignored and not talked to any of my former friends or acquaintances. I have also eliminated Ricky from my life entirely, I doubt he even still attends school; he was in much worse shape than I was for his addiction.

I am doing absolutely great, I do drink still and party sometimes, but not once have I put myself in a situation around cocaine, and I never will again. Sometimes it gets insanely tough to fight the feeling to take coke again, although I’ve been clean for over a year, I still do find myself day dreaming about the feelings cocaine gave me, but then I just think about all the pain and hardship it brought me and somehow that’s enough to get me through the day with a smile on my face, knowing I’ve changed my life back around and I’m thankful for that.