Funny thing, I recall fondly my times with LSD, I recall very fondly my times with opium or with qualuudes but I don't have such fond memories of the years I spent with blow. Even with the women, it was the gross excess that got me. Coke was fine when it was a small addition to a fine time out but it all too quickly turned into "let's not go out.... clubing takes too much time out of our snorting" and then not too long before it got to snorting a couple of lines and then peering out between the curtains for 10 minutes before...... snorting another line. And this was good and often excelent coke. Strange that I gained an ability to moderate it's use only after I had intentionaly divorced myself from anyone who could get it. I tried everything from giving it to a trusted person (didn't work because I could always weedle it out of her) to dumping grams of it in liquers that were so sweet one couldn't sip but a shot or two (didn't work because I figured I could just dilute it and still finish up a bottle in a few days). the problem with coke is that the clever person can always get around their own safeguards and their strength of will diminishes rather rapidly.
And base? bad bad bad idea. We had a certain level of honor in my group, even where coke was concerned but that all got washed away when we started basing it.
We had lots and lots of it. I recall sitting in a room with a bag and a big mirror there being 4 or 5 or 10 people in the room, all looking at me. At first I would go through the trouble of laying out 20 nice lines. Then it got to 10. Then my associates and I would start fucking with people. Lay out 9 for 10 people. In those days there was protocol. The giver would take his first so as to not confuse the recipients and assure them that if someone accidently spilled the mirror - the giver wasn't insulted.
So the last person would be shorted and figure that one of the others fucked him. Then we would lay out 11 and see what happened to the last one. Then we would conspicuously not take any ourselves, when the mirror came back to us empty we would make a big deal out of it. Sometimes we would wait and only make a deal out of it after we saw the hunger in their eyes, not the hunger for that first line, but for the third of the evening - before their brains were working fully on the drug and still had some dopamine or whatever left, before everything was depleated and they were working on the effects of the coke alone but after they were in that place they didn't want to leave (if you've had good coke - you know that place and you know how precariously you stay there). I started laying out fat lines next to thin ones, short ones next to long ones, breaking the code and not laying out even little rails. Would people pick and chose? would they leave the thin one for the next person? Oh once in a while someone would take the razor and redistribute his or hers but I took to leaving the razor off of the mirror.
We would do elaborate spirals so people would have to guage how much to take and how much the others might take to ensure that I had some when the mirror got back to me - no lines, no dependence upon the giver to equal everything out. I would alter the place and person I handed the mirror to so they would have problems figuring out how to have everyone get their share and still have the mirror arrive back to me with a line left. The best part (now) was how I had all these people sruggling to please me but not to the point where they didn't get their line, after all, what was the point then?
I recall a birthday party where I spelled out H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y, but there were 15 people a the party including myself. I was flattered and impressed when the mirror came back with two Y's left.
The point here is that this stuff is crap. I wound up demeaning people when I had the power of pleasure over them and they wound up using me - and they never ever figured out what we were doing to them. I am alternately ashamed of my actions and amazed that I had that much power.
cocaine is a mistifying, powerful, dangerous and ultimately painful drug. If anyone can figure out how to have fun on it and walk away the instant that stops - good for them.
I am not one of them no matter what little stories I tell myself.