I had the opportunity to speak at length with ALL the long-term drug addicts in the area where I live, people who remained addicted to hard drugs for decades, often having survived heroin/opiate addiction before developing dependence on cocaine/crack, very rare people, able to compare not only the short-term effects or the ways in which each drug creates addiction, but also the subtle long-term psychological differences, those “weak signals” in the middle of a storm, which only prolonged use over time can make one fully perceive.
All these people, despite the enormous differences among them in psychology and life experience, told me the same thing, confirming a phrase uttered by one of them and which well sums up the concept; I report it below, with minimal changes: “when I was using heroin my life was destroyed by it and I risked my skin because of the overdose risk BUT …I WAS STILL MYSELF, with crack maybe I don’t risk dying, BUT I AM ANOTHER PERSON, I THINK WITH ANOTHER MIND”.
I absolutely agree with this statement and I have verified its truth in numerous people including myself; referring to a comic and film series I will make an analogy which in my opinion explains well its underlying message, the essence of the sentence and of the testimonies I collected: In Marvel’s X-Men saga it is hypothesized that the genes responsible for our evolution can be stimulated, accidentally or intentionally, generating in each individual an early mutation toward another evolutionary stage.
Since evolution is a mechanism that proceeds by trial and error, each human being evolves differently, toward a different “species”, so for example someone becomes super-strong, someone grows wings and flies, others acquire extremely powerful psychic powers, others regenerate very rapidly and can heal from mortal wounds in a few seconds; in short, in each human being a different mutation occurs and it cannot be predicted before “activating” the mutation.
HERE, if one takes derivatives of the coca leaf, and particularly in the case of crack, something similar happens regarding the person’s psychology: everyone “changes” psychologically in a different way, and there is no way to understand in advance the nature of the change.
Yes of course, some effects are very common, snorted cocaine tends in most cases to give a sort of “sense of omnipotence” which often translates into increased aggressiveness, while the state of pleasure reached tends to make one “inert”, by which I mean basically indifferent, even when very serious/unpleasant things are happening around us...BUT THE FUNDAMENTAL POINT is that one literally BECOMES SOMEONE ELSE, it is as if an “alternative” version of ourselves, sprung from nowhere, manifested itself and took control, often without us even realizing it!
Under the effect of cocaine/crack, facts/circumstances/memories are evaluated very differently, aspects and/or nuances are noticed that were previously invisible/unknown and in general our judgment is significantly altered, and the way this happens is individual and absolutely unpredictable in advance.
I reached the conviction that the use of cocaine and/or crack induces a sort of split personality (more properly D.I.D., Dissociative Identity Disorder); the first time I observed and described this behavior was with a person very special to me, whom I called Miriam in the book dedicated to her, and below I report the link to the relevant chapter:
Initially I thought it was simply one of the immediate effects of drug intake destined to disappear together with its elimination, but today my fear is that, with intense/prolonged use, this effect tends to become stable and persist even when the drug is no longer taken.
The fascinating thing, and the most painful for me in my personal relationship with Miriam, is that the two (or more) personalities tend to COEXIST STABLY, as if inside the same body, regardless of the behaviors of the moment, the two personalities were ALWAYS present, each with its own evaluation and judgment, with the consequence of making both the person and the relationships maintained by that person with the rest of the community intrinsically “unreliable”.