Probably influenced by the glorification of drugs in the media and classic films like Al Pacino’s Scarface and Matt Dillon’s Drugstore Cowboy,there came a point in my life (when I was about 15 years of age) where my curiosity got the better of me and I decided I wanted to try every drug. (Of course famous films continue to glorify films even nowadays with the likes of Cocaine Cowboys and American Gangster hitting the big screen and theatre.
I achieved this ambition by about 21, starting with cannabis and LSD - very cheap in the 1990s. When I was old enough to shuffle past doormen I progressed onto ‘party-drugs’ like amphetamine (speed), and MDMA/MDA (ecstacy). Ecstacy was my favourite. I dabbled with heroin and ketamine before settling on the ubiquitous white powder: cocaine. 
My personal experience of cocaine use is a story about overcoming the addictive pull of cocaine. I wouldn’t say I was a ‘hard’ user by any stretch of the imagination. I was probably using everyday or every other day at my peak; sometimes using the toilet cubicles at work to have a morning snort. I cringe at thinking of this nowadays as it seems I had the life of pond-scum. Despite having some warped perception that I was somehow part of the elite and better than everybody else I was actually quite low. The more I did the more I felt low. In the end it led to me feeling as though I had lost my identity; like I’d forgotten who I was.
