Case #3938: Cocaine on the Brain

Though I have experimented wantonly with innumerable chemical substances, I have limited personal experience regarding marijuana, and virtually none with cocaine. However, regarding the latter, I have learned a great deal of what I know from one of my predecessors.

In 1884, the year that saw the publication of his first scientific paper, “Uber Coca,” a 28-year-old Sigmund Freud penned the following romantic missive in a personal letter to his fiance, Martha:

“Woe to you, my Princess, when I come … I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are froward, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

Indeed, Freud was a champion user and purveyor of cocaine, and not only because he thought it a turn-on for Martha. While many of colleagues condemned the drug for its psychogenic and addictive properties, Freud praised its use in treating innumerable ailments, from autism to alcoholism, from depression to indigestion. As such, the controversial substance is intriguing to me as well, and I have resolved to learn more about how it is dealt with–specifically, across the Atlantic and 124 years later.

So it was with great interest I took on a new patient who had himself dabbled in the drug. He was a slender, tall, amiable college student, and his name was Pablo Escobar. (Generally, I am quite dismissive of patient privacy, so I have used this ridiculous pseudonym in the interest of avoiding retribution for recounting his story.) Those who feared and revered him alike knew him by other aliases, one of which was simply, the “E.”

The E chose to see me because he wanted out of the business. He also wanted to come clean about his past with his family and friends. But didn’t know how to do so without devastating them–or shaming himself–to tatters.

Fortunately, this enigmatic patient of mine was not a kingpin of his trade. In fact, as a low-level trafficker of marijuana and cocaine, the E merely facilitated the acquisition of the aforementioned recreational substances by his fellow Denverites. In exchange, I learned, he made a handsome profit, though he would not disclose precisely how much. He also used both of these illicit drugs himself, though he would not admit to how often. Nor was he willing to discuss how he became embroiled in the drug trade in the first place, let alone any of the details that followed. Virtually all he would admit to was successfully duping his tightly-knit but oblivious upper-middle class family about his source of extra income, as well as the nose candy he snorted over the years.

The paucity of facts made my charge as his psychiatrist most trying. With any patient who either intentionally or unintentionally presents as a poor historian, I try to resist temptation to jump to conclusions, but eventually I do.

On the bright side, though, I am always certain I will not falter. After all, experience has shown that I have yet to find myself wrong about anything.

As the E relaxed upon the cozy Corbusier, I hooked up my polygraph and further prepared him for a hypnotically-facilitated interrogation with an injection of my expertly-compounded “truth serum”–a proprietary blend of sodium amytal, pentobarbital, and triple sec. I also broadcasted a piece of recorded music from my vintage Victrola record player over my uber-modern Blaupunkt soundsystem.

“What the hell is this?!,” he asked, incredulous.

“It’s called a ‘mash up,’” I replied coyly, dimming the lights and drawing the blinds, “and I’ve prepared it especially for you. This particular one is a combination of Bjork’s ‘Human Behavior’ and a Grateful Dead song that actually gets some radio play, ‘The Ballad of Casey Jones.”

Driving that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones you better watch your speed

Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
And you know that notion just crossed my mind

The refrain was looped over and over, while the bottom-heavy kettledrum of the Bjork song cast a heaviness about the room. I began the interrogation straightaway.

“Were you in any way, shape, or form affiliated with any of the following: The 32 Gangster Crips?”

“No.”

“The 33 Gangster Crips?”

“No.”

“The 83 Gangster Crips?”

“No.”

“The Black Gangster Disciples?”

“Um… no.”

“The Crenshaw Mafia Gangster Bloods?”

“No.”

“The Dog City Crips?”

“No.”

“The Sureños 13?”

“No.”

“The Viet Pride Gangster Crips?”

“No.”

“Cherry Creek High School?”

“No.”

“Barack Obama, Robin Williams, or Amy Winehouse?”

“I said, no … no … no.”

“Your marginally affluent friends, and your friends’ friends and acquaintances, and their friends and acquaintances, a percentage of whom, by virtue of being young, naive, adventuresome, and American, chose to purchase or at least partake of a patently addictive natural product of the coca leaf, a potent psychoactive compound cultivated in Central or South America and imported surreptitiously despite a painfully costly but laughably ineffectual taxpayer-financed “war on drugs” into this country, with no reasonable expectation of safety or quality control, by hapless individuals practically indentured to an industry ultimately controlled by tyrants who, on a daily basis, maintain strangleholds on their countries through unrelenting greed, extortion, and murder?”

A breakthrough. The polygraph needles began to twitch violently, and the E took notice. The truth serum was too potent. (That triple sec gives it that extra kick). He could not lie.

“Yes,” he sighed, pausing for a few moments to gather himself, “Yes, I am.”

Curious, I thought to myself, snapping the music off. The E seemed to have had some kind of epiphany about his drug-dealings. Perhaps he had just been another kid caught up in the confusing chaos of finding a niche for himself in this crazy world. Perhaps he was doing what, at the time, for whatever reason, seemed like an acceptable to do. And perhaps, contrary to what I had originally postulated, he was not really a member of the Crenshaw Mafia Gangster Bloods after all. In any case, it seemed that he was now ready to speak freely and openly about his “hidden life” to those he had hidden it from–and to leave it behind him. Accordingly, I opened the blinds, turned on the lights, and told him to get the fuck off my Corbusier.

Still, I pitied the young man for his ignorance. I mean, who doesn’t know that meth is where the money is these days?