CHENNAI: When Varsha*, then 17 and just out of school, walked into a private house party six years ago, she had an experience so good that she describes it as “better than sex, chocolate and both together”. Six years down the line, she still craves for it and she gets it more often and more easily than ever before. The experience is a hit of cocaine. Coke, snow, flake, white, blow, nose candy and the big F C — the names for the innocuous white powder are legion, and accounts of the drug’s use in the city are rising.
The First Snort
The pull of coke all starts with the first line of white powder. “My friend rolled up a Rs 500 note and showed me how to do it. ‘You have to make sure the snorting end of the note is inside your nostril and if you have to sneeze you get it over with before you snort.’ he told me. If you sneeze near the lines, you end up blowing them away,” she pointed out. Accounts of that first experience differ, but for one thing — it makes you very very happy. “For me, there was music playing. If you asked me what it was, I don’t remember now. But it felt like the greatest music ever created and like it was inside my body,” says Pranav*. Along with the boost in confidence and what feels like incredibly sharpened mental prowess, the first hit hooks and hooks hard. Both Varsha* and Pranav* say they are regular users, taking a few hits at least once a couple of weeks, but not addicts.
Want coke? Get Invited to a Party
The cocaine scene in Chennai is still largely confined to private parties. The drug is now a lot easier to get for people who have the cash. “I don’t know any peddlers. I source it through my friends network,” said Pranav. “But not knowing a peddler is no problem. All you need to do is put out the word and there’s usually someone who has it in the circle. People who go to Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi come back with a few grams. The first thing I ask now when I get into a party is if ‘Charlie’ is around. More often than not, she is,” he said.
Rave parties are no longer complete without Charlie. Along with LSD and the more common Ganja, it has become a mainstay. And coke is a prefered drug primarily because of its reaction with alcohol — even if the resulting hangover is a monster. “Alcohol and coke makes a high that’s both mellow and intense. A party is just more fun with them,” said Ravi.
Blades, Wrist Cuts and Depression
But cocaine isn’t all ‘hunky dory’ — there is a reason it is banned. Not only do users say that the initial high degrades fast, the experience also gets progressively worse with every hit. Mithun*(27), who got into coke six years ago, says that he decided to quit only after he woke up with a blade in his hand and a shallow cut on his wrist. “A few years after I began using it, the highs began to get more depressing. What was euphoria turned into intense sadness. The blade episode scared me because I am not a normally depressed person,” he said. Mithun* is getting professional help and the first month of that was a battle through depression and withdrawal.
But while cases like Mithun, while growing, are nothing to the slowly growing stream that are beginning to taste the highs of coke use. After all, the glamour associated with coke and the rolled-up Rs 1,000 notes has long been a mark of the elite.
*Names of all users/former users are changed