Addiction seeps in slowly, penetrating life's surface, unnoticed at first. It sits like a puddle, pooling, waiting, benign until there's a tear in the surface. It's then that addiction can infiltrate, fill the veins, poison the yawning void with manufactured, false brightness.
***
It was a summer morning when Corey sauntered into a 7-11, intent on a slurpee to quell the thirst triggered by the pulsating music, bouncing lights and illicit substances of the night before. Sweat soaked and wearing the tattered shirt he'd slept in, he turned the slush nozzle and waited for relief. It was the weekend and University courses and computer code and extraneous stress could wait till Monday. The freezing liquid drizzled into the plastic cup and he waited, bleary eyed and bedheaded and he was momentarily confused by the sliding of a card under his nose.
"If you're interested,"said the slider of the card. "If you're interested."
Corey was momentarily confused. The card slider was overweight, and maybe gay, and maybe he had ulterior motives. The card said something about modeling. It was probably bullshit. The slurpee tasted good.
***
Things happened quickly after that: local modeling jobs, the pausing of both classes and an entrepreneurial venture. There was the promise of Up and Comingness in Italy. Corey could be the Next Big Thing. Either that, or he'd have the experience of a lifetime in a far away country. Either way, he decided to take the opportunity to model in Italy.
There was a lot of rejection and some success but there was little room for all night binging and zig zag lights. At the end of it, he was eager to get home to familiar friends, girls, and computer science. His friends had missed him. There was partying to be had, local style, the way it was comfortable.
***
Jen was one of the few female models in his circle who practised any degree of caution. He was used to female attention, but hers was different, and she was leery of him. It cinched his interest. They had met at a gig and she had a boyfriend but things progressed quickly, they were meant to be. Corey wasn't one to do things slowly, without furious intensity. They were married within six months.
***
Married life means fluidity and repetition, comfort in daily ritual: at least to some. But Corey and Jen were young: 21 and 23 and the world was their shiny oyster. Corey was invincible in his own mind. There were businesses to be created and dance floors to be owned, late night friendships to be forged in a sea of vacuous dancing. Corey's drinking and social drug use spiked, Jen was initally compliciant; she followed where he went, but with bitten lip, wary.
After three years of marriage, they decided to pack up their bags and move to a new city where there would be fewer lifelong friends with pockets full of drugs and fridges full of Molson. They'd start fresh in a city by the ocean and maybe life would be less fueled by bad influence.
***
It didn't work out quite that way: she wanted a home with a picket fence and children, he wanted a corner penthouse and entrepreneurial success. They fought. He drank and lost himself in powder. She left. Looking for ways to ease the loneliness and pain, he sought friends wherever he could: in bars, on the streets, in the omnipresence of drugs. It was no longer recreational at this point, weekend binging had turned into daily reliance. He had tons of friends in his apartment and no one to talk to. He worked around the clock, high as a kite, and never gleaned any money because it went straight to coke.
***
At first it was fun, in the beginning intoxication beats out logic. New friendships and a flood of well being trumped the notion that this wasn't right, that he was so much more than this. But it took him a long time to figure that out. It would take a crash on the street, a loss of consciousness in his apartment pool, a stint in rehab, several ripped off items taken by "friends" and one terrifying near death experience before he'd understood that his choices were to die very young, or to radically alter his life path.
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