I was taught how to cook and smoke crack when I was 21. It was in a high-rise hotel room on East 34th Street in Manhattan, and some friends from New Jersey—in town for the New Year’s Eve Phish shows at Madison Square Garden—showed me the technique to convert powder cocaine into its smokable counterpart.
These upper-middle-class suburban kids seemed to know every detail about the drug, from the minutiae of proper pipe handling (taking a hit requires some optimization) to the kinder, gentler euphemism for crack, “hubbas.” They knew how to cook HCL (powder) cocaine into a base (freebase) as well as where to find the street version of the same drug (crack). Earlier that night, before I’d learned to make freebase, we had driven to someone’s house in Paterson, N.J., and one of my friends went inside and bought a bag of ready-made, smokable rocks. I sat shotgun on the way into the city while the backseat passenger took the wheel, allowing the driver to use both hands to take a hit off the pipe.
My levels of experimentation have varied since that night, from three months of daily usage in 1999 after that initial introduction to a year or two of abstinence. I eventually settled into a seasonal habit (I smoked crack only during the winter months), followed by a less moderate phase in 2013.
I don’t present these stories for shock value. On the contrary, I proceed with a lot of anxiety, knowing the potential to upset and alienate family members, friends, present or past business associates, future landlords, and whoever else is likely to take a dim view of the information I’m volunteering.