In the 80s, cocaine was everywhere. You could get it at any club or bar. From friends or roommates.

My first line came by way of my roommate Peg. Two neat rows of the silky white powder on the back of a cassette tape cover.

Looking back, it seems strange how I was willing to trade my life for that moment of freedom. But we were all trading something. Peg would be dead a few years later, the victim of a car accident. She would never know how it felt to live through the consequences of a life on drugs. She would never heal. Or suffer. I would.

But for now, I was just getting started.

Enjoy the first installment of the memoir, Four Seconds.