Is Cocaine Use Pretty Common now?

[leftyladyfrommo]

I've never even seen the stuff but it seems like I hear about it a lot.

I'm an old hippy and we didn't do cocaine - too expensive. And people my age don't seem to be interested in it.

[Phillycat]

1. More so in the 80's and 90's I would say. But there's still plenty around.

It's still expensive. That's why people turn to crack.

[leftyladyfrommo]

2. Crack and Meth seem to be so dangerous!

People get on that stuff and just end up a mess.

[idgiehkt]

7. I agree

there are alot of people on crack that you would expect to be on coke. I think a lot of people are switching to meth because the high lasts longer for the price.

[ceile]

3. I don't know about common, but it's definitely up in usage.

At least in my age group (30-35). I've seen people that would never have touched the stuff in college doing it on a pretty regular basis now. And where I live, it's very easy to get.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

4. It's big in NYC right now

[pitohui]

5. it seems like it has always been common since the 80s

it just seems to be everywhere, esp. in the form of crack

it is not expensive, it seems to me to be the cheapest form of illegal drug there is, at least in smokable form

i've known people to start on it for everything from losing weight to being able to gain energy, as well as recreationally, and users seem to be in every age group under 60

i try to avoid active drug users, but it can be surprisingly unavoidable, it's just everywhere in the deep south as far as i can tell, or maybe just everywhere in southern louisiana and texas?

[Courtesy Flush]

8. I guess it depends on your crowd

I'm in South Louisiana, and I'm amazed at how rampant drug use is, yet I can't name one person in my social circle who uses drugs other than alcohol. It's all a matter of what kinds of activities you engage in, and what kind of crowd that attracts. We're pretty tame people, and we mostly hang out with the sailing crowd. They drink a lot, but that's about it.

But then, I'm 47, and my generation has mostly put their drug-using years behind them.

[noonwitch]

6. There was a lot of it around in the 80s, when I was in college

But it was too expensive for me to mess around with. I had some friends who got into it pretty badly, I stopped hanging around with them because they had graduated from buying the occasional gram to weekly 8 balls. I didn't want to be around them, they were not the same people they had been before they started doing it.

I assume it's around, I know it is in crack form. Meth has not really become a big deal in the city of Detroit, with the clients I work with-they still use crack or heroin. They did have a major biker-related meth ring bust in northern Macomb County recently, though, and one of my second cousins allegedly died of a drug overdose (per mom) who was in the Renegades. I don't know if he was using meth or something else, as I didn't know him very well.

[ForrestGump]

9. I lived in Palm Springs, CA, for a while in the '80s...

That place was groaning under the weight of cocaine available...seems like everyone (but me) in the 'hospitality industry' was on it, with or without crystal meth (many, including the woman who became my wife, couldn't work the 18-hour-or-longer kitchen shifts without it), and the visitors all had little smudges of white below their nostrils, too. Lots of sniffling and blinking going on, everywhere you went.

I get the feeling that the mid- to late-'80s were cocaine's all-time peak -- in the form of powdered cocaine, anyway -- in Southern California. Crack seemed to follow on its heels.

[MrSlayer]

10. Mostly everyone I know does it .

No one is a junkie or anything like that but it is done recreationally by nearly everyone I know. Usually when they are quite drunk. I stopped using it regularly a long time ago but a few times a year I'll indulge.

[ceile]

11. That's how it is in our group too.

Maybe once a month or once every couple of months someone will get some for the evening out....

[catmandu57]

12. I never liked coke

I tried it a few times and just could never see what the big deal was, maybe I'm fortunate in that sense, I'd just rather spark up a reefer.