Author’s Note: Students’ names have been changed at their request to protect their privacy.
Courtnee Frier thought she knew just what to expect when she decided to stop by a friend’s 21st birthday party. It would be just like any of a hundred parties she had been to in the past two-and-a-half years at the University: loud music, lots of people, cheap beer, hard liquor and maybe some pot.
When Frier got to her buddy’s apartment on Kinsrow Avenue, the party was in full swing.
“I walked in the door and there were all these people sitting around a table playing drinking games,” she said. “There was music playing. It seemed like a normal party.”
But then Frier noticed something strange.
“People would just get up from the table and randomly go upstairs and come back down and sniff their noses,” she said.
At first, Frier didn’t pay much attention. She considered the possibility of a fast-acting cold, but “they were really jittery and super-full of energy. [They had] super-dilated, wide eyes. [They were] bouncing off the walls.”
Frier began putting the facts together and realized that “these people were high out of their minds on cocaine,” she said. “I have never seen anyone on cocaine before,” she added, “but it was interesting because it was completely obvious they were high.”
Frier’s description sounds as if it were lifted off any B-movie about 1983 ­ the year Frier and most of her friends turned three. Now it’s 2001, and cocaine may be the new drug of choice among the social elite at the University.
In the 1980s, cocaine was associated with wealth and success. Beautiful actors with big cars and multiple divorces routinely underwent treatment in posh clinics. This image contributed to Frier’s surprise at seeing her friends on cocaine: “Everything I have ever associated with cocaine has been with CEOs,” she said. “It puts you on this pedestal of untouchableness.”
But by the 1990s, most white Americans associated cocaine use with urban minority groups that smoke crack; “white lines” were associated with the 1980s. But according to statistics, law enforcement officials and students, cocaine did not disappear with Reaganomics, parachute pants and Vanilla Ice.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration, overall cocaine use has not actually increased over the last six years. However, the number of first-time users increased by 63 percent from 1991 to 1998. A 1995 study conducted by the DEA showed 74 percent of powder cocaine users were males between the ages of 18 and 25. If these statistics are accurate, then cocaine use is declining among people of every age group except those between the ages of 18 and 25 — the age group of most people who attend the University.
Jan Power, a programs specialist for the city of Eugene, said that 125 people under the age of 21 were arrested between 1997 and 1999 for the possession or manufacture of cocaine. While the numbers do not necessarily indicate an increase or decrease in the actual use of cocaine, they offer concrete evidence of the drug’s presence among young adults in Eugene.
Regardless of the consequences, more and more people continue to try cocaine.
Jessica Smith is a soft-spoken 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Oregon. Smith used cocaine on a recreational basis during high school, but she said she doesn’t like being associated with the drug or the culture that surrounds it.
Smith said she enjoyed using cocaine because of the high. “It’s basically like being wired,” she said. “Like you’ve gone out and smoked tons of cigarettes. It is a very good feeling — very hyper, very wild.”
Unfortunately, what goes up must come down. “It’s not a good feeling when [the cocaine] wears off,” Smith said, explaining that coming down from a cocaine high can be a physically painful, depressing process. “Your body is really heavy,” she said. “It feels like cement is filling up your body. You can’t pick yourself up. I think that’s how people get addicted: They take more to feel better.”
Smith also pointed out that the people she knows who use cocaine are not “typical” drug abusers. They are the children of people who find themselves at the high end of the income bracket.
“They were the athletes and the country club kids,” she said. “The image goes along with the drug. It’s high maintenance; models use it. Other drugs don’t have that. Like, heroin is a dirty drug.”
Sophomore journalism major Will Charters has tried cocaine several times. He explained that he tends to have strong opinions, and that he had just seen the movie “Traffic,” which made him think more about the social issues surrounding cocaine.
“I have a twisted logic because I decided to try cocaine just because it was a drug I hadn’t tried,” he said. “But I think most people try it because of the image. When people think of heroin, they think of needles and stealing and people falling over and twitching on their backs. Someone on coke is not going to stare at a lava lamp. They won’t be standing in a corner tripping out.”
Instead, Charters said, “They will be talking and socializing with everybody else at the party.”
Charters thinks that the drug ecstasy is a natural gateway to cocaine.
“The effects are similar,” he said. “I think ecstasy is the most dangerous drug out there because people don’t think it’s dangerous. There were all these articles about it in Time and Newsweek that were not entirely negative. It got all this media attention; kids started doing it more. Why not try cocaine?
“It’s like the media jumps on new designer drugs: ‘What’s the new thing that’s killing our kids?’ Cocaine has fallen out of media attention,” he said.
But according to Charters, lack of media attention does not signify a decrease in drug use.
“Cocaine is still out there,” he said.