(5 of 10)
Cocaine, many physicians now believe, is the most addictive popular drug of all, and crack is by far its most addictive form. "People fall desperately in love with this drug the first time they use it," says Dr. Arnold Washton, director of research for the National Cocaine Hotline. Unlike heroin users, who vomit and shake when they withdraw, crack addicts show few immediate physical signs of dependency -- at least at first. But they feel an overpowering yearning for more. Bouts of depression and irritability can lead to deep depression and paranoia. "I was afraid to be with it and afraid to be without it," says Kurt Bolick, a 28-year-old oilfield-services reporter in Houston. "I was afraid of myself, I was afraid of life, I was afraid of everything. I was afraid, period."
Researchers who have studied cocaine's effect on the brain believe it interferes with normal biochemical agents that control the desire for food, sex and sleep. Given a choice between food and cocaine in laboratory experiments, monkeys will become hooked on cocaine and take it until they starve to death. Humans become almost as manic. "You don't even see it coming," says Ken, a 33-year-old construction worker from the east side of Cleveland who began snorting cocaine with his wife in 1982. "We didn't think we were addicted. But once you get into it, it's got you. You don't even have a choice. I became a workaholic, a superman, staying up four or five days at a time." He also began beating his wife and blowing his entire paycheck; when he tried to quit, his wife accused him of ruining their marriage by going straight.
Since crack is a relatively new phenomenon (it was first imported from the Bahamas around 1983), some parts of the country have remained fairly unscathed. Yet in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, crack is already out of control. In an effort to at least cut down the tools of the trade, New York police last month seized 45,000 crack pipes (some of them labeled I LOVE NEW YORK). But in some New York neighborhoods, crack dealers are so cocky that they waltz down the street patting children on the head and greeting store owners by their first names, "like they're running for mayor," says Sergeant Kevin Kilcullen, superintendent of the 24th Precinct narcotics division. "Sometimes they see us driving down the streets and wave to us and say, 'Hi, officer!' It's disgusting."
Crack is an "equal-opportunity addiction," says Kilcullen. Crack is as easy to come by on Wall Street as it is in Harlem, and teenagers drive into the city from their parents' suburban homes to stand in line next to yuppies who are furtively handing over $100 bills for crack vials.
Beyond the personal tragedy and waste is the cost to society. As drugs have moved out of the ghetto and into the workplace, as bus drivers and lawyers and assembly-line workers get hooked, innocent consumers are put at risk. The cost to employers from drug abuse -- from lost productivity, absenteeism and higher accident rates -- is estimated at about $33 billion by the government. At a time when America is losing foreign markets to nations that can outproduce the U.S., the economy itself stands to suffer.