Cracked

Sure, I replied.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that no one was around. The woman took out a glass pipe, about the size of a cigarette, with a copper-colored mesh filter at one end. She loaded a small chunk of crack, less than half the size of an M&M, onto the mesh. She produced a lighter, brought the pipe to her lips and the flame to the filter. She inhaled, and white smoke coursed through the pipe, which she handed to me.

The rush hit me in two or three seconds and literally knocked me back two steps. It was as if a euphoria bomb had exploded in my brain. Imagine the most physically rapturous moment of your life, multiplied exponentially, and you might get close to the feeling.

I wobbled but stayed on my feet. I looked at the woman. She asked if I was okay. I said, "Wow."

That was my first hit.

The crack wave was just hitting Los Angeles, sparking a surge of violence and pathology in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the District was becoming known as the nation's per-capita murder capital, as young dealers fighting over lucrative drug markets shot one another with increasing frequency. At the time, the drug was being described in almost mythic terms; experts were quoted in newspaper articles saying that anyone who took even one hit was instantly addicted.

I didn't take a second hit that day. I didn't need to. I felt like I could have floated home. The woman let me keep the pipe and the lighter, and she gave me a chunk of rock to go.

I waited three weeks before I took another hit. Again, the rush was intense -- though not quite as astounding as the first one. I was 27, old enough to know better, young enough to think I was bulletproof. I'd read my share of stories about the horrors of crack and concluded that I could never become an addict.

Here's the irony: I believe, looking back, that I was born an addict and an alcoholic, same as I was born with brown eyes. At a party during my senior year of high school in El Monte, the L.A. suburb where I grew up, someone offered me my first taste of alcohol. I downed the glass of wine in a matter of seconds. I expected to feel a buzz instantaneously, and, when I didn't, I quickly drank another glass. I killed three glasses of wine in about three minutes. During the rest of high school and then in college, I didn't drink often, but, when I did, it was with great fervor.

I hit my drinking stride during my early 20s, joining co-workers nightly at Corky's bar across the street from the Herald Examiner.

Now, I can say with great confidence that taking that first hit of crack was, simultaneously, the worst decision of my life and the luckiest.

Worst because I flung myself down a trapdoor to hell.