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In This Issue

• Latvia, Land of Style and Lip-Hair, Too
• Liquids Banned
• Coke: Who Snorts What
• Hate for the Hate Squad
• Tales of the Inexpressible - Part I
• Al Franken Talks, Frankly
• Eggs Run with Claims of Cracker Nazis
• A Spears-Federline Manifesto
• What Goes on in my Head While I Get Paid to Pick Pine Needles out of the Gravel at my Local Country Club
• Hairless Man
• University to Fund Loan Elimination by Selling Drugs
• Proclamations from the Desk of Most Glorious Marshal Lee Bollinger
• Poland Ruined Everything
• Prez-Bo
• Tales of the Inexpressible - Part II
• Da Vinci Code Confirms Church Can't Tell Fiction From Non-Fiction
• On My Early Fame
• Able to Fuck My Anus in a Single Pound
• THEY WATCH

"The cookie money goes to support my worsening cocaine habit."

Arturo grinned, leaning back in the booth. "Cocaine," he said, loud enough that I felt mildly uncomfortable in the crowded Tom's Restaurant, "has a stigma because it's a high society drug. Columbia students want, in a way, to be identified with the common man. Pot is the common hipster's drug. Beer is the working man's drug. Cocaine...?" He trailed off. I slurped my Diet Coke through a straw, hungrily scratching notes. Although Arturo is the only person I've interviewed for this article who has never done cocaine, he knows those that have. There's a pretty big gossip circle around a lot of li'l white lines.

The Bwog, Columbia's go-to destination for up-to-the-minute societal remarks, wrote up a guide for freshmen eager to party on August 28, cheekily referencing cocaine use. When a commentator wrote  "I didn't see any cocaine on campus tonight," the response a few lines down was to the point: "There is always cocaine on campus." From day one, freshmen are told the same thing: Columbia is a place with a lot of cocaine, and it can be theirs if the price is right. And yet few ever challenge the assertions made about "this frat" or "that girl" when it comes to cocaine. Arturo (not his real name - no real names are used in this article), a senior, agreed. "You hear a lot about it, but it's one of the least [seriously] talked-about drugs." Exactly what does go on with coke here? Why isn't it discussed? And are those goofy stories you hear true?

Let's start with the basics. Cocaine in its "pure" (although it's always cut with something that could range from baking soda to meth to increase profit) form is usually sold as a white, powdery substance. Most of it comes from the country of Colombia (que ironico). The going price around here, according to buyers, is around $60 for one gram, with about quarter-gram generally required to feel significant effects. The most popular method of use is insufflating (snorting) it. According to a University of Michigan study, the number of 12th graders who'd ever tried cocaine in 2004 was around 8%.  But you don't see one in ten of the freshmen class stumbling out of Frontiers of Science with a powdered nose (don't get any ideas, freshmen; they'll make you do a problem set about it). According to Marshall, a recent graduate who used cocaine "about a dozen times" while here, "if you measured the actual number of ‘serious users,' you'd probably come up with a number less than 1%." The Enrolled Student Survey of 2005 found that only 3% of the sample (about 88 students) said they'd "abused drugs," and when you consider the tell-tale stench of marijuana that emanates from "that one room on every floor," it ain't hard to see that cocaine isn't the biggest issue here, even if you allow for the possibility that it is seriously underreported.

Why is that? One potent disincentive to abuse is the amount of damage long-term cocaine use can do. "At the point where [using] it seems casual to you, that's where you know you have a serious problem." said Laurence, a junior. Sally, a junior and a regular user for about nine months, got that message the hard way. "I remember going into the shower and blowing blood out of my nose after a long night," she said, shaking her head as she talked. "I remember not being able to go to [gym class]... sitting in my room, shaking, with my hood up and a blanket over me."

Well, gee willikers, commissioner, that sounds like a blast. Why do it in the first place? Laurence sighed. "Let me be frank. It's fun as hell, but not all it's cracked up to be, considering its addictive potential.... Why does anyone do drugs? Drugs are fun." It differs, all interviewees said, between guys and girls. "It's confidence," said Marshall. "Yet another Gucci sweater, a status symbol," said Adelaide, a junior who's tried the drug on a few occasions. "For regular [female] users, it's an expression of the ‘I'm-the-fucking-best' feeling they already have" but is buried by an image problem. "Part of the thrill is the mental process of cutting the lines," noted Sally, "just like smoking a cigarette isn't exclusively for the nicotine."

Of the interviewees, even the ones who classified themselves as regular users said they knew people that did more than them, but all added something to the effect of, "If I wanted coke, I could have it two hours." Marshall compared the (relatively) easy-going experience of buying pot to buying cocaine by saying, "Cocaine is a serious business. At any given time there are a couple of guys that connect coke on campus, and these guys connect coke." Sally remembered her own buying experiences, "They came to you. They kept their customers happy. I would walk over to Furnald, we would meet and walk up those red brick steps towards Low Plaza, and step out of sight of the cameras [to conduct the deal].... I got in a car once or twice and it was like a livery service. They'd pick you up at 114th, you'd do your deal, you'd get dropped off at 117th." Laurence summed it up best: "It's more professional, if you can call it that."

All of the interviewees "knew a guy who knew a guy" who could "connect coke," but who are the stereotypical cocaine buyers at Columbia? Adelaide was contemptuous. "It's the ‘look-at-me' drug," she said, "for people who went to Columbia not for their education but for the name [of the university] on their degree, concerned with their image so much that they aggressively self-select who surrounds them." Laurence grinned when I asked him. "It's expensive... probably the most expensive drug out there. There's no way a college job is covering a coke habit," he said. Everyone dropped the phrase "trust-fund" at least once over the course of an interview, which brings up the second, and largest, major barrier to cocaine usage - money. "The thing that worried me most," said Sally, speaking about the peak of her usage, "was going to the ATM and taking out $400 without batting an eye. Who has that kind of money to spend?" Yet she certainly wasn't a trust-fund baby if that kind of money scared her. How did she get involved if she wasn't a "have-more" with a hankering for burning through cash?

Sally's story brings up one of the longest-standing myths at Columbia involving the fraternities and cocaine. "This guy invited me to a party at St. A's," she said, referring to Saint Anthony's, a co-ed literary society famous for its high dues and oft-alleged expensive rush activities. "There were five or six people in [a room upstairs]. They opened the desk drawer and - of course - there were some lines." When asked about his view of "serious users," Marshall thought back, "I didn't know anyone who did cocaine seriously who wasn't in a fraternity." So are these organizations the infamous "coke ring" groups that we hear tales of, frats like Fiji and Beta Theta Pi which were shut down and later re-opened under incredibly strict mandates to shape up?

No, not really. It's not the drugs that the groups use. It's the money they spend using them. "Half the point [of using cocaine] is excluding people," said Adelaide. Laurence looked at it more in terms of limits on use. "People who drink to get trashed can go to the bar with someone who'll only have one beer. People who smoke pot all the time can smoke up with a casual user. With cocaine, if it's in your pocket, it's gonna get done that night," and probably not with people eager to moderate their use. To spend that amount of money on any sort of regular basis requires cash, not a "secret society." Remember, it's $60 for an amount that you can easily use in one night - Sally's conservative calculation was that a gram could last her nine hours, or one all-night binge. "Certainly not everyone at St. A's does coke," said Sally, who was often invited to their parties. "It's not a ‘coke frat' - neither is ADP [another co-ed literary society], whose members in general are well-off and get that rap as a ‘cocaine hub.' I think people are more accepting [of cocaine use in those places] just because of the social status," as opposed to any sort of "cocaine cabal." No organization is subsidizing the drug purchases of its individual members - sorry, thrill-seekers, but you can always try Yale for real secret societies and not just groups that throw bottles out their windows and yell "faggot."

The absence of a mysterious white hand of white lines doesn't mean there's no stigma or danger attached to the "elite" drug. "It's the ‘next step up' from ‘casual drugs,'" said Arturo, remarking on the associated loss of those who considered it discomforting. "The kids in the coke room stay in the coke room ‘til there's no more coke," said Marshall. "No one, I think, gets a lot of respect for using." Everyone had a bad story about a regular user - in some cases, their own stories sufficed. A friend who dropped out freshman year after rushing a frat in an eagerness to abuse; a would-be football star who took a leave of absence; and in Sally's case, a trip to counseling services up on the 8th floor of Lerner that ended in her being recommended for an immediate medical leave. She scoffs at the memory. "It's unfortunate counseling couldn't help me get my shit together," instead attempting to pass the buck. "It makes me worried about those people who weren't as lucky as me [in dealing with drugs]." To this day, she says, she still deals with leaving that world behind. "It still seems glamorous," she said. "Even knowing what I know now, knowing it's not fun, it's got that glamorous feeling."

What about the world beyond Columbia? Adelaide's first experience with the drug was when a neurosurgeon cut his lines with his old Columbia ID. Sally remembered going to a party full of investment bankers asking her, "You want a bump?" and almost saying yes. Was it immaturity? "Necessity," she said. "For them to feel successful, they needed the drug."  Even beyond our little social circle of Morningside Heights, cocaine still pops up in the hands of former Columbia kids. Yet it isn't some sort of deep social cabal. Sure, a lot of the kids who do it do it for the "exclusivity" that Adelaide mentioned and Marshall seconded - but at the same time, there are others like Sally who stumble upon the drug out of curiosity, without being tapped for any sort of cloak-and-dagger, high-born hijinks. "People think of coke at Columbia and they see that rich kid in the popped collar," said Marshall. "But it was sometimes that kid you saw in class - or didn't see in class - with the non-committal look and the backwards baseball cap, the kid who looked a bit like you."

Laurence and I watched as parents chased after their giggling toddlers near where Sally once met her dealer. I asked him if he had any parting comments for the article. "With all drugs," he said, "the primary issue is the degree to which you know yourself, what you're capable of handling. Since cocaine is so highly addictive, that's hard to deal with." I asked him what he meant. "People misinterpret the lasting emotional impact of cocaine," he said, pausing, then laughing at his own sort of far-out rhetoric. "There's a danger in the illusion of sociality. Cocaine makes you numb. You know the stories of numb lips, the drip in the back of your throat. That's a pretty good metaphor for what happens to the people that use it regularly. They get numb, cold, unable to live normally, even though they still think they're really social."

So yeah, cocaine's on campus. Not many use it regularly because it's dangerous and expensive in the long run. Not many talk about it because it's socially stigmatizing, much more so than booze, pot or even speed. Some have tried it, and access is easy if you know where to look. But it's a recreational drug, not an initiation rite, and certainly not a ticket to social mobility or exclusivity, unless you don't care that your social circle "eventually closes to those who don't do the drug," in Marshall's words. Sometimes a line is just a line.