Sorry I just thought the experience that happened to my friend's former neighbour was appropriate for this topic, as it is about smoking crack. I have never smoked crack, do not want to, and never will. But people who I know who have went out and had lots of unsafe sex with strangers and basically smoked all the crack/base/cooked coke they could in binges that lasted for days/weeks, or for however long their bank account had money and their dealer had coke/crack.
I am not sure what sentence the man I wrote about received. This happened decades ago and I will search for the information.
Hey, dont apologize buddy. It was a crazy story and cool to hear, we were just pointing out that it's not typical, but that is why its such a crazy story, fascinating in the same way a car crash or those true crime shows are. I just didn't want people reading to get the idea that behavior
that extreme is common on crack. It's not totally unheard of for crack addicts to do insane things, but the juxtaposition of a seemingly regular middle class lawyer with his actions of kidnapping & rape during a crack bender is insane. IMO for him to do that there must have been some part of him that had that aggressive sexual drive with rape fantasies and urges, since no amount of crack could make the vast majority of people actually rape somebody unless there was a part of them (that perhaps had been stifled) that already had the desire. Maybe without the crack bender he never would have actually acted on them until the psychosis & paranoia warped his thinking to the point where it left the realm of fantasy to something he decided he would actually do, but IMO there's no way it just came out of nowhere. Even severe meth binges won't make a person go from a normal, empathetic & average guy to an actual full-on rapist, and anyone who claims otherwise is looking for excuses or justifications.
No it was definitely crack. The newspaper article at the time after the arrest said he had been smoking crack/base/cooked coke, and both the victim and the lawyer who raped and sexually abused his legal assistant said he was smoking crack/base/cooked coke. Meth is/was around then when this happened but coke/crack and heroin have always been more in demand and more popular than meth is, and for many decades and probably still both coke/crack and heroin/opiates were/are very inexpensive and very easy for anyone who wants them to get.
I'm not sure it's still the case that crack is more popular than meth. Coke definitely, but it's my understanding that in many areas of the US the comparative ease and possibility of home manufacture of meth along with its much higher potency, duration & effect has led to it overtaking crack. I'm not 100% certain of this since this is just what I've been told by people I know in America & have read on the internet, but I do know that crack is not the enormous thing it was in the 80s and 90s as shown by the decline in the crazy murder rate that was caused by gangs fighting over turf in which to sell crack. Cocaine is obviously still way more popular (I was surprised to find it's actually the 2nd most popular recreational drug, period) than both since it has much less stigma and is omnipresent in all stratas of society, but since the stigma around both crack & meth are practically identical it would make sense for meth to become the DOC for those who would have been hooked on crack were it still the 90s, since it's so much cheaper and you get more bang for your buck.
You can only call crack inexpensive if you're looking at it by a hit by hit basis - sure, you can buy "dime bags" (or £10 stones as we would call it on this side of the pond), but for 90% of users that will last literally minutes and then leave you feinding for more. In order to be high on crack for any reasonable length of time due to its stupidly short duration you need to spend a lot of money, and that only goes up with tolerance. Crack is definitely
not a cheap habit. Heroin is relatively cheap until people get addicted and their tolerance skyrockets, but at least with heroin there's some kind of ceiling since if you do enough you will start nodding out - with crack there is never enough, there is never a point where you will feel as if you have had enough of it, so to stop yourself draining your wallet & bank account you have to exert some self control at some point to physically stop yourself since there will never be the point like there is with heroin when you can say you're content and don't need any more. Meth may be more expensive by weight, but since it lasts so, so much longer it works out cheaper than crack in most cases.
You are correct that crack & heroin is very easy to find in most cases. I can only speak for the UK, but I went from ages 16 - 21 just smoking weed, taking MDMA, psychedelics and the occasional gram of some upper like amphetamine or 4-MMC, and had no idea where I'd even start if I wanted to look for crack or heroin, since I didn't move in any circles with people who used it and none of the dealers who sold the drugs I was into had anything at all to do with those. When I made friends with a girl who was a junkie and she started introducing me, it was like this entire world opened up that had been right under my nose. I was shocked to find out that there were FOUR dealers on the street where I'd lived my entire life. Four! It was insane, and I soon realized that once you get into that scene heroin & crack is easier, quicker & more convenient to get than any other drug, even weed. It's crazy. You are probably very sensible to have never tried them, and I recommend you don't change your mind about that!
