Here's my thing with it: there's no communicating with people who haven't gotten deep into coke. That's not their fault, it's not your fault, it's just the fact of the matter. Once you understand the way coke can make you feel, and have a good connection for stuff that makes you feel like that with a small amount, you're faced with a very real choice: you can experience the best feeling life in terms of pleasure, or you can live a stable and healthy life with significantly less pleasure than you know is possible but to ease their minds and get more on their level. I've talked at length about this with concerned friends: it really is a coin flip which lifestyle is better, IMO. One is much more moral, as you participate normally in society and use money properly and maintain a good public appearance and you're a better friend and family member and partner. But if you look past morality and health and appearances, you can basically be on top of the world and experience pure intensity of emotion whenever you want, good and bad emotions sure but the intensity compared to square life is what brings me back over and over again. I'm also somebody who loves stories and art and risk taking, and coke basically makes your boring life into a complicated mess that's very compelling from your perspective and dangerous annoying and destructive from the world's perspective. So you basically have to choose whether you want to fit in and benefit the world or retreat inside yourself and see things in a ridiculously distorted way that will dwarf the pleasures of the normal world. It sounds like a no brainer, but I'm deep into an addiction too and once you break your brain into this stuff it becomes more valuable than money for the euphoria and excitement it gives you.
I'm aware this is just addict speak, but it is a profoundly confusing mental addiction because it really does feel good and distort reality in a fascinating way. For me, I binge hard when I get it and it is a very profound and often disturbing departure from reality. I'm thankful to return to earth, but I end up craving that mental adventure it provides. But once you push the limits of dosing and getting sucked into that experience, you end up discovering that it is much more than just a euphoria. It really does change the way you view reality in a specific but difficult to place way, I feel like it almost removes me from the modern idea of a human and back into a more primal and destructive animal, wasting money like it doesn't matter and pursuing any curiosity regardless of it being embarrassing or foolish to a civilized person. Seeing yourself transform like that, particularly if you are an intelligent and put together person, is fascinating and terrifying and exciting. I was just reading a list of artists/celebrities who overdosed on cocaine as a cause of death, and it did make me consider that many people choose to just keep going. Chris Farley was talking about coke and heroin in an interview I read near to his death, and he referred to it as "the end" in terms of experiences. I think that kind of approximates the power it has over you when you start to really understand its effects, reality just doesn't compare and it feels like you're quitting something profound. Sorry to make such a long post but I have been so alone in this addiction and it is very frustrating to hear from people who really have no clue the kind of mental trip this drug is. It's not a physical addiction at all, it's a terrifying funhouse maze that is always interesting and always destructive, and some people who are curious and self destructive will get lost and prefer that to reality.