Hooked by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes

their addiction from being discovered, and in some cases are not even aware of how deceptive they’re being.
    When I was a kid, my dad would sometimes lecture me about not doing drugs. He’d say, “I experimented with plenty of different substances and it’s a bad idea. Never do what I did.” But it never occurred to me that he was still doing drugs. It wasn’t until he started going to meetings of a group called Cocaine Addicts Anonymous that he decided to tell my brother and me about his addiction. By that point I was seventeen, but when I look back I think I’ve always known something was up with my dad. I could never really put my finger on it, though.
    As it turns out, he was doing cocaine pretty heavily beginning when I was eleven and going until I was at least thirteen. When he first told me that, I was more curious than scared or angry, because by then he had stopped and I didn’t have much to be angry about. But it did make me wonder if cocaine was the reason he used to get so mad. Sometimes when I was younger, I would be crying or upset about something, and he would grab my arm to get me to stop or make me listen. And when he told me about his addiction, he apologized for this too. He says he did it because of the cocaine.
    Dad’s anger
    I wasn’t the only one who dealt with my dad’s anger. A lot of my early childhood memories involve listening to my parents fight. Mainly it was my dad shouting. I hardly ever heard what it was about, but I sure heard the yelling. I would usually try to drown it out, or I’d just go to my room. Dad never hurt anyone in our family, and I’m pretty confident that he never hurt anyone in his life, but he sure did know how to argue. And if I ever pushed or hit him when I was little and upset, he would hit me back—never as hard as he could, but hard enough that I could feel it.
    Other signs
    He worked as a software engineer, and I used to hang out in his office all the time because it was close to our house. Usually I would sit outside his door, and sometimes, when I’d walk into his actual office, he would say, “No, no, no! You can’t be in here right now. I’m doing important work.” But after I left, I’d peek through the window beside his door and he would be sitting there doing nothing—just staring off into space. So I noticed lots of weird things like that. I never came to any conclusions about it, though. I never had any idea that he acted the way he did because of drugs. And it was so interesting when he told me that he was using, because suddenly I realized that maybe his actions would have been completely different if it weren’t for cocaine; maybe the guy I grew up with was not my real father. So in that sense, it was a real shock to the system.
    How it changed him
    I can only assume the reason my dad started doing hard drugs in the first place was to help him deal with the stress of work, and life in an expensive city like San Francisco. It gave him energy and helped him get things done, so I guess, if it hadn’t been for the cocaine, he wouldn’t have been able to be as on top of things. But I’m pretty sure he also would’ve been less angry toward people. And he would have been healthier too. When I was a kid, I didn’t sleep very well, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night all the time. But no matter what time of night I got up, my dad would still be awake. So that was another thing that sort of fell into place when he finally told me about his addiction.
    The good thing about our shared sleeplessness was it usually meant that I got to see him a lot. But every now and then, instead of keeping him awake, the drugs would make him crash completely. That’s the thing about cocaine: doing it gives you a jolt of energy and keeps you awake, but then afterward it can make you irritable and extremely tired. So all in all, I guess it helped him to get through