Hooked by Chloe Shantz-Hilkes Page A

work, but it also made him less active and more zoned out around us at times. I think that was just one of the ways it was bad for him. He made drugs a part of his daily routine and his body paid the price.
    Sustained use of cocaine can cause heart problems and respiratory failure, as well as seizures and headaches. People who use cocaine for a long time can also develop a tolerance to its effects, meaning they have to take more each time in order to experience the same high.
    Drinking too
    When I was fourteen, we were pretty much forced out of the building we were living in and moved to a much tinier apartment. That was stressful for our family. At the time, I didn’t think about my dad or realize that his expensive cocaine habit might have had something to do with it. I didn’t even know he had a cocaine habit back then. But I had begun to notice his drinking. Sometimes I’d be sitting in the living room watching television and he’d come into the room, get a bottle of booze out of the liquor cabinet, and just do a shot. It was as though it was part of a normal day.
    I’d say to him, “Why do you drink so much?”
    And he’d say, “I’m not drinking that much. It’s healthy for people to have a shot of alcohol every day.”
    â€œOkay,” I’d say. “I guess I don’t know much about it.”
    So I kind of accepted it. And even though I was aware of his drinking in a way that I wasn’t aware of his cocaine use, I still didn’t think about it that much. I certainly didn’t think he was an alcoholic. It wasn’t as though he walked around with a beer in his hand all the time. But it seemed to me that he relied on those shots. It was like he was dependent on booze, without ever being visibly drunk. And so drinking also became part of his normal day, without changing his behavior that much.
    How I coped
    It’s hard to say how I coped with my dad’s cocaine addiction as a kid because, like I said, I wasn’t really aware of it. But when I was little, I was quiet and often played by myself. I watched a lot of television and was very into video games. Sometimes I would go to the park and hang out with friends, but I never spoke much. Looking back, that’s kind of strange because both of my parents were very outgoing. It’s not like they had no shame, but they certainly weren’t quiet and they liked to socialize a lot.
    One thing I think I did as a kid was bottle up my emotions. This meant that sometimes I would have angry outbursts where things came to the surface. It was usually small things that would prompt them, like not getting a toy or something. That’s when my dad would grab my arm like I described earlier.
    Still my dad
    Even though all this was happening, I still just thought of my dad as my dad. I mean, he still taught me to play baseball and soccer and hockey, and most of the time he was fun to be around. So I never thought of him as bad, and life never seemed all that unusual. Sure, we were never the kind of family that had meetings or ate dinner together, but we still did fun stuff. The four of us would go visit relatives or friends out of town. And whenever we were on vacation together, we enjoyed each other’s company. We could talk about almost anything. I knew I could come to my parents if I had major problems. But I never had major problems as a kid, or at least nothing I couldn’t deal with myself. So my dad and I had a good relationship, despite his addiction.
    Where things stand
    In a way, there was more to cope with later on, when I finally found out about my dad’s addiction. When he first told me about it, I wasn’t sure what to say and was just kind of speechless. I never talked about it much with my mom or brother, because I think it affected us all in very different ways, and we’ve each dealt with it privately. But since coming clean, my dad has become a very different, very calm