I'm a performing arts student (I could be more specific but I'm trying to keep this reasonably anonymous) starting my third year of four, in the U.K. Back in May, I was approached by a fellow student in the year below, who I vaguely knew, asking about my living arrangements for this academic year. We agreed to move into a two bed apartment together as flatmates, but both ended up coming out of (differently) bad long-term (5 years for me, 3 for her) relationships, and getting together, as we got to know each other better.

It transpired soon after we became good friends that H was a fairly regular user of cocaine, recreationally. I had previously used cocaine just twice, with friends, around 6 months previously, and had thoroughly enjoyed the "buzzy" effects, increased activity and speech. Circumstances at the time were that H was pretty much flat broke, and I had just come into a small four figure sum so felt pretty loaded for a 20 year old student. We started doing coke together in her room, in May, as friends, and over a period of around a month I realised that her use was a little more than recreational. When I realised that she and I had done coke more days than not over the course of a month I broached the subject with her, and she admitted that she had recently gone through a phase of using coke during the day to "get through" stressful situations, and spending her evenings depressed, watching T.V., crying, and snorting coke on her own.

H had an extremely difficult childhood and has big "issues" - she spent six weeks in rehab for addiction and sexual boundary problems at 15, in Africa. She was prescribed Fluoxetine (Prozac) and is still on 40mg daily, and sees her therapist not quite regularly enough (it's supposed to be weekly but the therapist's a little flakey). For H, the Prozac masks the long term effects of cocaine abuse - she hasn't suffered the change of effects that coke seems to have over time. In not so many words, each line feels like her first, given the way coke bonds with Fluoxetine.

However, I am not a Prozac recipient and gradually the fun disappeared out of cocaine for me. Firstly I realised I was supporting not one, but two, cocaine habits (probably around 7-10g per week between us so not huge but enough to matter to me) and I realised that *she* had a problem. I then stopped feeling the supposedly positive effects. Next was being able to sleep perfectly fine on coke. Then came my secret binges.

A couple of months ago I was in a bad mood during the day and H went out in the evening with our other flatmate, E, and her boyfriend N. I was bored, had a little cash in my pocket, and called our dealer, who dropped off a gram for me. Sitting in front of the TV, I snorted the gram in less than half an hour, and when the others returned I apparently acted normally. I slept fine but spent the next day thoroughly coked over, moody as hell, and admitted my problem to H, who by this point was back to recreationally using once or twice a week, with friends.

A day or two later we had a party in the evening, at the flat. I had said that I gained no pleasure from doing coke any more and wasn't going to, but when some turned up I was interested. H told me to give it half an hour and if I still wanted some then fine. I snorted some half an hour later.

Since then, I've tried to tighten up my rules. Until today I genuinely thought it was H that had the problem, and refused to admit it to herself, and the idea of her risking getting back to the stage she'd been in a few months previously REALLY worried me. She's got into some awful spots - I once ended up going to bed out of desperation because she'd taken a sufficient amount of coke that a kind of instant compulsion appeared - ALL she wanted was more coke, and she spent her last pennies for the next two weeks AND a loan from a dealer to get more. She also recently got herself into a situation where her grandfather's business partner ended up trying to molest her in her own bed, and she can't tell her grandfather because he doesn't know that both she and the business partner use coke. She refused to listen to me, pointing out that I was being controlling and she wasn't prepared to quit coke to appease me, given that as far as she's concerned her use is no more dangerous than people that have a couple of glasses of wine two evenings a week. I said that I couldn't cope with seeing her do coke, so if she went out clubbing with friends then at least I couldn't see it in front of me.

Unfortunately she recently suffered a severe back injury and hasn't been going out much. There was an occasion three weeks back where she had a weak moment when I wasn't in, and ordered a gram. I was upset first, but was happier doing it with her than worrying about her doing it elsewhere with somebody else. Then since then, there were a couple of nights when I again got bored and tried binging on my own, really wanting to experience the high that she does (with no success).

Wanting to relate to her got so hard that I ended up almost ordering fluoxetine from a dodgy online pharmacy, in order to put myself on it for a few weeks to see how coke and prozac reacted together with my system. I didn't in the end, and I ended up telling her about that a few days back. She said that talking about coke so regularly really depresses her and she's my girlfriend, not my therapist. She also started suggesting therapy for me and couples therapy.

Then last night N (E's boyfriend) came round in the evening - they were all going out. I had been intending to go out but an old teacher of mine had just died and I didn't fancy clubbing. To make matters worse, when N arrived he announced he was calling J, "that wonderful witchdocter", for some coke. H asked if I'd like them to go into the other room and I said that actually I fancied a line with them. She apologised, told me she loved me, but said under the circumstances that she couldn't let me. A gradually got worried as it was being chopped in front of me, and retreated to the bedroom, but the sound of coke being tapped on the table, even through the wall, was horrible. I got really moody and upset, and when she came through I pointed out that it wasn't her place to be controlling about my coke use, in the same way that it's not my place to be controlling about hers. She apologised again, and I apologised for being so bad with setting boundaries and changing my mind about them.

Shortly after they went out, I called J myself and ordered not one, but two grams. I did most of it before they got home, earlier than expected, and then lied about it to H. The four of us ended up finishing their stuff together, and then eventually, around 5am we all went to bed. I couldn't sleep, and I knew that I still had a good half gram lying around. I took it into the bathroom and snorted most of it, but left some until the morning, which I then snorted this morning after H had gone to work.

Pretty much everything came out when H got home from work. I didn't tell her it was 2 grams last night and I didn't tell her there had been a couple of other occasions recently where I'd binged in private, alone, but I told her that I'd done coke behind her back last night, on my own, while she was out, and that I'd only had an hour asleep before her alarm went off at 9.30 this morning. I've been more tired than coked over today, but it's been a really hard day for us both.

I realise now that I am the one with the problem, not her. I'm very overprotective of her - she has very little family of her own and is a year younger than me, and I have more income than she does (and am generally a little better at regulating my spending). I find it hard to let go of her in that she needs to make and learn from her own mistakes, but I wish she'd stop doing coke herself. Now that I've admitted to myself and to her that I'm the one with the problem, she's actually said that she'll think about quitting coke full stop, for my sake, but she herself is in a position where she knows that if she says "never again" rather than "once in a while, sensibly" she'll relapse because the first just isn't a realistic option for her.

I really don't gain anything positive from coke these days. I wish I did. Most people I've read about with coke addictions carry on getting some kind of buzz, but I don't, yet I'm still an addict. I wish coke didn't exist as a substance, I wish the first time H and I had sex wasn't on coke, I wish she didn't have the problems she has and has had and I wish that I could say goodbye to coke full stop.

I'm trying damage limitation measures - I wiped all three dealers from my mobile (they never call me, I always call them), and I've asked her to hide her paraphernalia (mirror, blade, tooter etc.). I've put mine in the trash. I don't think it's my right to dictate to her what she can and can't do, but I've said that IF she insists on doing coke then I can't be on the same premises as her at the time. If she's doing it in the flat, I have to be out, and if she's doing it while she's out I can't be there with her.

I suspect that if I went to an addiction therapist, their first advice would be for me to leave H and move out. It's her group of friends that I've inherited, that see coke as socially acceptable, as much as alcohol and cannabis is among British young people. I suppose if I were to do that, and rebuild the friendships I semi-dropped when I got together with H, it would be much easier not to come into contact with coke.

The problem is, every other aspect of our relationship is fantastic. We share so much in common in terms of what we're passionate about in our working lives and hobbies, the music we listen to, the films we watch, the food we eat. Our sex life has deteriorated in the past week but understandably so - we're very close and generally the state of our sex life reflects the state of our relationship. Our codependency issues are down to coke and the problems that coke causes, alone.


Just to clarify - this post is about straight forward white powder coke, not crack. I apologise for the length of this post.

What should I be doing? Who should I be talking to? What can I reasonably be asking H to do to help me, and what should I do to support her?

Thanks for your advice, in advance.
Jim