Modern Living: Tyrannical King Coke

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The dinner party on Manhattan's fashionable East Side included all the chic refreshments. It began with perfectly mixed martinis, followed by a fine vintage French wine with the main course. With dessert, guests puffed the finest marijuana. Then, after coffee and cognac, the young hostess presented the evening's piece de resistance: a glass jar filled with a white powder. "Would anybody like a hit of coke?" she inquired casually, as if offering another drink. Indeed they would. Recalls one of the guests: "I was so wrecked by the time I left that I could barely find my way to the next party. But when I got there, wow! I was really on top of it."

Not for long, of course. When a usual dose (one snort into each nostril) of cocaine wears off in about an hour, the user may have a hangover of depression. There are medical and legal hazards as well; possession of cocaine is a felony. These grim facts have not stopped some enclaves of the bored and beautiful set from making the inhaling of coke a status cult. Since cocaine for a dozen people can cost as much as $600, depending on the quality and scarcity of the drug, the hostess of that recent East Side party was showing her friends that she really cared.

Trying to keep up with ostensible trend setters, bankers, lawyers, doctors and would-be socialites have also taken to snorting coke (also called snow, freeze, flake, lady). The habit was in vogue decades ago, then fell out of style except among pop musicians, some other show-business types and the more prosperous prostitutes and procurers. Yet a recent Government study concluded that the use of coke is now more widespread than of heroin. The same survey estimated that 4.8 million Americans have sampled the drug.

The growth seems most dramatic among "respectable people." A Wall Street broker keeps coke in his wall safe. A New York advertising firm is said to impress clients by giving out small samples. A Hollywood film editor says that some movie and record companies pay for the stuff out of their operating budgets because "people won't work without their wake-up calls."

Medical authorities disagree over whether cocaine is physically addictive. But there is no question that steady users can become psychologically tied to the drug and have a difficult time functioning normally when they try to give it up. Says a Boston real estate executive: "It got so that I couldn't imagine life without it." Because the drug has a relatively short effect, cokeheads tend to keep going back for more. Bill Schwartz, an assistant supervisor in a New York drug treatment program, warns: "If you and some friends have $1,000 worth on the table, you just keep on and keep on until it is gone, just like eating salted peanuts."

A frequent side effect of heavy use is bleeding from the nose, a result of injury to nasal membranes. Snow can also cause hyperactivity and damage to the nervous system. Many long-term users have suffered psychotic symptoms, such as imagining insects crawling under their skin. Still, snorting cocaine is not as bad as injecting it into a vein; a mainlined overdose can literally freeze respiration and stop the heart—permanently. Considering these hazards, the king of drugs, as cocaine is often called, is something of a tyrant.