COOL STORY BRO

You can't find happiness at the bottom of a bag either. Trust me—I checked.

Let’s Tarantino this shit up and start from the middle.

After a messy breakup, my life went completely off the rails—so I got right back on them. HARD.

It was my thirty-seventh birthday during the height of the June COVID lockdowns, and ten of my closest friends—five guys and five girls—rented a cabin deep in the northern wilderness for a joint birthday bash. I thought getting out into the woods would help me get over a girl, yet it had the exact opposite effect. I was down and out, and there was only one thing left on Earth that could pick me up: cocaine.

I was using almost every weekend now, telling myself it wasn't a problem because I never missed a shift and swore I could quit whenever I wanted. Who was I kidding? I was addicted, heartbroken, and quietly wanting to die.

"Have you ever heard of anyone dying from doing too much cocaine?" I kept asking my friends all day. It was a blatant cry for help dressed up like bar-stool trivia, and they just laughed it off.

While everyone else started day drinking, I started counting little white lines. Thirty-seven on my thirty-seventh—my champagne birthday, except instead of bubbly, I wanted to see how many of those sparkling little beauties I could put up my nose in a single day without dropping dead. In my head, the decision was made: I was checking out on my birthday.

I cracked a Watermelon White Claw at lunchtime and got to work, snorting a few lines every hour until I hit twenty-five and my heart started hammering against my ribs like it was trying to kick down a locked door. We played some beer pong, and I took a supper break. I had zero appetite, yet I didn't want anyone getting suspicious, so I choked down a hamburger and a handful of ketchup chips, poured a stiff whiskey, and went right back to work.

I pushed straight through to line thirty-seven—one for every year I had been on Earth. I still remember looking down at the cabin table while my buddy Rocco carefully arranged the powder into giant block letters spelling out "DICK CHEESE." I snorted thirty-seven lines that day and barely even made a dent in Cocaine Mountain.

Later that weekend, we grabbed a Bluetooth speaker and wandered into the warm June air, blaring The Weeknd while strolling right down the middle of Main Street in a sleepy northern resort town. Because of the lock downs, there wasn't another soul in sight—just our crew, wide-eyed on mushrooms and pure vibes, owning the empty street like we were the last ten people on Earth. Eventually, we collapsed onto our backs in the cool grass and stared up at a canopy of stars so bright it felt like you could reach up and grab them.

My chest felt like an overheated car engine rattling on empty, throat raw from chemical drip and nostrils burning like battery acid, but the flatline never came.

Still, when the sun finally crept through the pine trees and the ringing in my ears quieted down, staring at Cocaine Mountain hit me harder than any comedown ever could. One minute you’re lying in the grass high on mushrooms feeling invincible under the stars; the next, you realize you’ve spent your entire life chasing every rush and distraction you can just to outrun the exact same ghosts you’ve been dodging since you were a kid.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit I ain’t that good at pool—but I sure know my way around an eight-ball.