20) Cold Water Therapy
Present tense: October 23, 2023, Cape Town, South Africa. I am currently living at Liberty House, a sober living facility in Cape Town. I...
Present tense: October 23, 2023, Cape Town, South Africa. I am currently living at Liberty House, a sober living facility in Cape Town. I...
Yes, I was a junkie. Down and out, hopelessly addicted to cocaine. I was as bad as it gets: days-long benders, horrific crashes, stealing...
This idea, that I “deserve it” fueled my drug use for a very long time. In fact, this rationalization was present from the beginning. I...
It's all in the eyes--the eyes. That's what the sex workers used to say. They would stare men down as they walked down the...
Today is an exciting milestone for me. I am 365 days clean. 365 days of continuous sobriety. It is a tremendous achievement, as I had...
When I first showed up on the streets, I mistakenly thought that jealousy would be the largest challenge among the sex workers. I thought...
The hierarchy that existed among the sex workers was incredibly complex and took me years to unpack. Where do I begin? First of all, the...
In Ecuador I became a regular user of cocaine. But I remained a "weekend warrior," which is someone who parties hard all weekend and then...
Back to Quito (2009-2013), the capital of Ecuador, nestled high in the Andean mountains. Back to the streets, back to my fieldwork....
In this blog I plan to play with time and place: this particular post will reflect upon a recent day where I am currently living, in Cape...
Without a doubt, it was emotionally draining to work in the red-light district. Just being in the ambiente was heavy, I never knew what I...
Several posts prior, I posed the question, how did my research affect my drug use? My previous post was meant to start to tackle that...
I never smoked base with any of the sex workers, nor with Santiago (all names have been changed) or his partner, Carolina. Despite...
Base is a street drug found in much of South America, though its origins are in the Andes. Called basuco in the Spanish Andes--derived...
Santiago (all names changed) was my unofficial bodyguard while I did my fieldwork in Quito's red-light district. When I first started...
It took time to earn the trust of the women I worked with in the field. Many people ask how, on earth, did I approach these sex workers...
I moved to Ecuador in September of 2009 to conduct my doctoral research on sex work in Quito's red-light district. I was studying at New...
Those were halcyon days--those days of cocaine use during my years in Ecuador. I was still just dabbling, a casual user, which is the...
Actually it was Ecuadorian. Ecuadorian Marching Powder. I had tried cocaine a few times in my 20s, but it wasn't until I moved to Ecuador...
One day I became a cocaine addict. I can't tell you when this line was crossed--this mysterious, mystical line, between casual user,...