“The drugs were a combination of boredom and loneliness,” he says. Today, when I ask him how the hospital’s been so far, the first thing he says is that there’s no Wi-Fi, he’s way behind on work emails. The first time we met, three years ago, he asked me if I knew a good place to do CrossFit. He is trim, intelligent, gluten-free, the kind of guy who wears a work shirt no matter what day of the week it is. Until a few weeks ago, I had no idea he used anything heavier than martinis. Jeremy is not the friend I was expecting to have this conversation with. He won’t tell me the exact circumstances of the overdose, only that a stranger called an ambulance and he woke up here. Jeremy is telling me this from a hospital bed, six stories above Seattle. About two years ago I switched to cocaine because I could work the next day.” When it’s gone, it’s like, ‘Oh good, I can go back to my life now.’ I would stay up all weekend and go to these sex parties and then feel like shit until Wednesday. “When you have it,” he says, “you have to keep using it. “I used to get so excited when the meth was all gone.”
