Four Seconds

With a new life in a new state and more money coming in than Miguel and I had ever imagined possible, you might have thought I'd arrived. In a way, I had. Twelve years clean. Two thousand miles away from the old life I'd once lived. Money in the bank. Now when people met me, I looked like a respectable housewife, not an ex-felon. But life, she has a way of throwing curve balls. Especially, since distance and time hadn't given me any magical coping skills. On the contrary, without drugs, I'd turned to any other substances I could use as a bandage when I felt scraped up. And I felt scraped up a lot. My leg still hurt constantly. My husband had taken a job in a city out of town. And my daughter was struggling to find her footing in adulthood. So I smoked like a steam engine and drank like a fish. I got angry at the smallest provocation, and raged at anything bigger. My life, once again, was beginning to pull apart at the seams. If I was going to survive, I needed more than a quadruple shot of espresso and a pack of cigarettes. I needed, somehow, to find my way home. *** Enjoy the beautiful conclusion of Laura's story in part 3, Four Seconds to Heal, Indiana.

After twelve years in Hawaii, I was ready for a new start. Six months later, I was in San Diego. I felt like a new woman. I was ready to be a new woman. For the first time in eight years I was ready to give up drugs-not just put them away for a pregnancy or ignore them while I was visiting my parents. For the first time since I'd started using cocaine, I was ready to be done. And for the first time in eight years, I was in a place where I felt like I could be done. The old friends and familiar clubs were gone. A door had opened for a brand new me to walk through. And I did. For about five months…. Keep reading in the second installment of Four Seconds! (Trigger Warnings: Contains NON-graphic content pertaining to drug use and the discovery of child abuse.)

Im not going to try it, I said. Youll like it, she argued. I know Ill like it, I said. Thats why Im not going to try it. Try it just this once and Ill never ask you to do it again. That WAS a deal. I slipped back into the drivers seat while Pat corn-rowed two neat lines of the silky white powder on the back of a plastic cassette tape cover. Fifteen hundred dollars every month, an abusive boyfriend, a molested child, a lost family, hotels for houses, a ruined leg, a gun to my head, a knife to my butt, a jail cell all my own. Black eyes, bruised days, broken hours. Looking back, it seems strange what I gave up to get my roommate off my back. It only took four seconds. *** In her debut memoir, Andrade tells of her years with cocaine and crystal methamphetaminesusing, then sellinguntil all she had left of the life she wanted was a chalk outline and a pack of cigarettes. This is the story of her use and recovery, of the people who frustrated and inspired her, of her decision to leave the drug world. It is the story of her slow, often unsteady walk home. Author's note: This is the complete story for Four Seconds. It includes Four Seconds to Fall, Four Seconds to Break, and Four Seconds to Heal.