When our sixth-grade class went to confession each Friday before early-morning Mass, I always had trouble thinking of any sins to confide to the priest. My religion teacher, however, insisted that we all committed sins and urged me to think harder. In frustration, I took to inventing two or three serious ones in advance. I kept this up for two and a half years — until I found drugs and stopped going to Mass altogether.
By the time I got to college, drugs were my sin of choice — and crack exclusively, from the moment I first tried it in 1979. That day, I sat at a friend’s coffee table and smoked from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, getting up only a couple of times to go to the bathroom, and stopping only when I’d smoked all I had. Afterward, I paced around my dorm room, fists clenched, taking deep breaths, drinking beer, and watching late-show reruns until sunrise.
