Cocaine was a prominent drug in the professional and media fields in the 1980s. KFI-AM 640 host Bill Handel was under the drug’s grip in those days but says going to drug rehab now is a much bigger deal than it used to be.
On Tuesday, Handel joked that one of his colleagues would be out until March due to entering drug rehab. He then joked that when he went in 1983, it was only a 30-day program.
“When I was in Dry Island drug rehab, I had quite a dependence on drugs and cocaine for the most part. 1983. Can you imagine I’ve been cleaned for over 40 years?,” Handel marveled. “It was big then. It was it was huge. And I mean, it was enormous. When I was going in, it was 30 days. I don’t know how long it is now.”
Handel, who was a lawyer at the time, told an anecdote of just how prevalent the drug was in those days.
“Every lawyer in the world was doing cocaine at that time because no one knew how insidious it was. And it was sort of just people did it. Doctors did it. Lawyers did it. It was not considered a big deal. I’m there in the hallway, downtown at the county courthouse. And there’s about 15 of us talking and all of a sudden you hear a clink and a little vial of cocaine starts rolling down the hallway,” said Handel. “Every lawyer there starts patting their pockets, their shirt pockets, their pants pocket. We never did figure out who it was. Of course, I grabbed it and I used it myself.”
Handel concluded by doing the math to realize that the price of cocaine hasn’t risen since he got clean in 1983.
