It's incredible what a difference two days can make.

On June 27, 1982, I stood on top of the world, fresh off the type of game that had solidified my reputation as one of the fastest-rising stars in the major leagues. In a Sunday afternoon win against the Pittsburgh Pirates that brought my Montreal Expos within a game of first place, I went 3-for-3 with two walks and three stolen bases.

Not a bad performance considering I had been up all night partying on Crescent Street in downtown Montreal.

With a day off before our next series at Olympic Stadium, I decided to keep the good times rolling. I hit up the locales where I knew I could score cocaine, which had become my drug of choice earlier that season. The next 48 hours were a blur. As I crisscrossed Montreal, snorting line after line, my mind started playing tricks on me. I saw objects and heard voices that weren't there. By the end of my 48-hour binge, I was drained of all energy and emotion, lying on the floor of my apartment at the Château Lincoln, staring up at the ceiling and feeling like I was going to die. I hadn't slept for three days, or maybe it was five. I had honestly lost count. I was afraid to give into the exhaustion. If I went to sleep, I feared I might never wake up. As one of my favorite bands, Chicago, once asked, "Does anybody really know what time it is?" Well, back in those days, I often had no clue.

We had a game that Tuesday night, and the Expos needed me. But I needed another fix to get me back on my feet. That meant my team would have to wait, because in the summer of 1982, everything took a backseat to cocaine, even the game I loved.

As the walls of my apartment closed in on me, cocaine consumed me both in body and in spirit. The ringing of the phone awakened me from my trance. Somehow I rolled across the room and managed to pick it up. Most junkies would have just ignored the call. I didn't realize it at the time, but my effort to reach the phone meant I wanted help.

The call came from someone in the Expos front office who was wondering where the hell I was because our game against the Mets was about to start. I can't tell you who placed the call because junkies aren't the most detail-oriented people on the planet. What I do know is that the fear of having my secret exposed momentarily jolted me to my senses. I muttered something about a case of food poisoning, a terrible headache, and problems of a ... umm ... personal nature, hoping that one of those excuses would stick.

When I think back to that night, it's with a mixture of embarrassment and gratitude. I never thought I would, but I ended up falling into a trap that ensnared many baseball players of that era. Years before steroids became baseball's Public Enemy No. 1, coke reigned supreme among certain major-leaguers. Regardless of what city you played in, cocaine could easily be found, for the right price. If you had told me when I broke into the big leagues in 1979 that I would be seduced by the charms of the white powder, I would have just laughed in your face. Prior to making the majors, I never drank, smoked, or did drugs. I barely ever cursed or stayed out late. You might say I was a boring guy. Throughout my life, baseball and other sports had always been my sole passion and focus — my drugs of choice.

Was it a case of too much, too soon? Probably. During the strike-shortened 1981 season, I stole a rookie-record 71 bases in 88 games and hit over .300, becoming one of a select group of players ever to make the All-Star team in his first year. The sportswriters pointed out that the strike had likely cost me a chance to break the modernday record for steals in a season, 118, which belonged to Lou Brock before Rickey Henderson shattered it in 1982. My overnight success thrust me into the spotlight. A prominent baseball writer went so far as to proclaim that I was helping to revolutionize the game. "In case you've been away for about a decade, baseball has changed," wrote Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. "Fundamentally. It's guys like Tim Raines who have done it." Boswell cited a 1981 game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in which I scored standing up from first base on a routine single to right field. "When Raines gets on, it's as though the groundskeepers accidentally put the bases only 80 feet apart and he's the only one who's found out yet," Boswell continued. That made me feel special. It also made me believe I was untouchable.

If it weren't for Fernando Valenzuela's incredible start in the majors, I would have easily won the National League Rookie of the Year award. And if it weren't for Fernando's Dodgers, the Expos would have reached the World Series in 1981. Maybe a less dramatic start to my career would have resulted in a smoother maturation process. As it stood, there I was, less than two months into my first full season in the big leagues, on the cover of a national sports magazine. The dose of quick success led me to believe that I had it all figured out. Instead of committing myself to taking my play to an even higher level, I took my gifts for granted. After cocaine got a hold of me, it didn't take long for Rock to hit rock bottom.

The problem snowballed quickly, excuse the pun. Playing in a foreign city full of temptation, walking around with an air of invincibility, I succumbed to peer pressure and allowed some of my older teammates to lead me astray. Montreal was a party town, but ironically, I got my first introduction to cocaine back in my sleepy hometown of Sanford, Florida, after my rookie season. I wanted to party like a star. So when some old high school classmates pulled out some coke, I figured, why not? I soon found out that the drug gave me a feeling that bordered on all-powerful.

When I returned to Montreal for the 1982 season, I brought my newly discovered taste for cocaine with me. And that led me to hang out with the wrong group of Expos, the ones who cocaine had firmly in its grips. Some of them had been using the stuff for years. On game days, they'd show up in the clubhouse after a long night of partying, put on their uniforms, and go out and play ball. I didn't think the drugs made them better players, but as far as I could tell, it didn't make their performance suffer, either.

When you're far from home and trying to fit in with your older teammates, it's amazing how quickly you can go down a dangerous path, especially when you have more money in your pocket than you've ever had before. During the off-season, I signed a contract that bumped my pay from $35,000 to $200,000. That kind of cash allowed me to afford the $1,000 a week I spent on cocaine. The possibility of getting hooked didn't cross my mind. As far as I was concerned, I had everything under control and could stop whenever I felt like it. Other people — weaker people — became junkies. Not me. I was very naive.

I tried my best to conceal my behavior from the world. But like any addict, I went to reckless lengths to make sure my habit got fed. On the road, I would meet with shady drug connections I got to know through my teammates. At home, I'd leave cocaine lying around the apartment. My wife at the time, Virginia, got wise to my problem and dumped my stash down the drain on more than one occasion. It worried her a lot. She hoped that I was just going through a phase.

The drug-related anecdote that the media jumped on and elevated into legend involved my tendency to...