Hey, I figured we’re doing strippers and substance abuse counselers, so I might as well flesh out my sordid past a little, just to keep us on topic.
When I was in high school (junior and senior year, so about 16-17 years old for me) I did a stint of small time dealing. I mostly sold to other students but I had a few older “clients” as well to whom I sold marijuana, mushrooms, LSD, and ecstacy. This all ended when I was eventually arrested (from a set-up. A really, really obvious set-up which I should have seen coming if I was in any right state of mind) and charged with felony posession of psilocybin (mushrooms) with intent to distribute.
My parents hired a lawyer for me (thanks folks!) and I did a first offender’s program which got my charge reduced to misdemeanor posession of drug paraphernalia. I didn’t have to do jail time, other than the 24 hours I spent in jail until I got picked up (once again by my parents. That was a really uncomfortable ride home). I did however do 200 hours of community service and a year of probation*. This happened long enough ago that I’m comfortable talking about it and shouldn’t be violating any board rules. I have not sold anything since, and pretty much stopped using drugs entirely as well but I do admit that I’ve smoked pot maybe half a dozen times in the meanwhile.
*ETA: Oh, and there were several thousand dollars in fines but since all my money was gone my parents actually paid those for me. That was probably much too nice of them - thanks again folks.
1/ what got you onto drugs
2/ how did that lead to dealing, if at all? Or was it vice versa?
3/ which of the arrest, the community service, the probation, the parental disapproval, or what, most helped you to stop?
Where did YOU get your drugs? How did you meet them? Were the people the next level up super-sketchy or just another kind of businessman (al la Stringer Bell on The Wire)?
Adolescent experimentation. It certainly wasn’t peer pressure, as I didn’t have a lot (or really any) friends when I started using them - I did a lot of research first and then sought them out myself.
I started dealing after quitting my job (at a crappy pizza place for $5.25/hr), mainly as a way to support my increasing interest in continuing my “experiments”. Drugs are expensive.
The arrest, absolutely. I sat in jail for 24 hours and decided quietly to myself I was never going back there again, no matter what. It’s really not worth it.
I had one main supplier (who only sold weed) and 3 or 4 others who I would occasionally buy from (weed as well as the other stuff I mentioned selling). I met them initially just by asking around in some of the shadier circles at school. My main supplier turned into a very good friend who I would also spend time smoking with, and I still believe was an essentially good person. The others were sketchier, and that’s why I only did business with them when my main supplier was unavailable or didn’t have product and they did.
Yep, pretty much completely. During the peak of my activities I would have been making about $1000/week profit. But I did a lot of drugs myself. We prided ourselves on smoking eighth-ounce blunts in one session (that’s about $50 of weed!), and I smoked 3-4 times a day + other drugs. Granted they weren’t always $50 blunts, but the costs really added up. Plus I got robbed several times, once for $640.
So is this were most of the money went? You hear stories about how lucrative the business is, but of the few I know who have done it in the past, not a single one really made a windfall off of it. If it’s such a lucrative business why are dealers so poor?
Did the police pressure you to help them get to your suppliers?
Did your parents notice that you were getting high all the time?
Do you miss any of the drugs? (For instance, I miss college because there were people there who knew where to find LSD.)
How were your grades while you were dealing/using? How did the whole experience affect your college career? I know that when I applied, you weren’t eligible for federal student loans or grants if you’d been convicted of a drug offense.
Yep. Honestly, if I had been financially savvy and didn’t “get high off my own supply” so to speak I could have been making some pretty nice contributions to an IRA for a 17 year old. But of course I wasn’t, and I blew through it.
Yes. As part of my deal to reduce my charge to a misdemeanor I gave them some information but only about one of my occasional suppliers who had robbed me (the one who robbed me for $640 actually, and I was bloody well pissed at). The information was all basically accurate except I sort of fudged my answers to their questions to make it seem like this guy was my primary/only supplier when in reality I had only dealt with him a few times. I had no intention of ever giving them the name of my real primary supplier.
Yes, sort of. Our family was rather disconnected and dysfunctional anyway. They later told me they suspected I was doing drugs but had no idea I was selling them, nor as to quite the extent I was using them.
Not really. As mentioned I have smoked weed a handful of times since, and I have had minor temptation to go on another psychadelic trip (but gave it up when I couldn’t acquire any). But for the most part I am happy to be drug-free and have never felt better.
My grades slipped a little, especially in my senior year, but I was really surprised that I managed to maintain a B average. I skipped a lot of class and would frequently show up very late and very stoned to English (which I had right after lunch - we had off campus lunch for seniors at our HS). As for college, it never came up, and I actually got an academic scholarship - it was still damn expensive though and I dropped out after a year and a half. (I may or may not go back sometime, depending on how my writing career goes)
I understand why a lot of these substances are controlled, and I have more respect for drug laws now that I have had a pretty thorough experience with them. I don’t think it would be a good idea for the government to sanction the sale of most currently illicit drugs to the general public (maybe with the exception of marijuana), but I do believe that individuals can responsibly use illicit drugs and gain positive experience from them. It’s just something you’ll have to keep on doing under the radar so to speak, and that’s the risk you take when you sign up.
None taken. In fact, I fully support you, and now that I’ve experienced the business of it first-hand I am all the more concerned for the sake of my own (future) kids and I expect to have very strong feelings on the matter when the time comes.
It’s impossible for you to really control their behavior by micro-managing them and I think that extreme over-protectiveness and nagging behavior will only make them resent you. Even if it works for a while, you just can’t hover over them every second, and this is not a good strategy in the long run.
Rather than spend a lot of energy negatively reinforcing what you don’t want them to do, positively reinforce the things they show interest in. My parents were not only unsupportive of me when I expressed interest in exploring music, art, & other creative endeavors they actively discouraged me from them, because everyone knows it’s really hard to get a good job in these things and apparently if I wasn’t pursuing hobbies that pushed me toward a “worthy” career I was wasting my time. (to this day when I see them my dad still says, “So are you sure you don’t want to be a lawyer or a doctor?” :rolleyes: ). I’m not blaming them for anything, but I already had low self-esteem and their attitude really didn’t help. They were very verbally and emotionally (though not physically) abusive and although they would say they loved me, I really never felt it (and still don’t). Show your kids that you love them, don’t just tell them.
That being said, even if you do everything right there is still the possibility that they will experiment with drugs - it can be kind of a teenage rite of passage. If you find out that they have, just make sure they know they can confide in you and still come to you for advice and emotional support when they need it - then you can warn them about the real dangers involved (and of course make sure you get your facts straight, as there’s nothing worse than a fear-mongering campaign full of distortions and outright lies). This is important because if you lose their trust, it only gets worse.
Were you ever concerned about the possibility (actually, the eventual likelihood) of being caught and arrested for your actions? Or did you think, “can’t happen to me”?
I actually had nightmares about the DEA raiding my house - complete with searchlights, helicopters, and black uniforms. :eek:
The way I got caught, like I said, was really stupid. A girl called me up one day who I didn’t even know, but I did know her brother fairly well. Plus she was a girl, and I was partial to girls since most of my clients were guys (this of course turned out to be my downfall). She says to me, “she’s looking for a good time”, and asks what I’ve got. I say, “Well what are you looking for?” and she repeats that she’s “just looking for a good time”. I tell her I have some shrooms, she says OK, and I ask her how much she wants. She didn’t really seem to be familiar with the size of a dosage (they usually come in “eighths” or one-eighth of an ounce), and I tell her the price and she’s sort of all “yeah, whatever” about it. This set off warning flags for me, and yet we arranged a place to meet in a fast-food restaurant’s parking lot anyway.
I told myself if anything seemed remotely fishy that I would bail out of there. But I didn’t even get the chance - I got pulled over on the way there. I ask the officer why I’m being pulled over and he says, “improper lane change”, shines a flashlight in my car’s backseat and says, “he’s got mushrooms!” They were sitting under the seat and apparently he could see a small corner of the bag. Not that he would be able to identify what was in the bag just from seeing that tiny corner of it if he didn’t already know. Within 30 seconds, 2 other squad cars had pulled up with the drug dogs and they were already searching my vehicle. Pretty obvious set-up. The rest is history.