The things people have done to acquire drugs

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

While reading the thread about hydrocodone, this post peaked my curiosity, especially the line

Rather than derail that thread, I started a new one for people to share stories of unsavory things they have done to acquire drugs. I understand not being proud of such actions, so we can expand this to stories of family/friends/person I know.

My contributions: An ex was addicted to oxy, and for a while she helped deliver meals to seniors and would raid their medicine cabinets.

Her downfall came when she stole a prescription pad from a doctor and was caught because she did not realize even mom and pop pharmacies are networked.

Who else has stories?

2

Well, there was the prostitution. I wouldn’t call it “unsavory” however: I’ve always had a pretty relaxed view towards sex, so while I’m not proud of it, I’m not ashamed of it by any means. I discuss it pretty openly with friends.

I also let a homeless prostitute move in with me. This gave her a place to live and “work” out of, and I charged her per day, payable in cash or drugs. She was also “supposed” to contribute cash towards rent on top of. Of course, she never did, despite the fact that all together, what I was asking her to pay was 1/2 what she was paying to live in the hotel she was at when I met her. I ended up getting evicted, of course. It was my fault: I’m generous and “understanding” to a fault, and I never pushed her hard enough to actually pay me. I always felt too guilty asking her to leave. She knew a sucker when she saw one and completely took advantage of me.

There was the “boosting” – we would go from store to store shoplifting baby formula, then take it to a bodega and sell it for $10 a can. Ended up with a shoplifting charge, but not before I made thousands of dollars that way. We mostly hit up Walmarts, which I genuinely don’t feel bad about, because Walmart is fucking evil IMHO.

My credit was already pretty destroyed before the drugs, but I did a lot of things that didn’t help matters whatsoever. For example, I had a PayPal debit card that was linked to my bank account. At some point I realized that if I created a “dummy” PayPal account, I could send money from my main account to my dummy account, then from the dummy account right back to my main account. The cash would then appear on my PayPal debit card, regardless of whether I had the money in my bank account or not. I could then go retrieve the money from an ATM. This basically allowed me to overdraft my bank account to the tunes of hundreds of dollars, which wouldn’t have been possible with my bank’s debit card. I thought that was pretty clever.

The worst thing I ever did was steal a gold bracelet from my mother. I had played in her jewelry box since I was a kid so I thought I knew the history of every item. One day when I was incredibly sick I went into the jewelry box and selected the bracelet, which I didn’t recognize. I assumed it was some random thing her ex bought for her and that she wouldn’t be attached to it, but it ended up being something her mother had given to her shortly before her death a year or so earlier. Oops. To make things worse, my mom then gave her jewelry box to a “friend” in order to hide it from me. The “friend” pawned every single item in it, something which I absolutely never would have done. She’s forgiven me, but I still feel incredibly guilty about it.

Those are the ones that immediately come to mind, though I’m sure if I thought it about it harder I could come up with some pretty wacky things that I’ve done to come up with money.

3

It wasn’t me, and I don’t have a cite, but I read about people who watch the obituaries and also try to find out which houses have people dying, so they can break in and steal their medications.

Stealing drugs from a dying person, or from a house of mourning. shudder

Regards,
Shodan

4

IMHO stealing drugs from the recently deceased, who don’t need them any more, is less morally objectionable than the kind of thing the OP mentioned—stealing drugs from people who do need them.

5

Not so much unsavory per se, except for his contribution to the long term effect of drug-seeking behavior screwing things up for those legitimately in need. But I knew a fellow that would fake kidney pain in an emergency room, then when asked to give a urine sample would prick his finger to put a drop of blood in it. This would apparently often net him either a shot of morphine and/or a small pain med scrip.

That was some time ago, so I doubt that works most places now. Last time I was in an emergency room with a( legitimate )kidney stone issue maybe a decade ago I was just given a muscle relaxant.

6

Taking your kids wrapped Christmas presents from under the tree to sell for drug money.

That was one of my recent employees as a supervisor. The employee in the sense that we hired our hourly through temp services. He’d been close to the 6 month point where we typically hired them in full time. Then he fell off the wagon, landed with a crack pipe between his lips repeatedly, and stopped showing up to work. He showed up at the warehouse around lunchtime not long after he was replaced. He only asked to “borrow” money from me while I was telling him he had to go. He’d tried selling the presents to my other employees before that.

7

[Tyrone Biggums]"This is not the first time I sucked dick for Crack![/Tyrone Biggums]

8

har har har.

9

This one is very heartbreaking, And made me remember the time a woman left her baby with us for collateral while she took our money to go make a buy. A very sobering situation to say the least.

10

Weren’t you worried that she’d abandon the baby and take off with the money?

I mean, if someone’s leaving you their baby as collateral, it’s a sign they’re so fucked up that they’re capable of anything. So it’s not exactly the iron clad guarantee you’d think it would be.

11

You should never accept anything less than a toddler.

12

FOAF: Grandma bought grandson a brand new truck. Grandson purposely totals truck to get the cash. Sadly, Grandma bought grandson another truck. That magically was totaled. This was after grandson plundered anything not nailed down from his parents’ house and Grandma’s house.
In the space of 18 months, he drank and shot through over 27K.

13

That is exactly what I meant by a sobering moment. That I was dealing with someone so messed up she would even consider leaving a baby with strangers, and think that made her seem trustworthy.

14

Those drugs are actually most likely to be stolen by “friends” or relatives of the deceased. This crime is just like any other, in that they usually take place between people who know each other.

I’ve bought and sold several houses over the decades. One of the first things the Realtor said was, “Lock up your valuables, and that includes prescription drugs.” Lots of people go to open houses to look for exactly that. Which reminds me - I was interested in buying a house a couple years ago and looked up the agent who had helped me sell a previous house. Google-fu revealed that she had been arrested and lost her real estate license (and presumably her freedom as well) for using her passkey to get into houses and steal narcotics. :eek:

Like I just said in that other thread, I’ve had 3 classmates get in various levels of trouble, up to and including death, because of drugs, and I suspect that they became pharmacists in order to have ready access to them. THAT’S got to be one of the toughest ways to do that, believe me. :smack: Not a small number of nurses and doctors also do that.

I’ve definitely heard of people damaging their teeth or injuring themselves in this way or that in order to get drugs (and every addict knows who the doctors and pharmacies are in their area who will prescribe and fill them, no questions asked) and the most extreme example I personally witnessed was the woman who doused herself in lighter fluid and set it on fire, just to get drugs. Not surprisingly, she died - from something else, interestingly! - not long afterwards.

15

When I was in high school, I had a friend whose mother, who was herself a recovering alcoholic, was always hauling her dad into court for non-payment of child support. One reason why he didn’t pay was because she was doing things like this for their son who was himself a hopeless alcoholic who ended up dying from his disease. The main incident that comes to mind was when he told her he needed $2,000 to prevent a foreclosure on his house, and instead of sending the money to the bank (which she really shouldn’t have done, either), she took out one of those high-interest loans that you could get in the 1980s and wired him the money! :mad: She knew darned well what he was REALLY going to do with it.

p.s. The one time I met him was when he was in town and stopped by for a family picnic. Of course, he was drunk, and he threw his 3-year-old niece (her other brother’s child) across the room for “hitting” the dog. (She was PETTING it!) I remember being afraid of him myself, and after he left (and yes, he drove) I held my friend while she cried.

16

Considering that it takes at least six years to become a pharmacist, they must have been very patient addicts.

Or did they become pharm techs, (which is less than year)? In either case, of course, you can’t have any criminal record of drug/alcohol related convictions to licensed.

17

Twenty years ago I was recovering from getting my wisdom teeth pulled, and the doctor prescribed me some pain medication. I don’t even recall what kind of medication it was. I didn’t take it… I have never taken pain meds, so I just threw it in the medicine cabinet. A few month later my cousin paid a visit. After she left I noticed the medication was missing.

As long as I’ve known her, she has complained about vaguely described “head pains,” and routinely visits doctors for treatment. I’m guessing she got hooked on pain meds.

18

At the time, it was a 5-year degree. And then as now, you didn’t need a degree or even formal training to be a pharmacy technician, and very few of them were certified, for which you need to take a test. The requirements for the job were this: 18 years old and a high school graduate.

You can’t practice with a felony on your record, that I know. Drug and alcohol convictions are a fuzzy area, and a lot of it has to do with whether they’ve been through treatment. Over the years, I’ve worked with two people whose licenses were revoked for drug theft, although not when I was working with them. One was arrested and the other AFAIK was not, and in both cases, it was two or more years between the offense and the board’s final decision WRT their licenses. The one who was probably not arrested was shocking to me; the one who was arrested was not. Mr. Arrested also has Asperger’s which was so obvious, you didn’t need to be a psychologist to diagnose him, and I do know that substance abuse is a big problem in that population.

19

Yes, it used to be easier, but of course, it depends on the state. Today, all but seven states have licensing requirements for pharm techs, and I assume all include the background check, as does CA. My point was just that it surprised me that addicts were thinking so far in advance. Usually they want what they want NOW–instant gratification is the essence of addiction.

20

Marijuana is boring by comparison. The worst I’ve done is fake friendship with people who were dealing.