Reprint of an essay written by my friend, citizen ergot, and published in The Fine Print back in 2008. Enjoy...
“If you’re gonna be serious about your drug use, there’s no
point in buying small quantities at inflated prices…paying your
dealer’s rent. You might as well buy in bulk, at discounted
rates…sell it to your friends and neighbors at a mark-up…then you
become ‘The Man’…” So counseled Dwight, my shift supervisor
at the greasy spoon diner where I worked as a teenager. This and
other hard-won wisdom, offered up between omelets and homefries on
groggy Sunday mornings, was intended to help me avoid the pitfalls so
common to the novice drug user. In addition to advice, Dwight
offered hands-on experience—giving me my first samples of LSD,
psilocybin mushrooms, ecstasy, marijuana, crystal meth, and anything
else I cared to try. Dwight—several years older than me, with a
cool, beautiful girlfriend and the largest music collection I’d
ever seen—saw himself as something of a mind-expansion mentor. He
wanted me to be “turned on” in a safe environment, free of “bad
shit and bummer friends.” Dwight guided me through those first few
experiences, and then was there for me with bumps of speed and a wry
smile when I came into work after a long night of “tripping,”
short on sleep and still seeing tracers run cross the stove.
So it happened that at sixteen, when most kids I knew were still
sneaking booze out of their parents’ liquor cabinets, I was
probably the first guy on my block to try LSD. Needless to say, as
an angsty, working-class teenager who looked at the society around
him and knew that something just didn’t add up, hallucinogens
pretty much rocked my metaphysical perspective. In the immortal
words of Bill Hicks: “Today a young man on acid realized that
all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that
we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively,
there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and
we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the
weather.” I took to hallucinogens with an almost missionary zeal,
and took Dwight’s advice to heart, going in with him on bulk
purchases of LSD and learning how to differentiate poisonous from
hallucinogenic mushrooms in order to exploit the vast, prolific cow
pastures of central Florida.
At the time, LSD and ecstasy in particular were pretty abundant,
and LSD was going for about $7 per “hit.” However, we lucked
upon a reliable dealer with quality product and found that we could
get “sheets” of acid (100 hits/sheet) for about $125; do the math
and you’ll see that Dwight’s logic was impeccable. Up until that
time my life options had seemed pretty limited: I could continue
slaving away at a minimum wage job and try to work my way slowly
through community college, or I could join the military. My foray
into drug culture provided a much more attractive possibility,
however: quicker, easier money than I’d ever made and a whole new
world of friends and experiences, swirled altogether with adventures
and visions that Miramax couldn’t touch. For many glorious months,
my life was cast against a hallucinogenic terrain, replete with new
worlds to be discovered and set to a fantastic soundtrack. Ironic as
it may seem, I often credit that early experimentation with
psychedelics with diverting me from a much more dangerous path—one
of violence and self-destructiveness that ultimately devoured the
lives of countless other kids who grew up in a similar situation as
myself.
I never really considered myself a serious dealer. I essentially
bought enough so that I could “hook up” my expanding circle of
friends, meanwhile my girlfriend and closest pals could trip for free
whenever we wanted. The extra income was a bonus, but never amounted
to too much and was quickly blown on concerts, partying, and travel.
Yet these sorts of escapades have a way of taking on a life of their
own, and at some point it became clear to me that being The Man also
came with a whole other set of consequences that I wasn’t quite
prepared to deal with. Red flags began to creep their way into my
psychedelic haze. My younger sister, for instance, heard about my
little side business from some kids at her high school; and when a
friend of mine ran into some trouble with the law, the police
essentially asked her to narc on me.
I learned another hard lesson when my original LSD wholesaler
disappeared and I had to start shopping around for new suppliers.
One guy took me for the inexperienced punk that I was and sold me a
pretty sizable load of bunk shit. I quickly learned that one
downside to black market dealings is that entrepreneurial acumen will
only get one so far; at the end of the day, might still makes right.
Initially I tried pursuing “Bunky” (as we called the guy who’d
ripped me off) for a refund. But he took full advantage of this
rather teachable moment and used a handgun to educate me as to the
ways of the underworld. At that point I had an important choice to
make: I could cut my losses and walk away, or get my own piece and
“play the role model,” as the song goes. I’m probably here
today, coolly reflecting on this episode from my life, because I just
didn’t have the stomach for the latter. Bunky held onto his booty
and I searched for a way to rebound from my poor investment decision.
One friend suggested I diversify my holdings and move into crystal
meth futures. By then, I’d tried meth—or poor man’s coke, as
we called it—a few times and really enjoyed it, even if I knew
better than to get too cozy with it; there were more than enough
emaciated, toothless wretches hanging around the trailer park to
drive that point home. But quick money was quick money, or so I
thought, so I bought a few hundred dollars worth just to see how it
went. Mike, another co-worker, turned out to be a budding meth-head,
and overnight he became one of my closest pals and best customers.
Mike would come by my house several times per day, at all hours,
eager to buy another bag. On each visit he would ask to see my
entire line of baggied product, and would carefully inspect each one
in hopes of getting the best deal. It only took a few visits from
Mike, and others like him, to realize that dealing a truly addictive
substance like meth was worlds apart from my earlier experiences; and
the longer I did it, the more I started to feel like Satan, not to
mention a growing concern for my safety. My mentor and drug guru
Dwight even fell under meth’s deadly spell eventually and lost
pretty much everything, only deepening my disdain for the miserable
substance. Finally I flushed the rest of my supply down the toilet,
and with it much of my remaining ambition to be The Man.
A year or so later, as a student in a residential, vocational
training program which I’d entered mostly to get away from my home
town and my dodgy past, I took to dealing one last time. This time
it was only weed, which my girlfriend would meticulously hide inside
the “care packages” she’d mail me on a weekly basis. Once
again, the temptation of quick profit was too hard to resist;
especially as each box of Lucky Charms, with its special prize
inside, earned me more than a couple weeks’ pay at the facility.
But it all came crashing dangerously down when one of my instructors
caught on to what I was doing on the eve of my graduation and a
full-ride scholarship to college. He confronted me late one night,
and despite all that I had to lose at the time, I didn’t have the
gall to stare him in the eyes and lie about what I’d been doing.
This time my lack of thuggishness was to my benefit, however. Since
I came clean about the whole affair he kept it between us and allowed
me to graduate rather than turning me in. Only a slightly different
turn of events or state of mind on his part and I would probably be a
convicted drug felon rather than a college graduate right now.
Reflecting on these experiences years later, it feels worlds away.
These days I am career and movement-focused. I work regular
day-jobs. I have family responsibilities and a somewhat impressive
resume. Like most middle class or aspiring middle class people, I am
terrified of what a drug trafficking arrest would mean for my family,
and for my future, even as my attraction to mind-altering substances
lingers. I still have a somewhat missionary zeal when it comes to
hallucinogens, even if only undercover, and believe that pretty much
everyone should give them a try at some point in their lives. If
nothing else, the world would honestly probably be a better place if
people exchanged their television viewing for exploring the visions
and thoughts that reside in the untrammeled vistas of their own mind.
And I still believe that the “War on Drugs” is a farce, even
as I have a more nuanced political perspective on it now than I did
during my days as an enemy combatant on the front lines. Though many
people will continue to choose—as I ultimately did—security,
responsibility, and material comfort over recreational drug use, that
doesn’t mean that the harsh criminalization of drugs is right, or
even efficacious. In a society as deeply divided as our own, there
will always be those who have very little to lose and are desperate
for a way out. As a spokesman for the organization Law EnforcementAgainst Prohibition states, real drug dealers “…accept the
possibility of death and long prison terms as a condition of
employment.” What seems most apparent to me, in retrospect, is the
nearly irresistible allure of drugs, from a psychological as well as
economic perspective. Attempting to bind and castigate that facet of
our self which seeks only to escape from undesirable and mundane
circumstance seems about as absurd as, well, designating a plant
which grows naturally upon the earth as illegal. The world needs a
little lunacy; this world, especially, needs a little lunacy.
So until that day when the calculated, dogmatic absurdities of our
society run their course and we cease waging war on ourselves, I
continue to sneer at the police, and rejoice in ditchweed growing
wild on abandoned lots. And I strive to live the sage advice of my
newfound mind-expansion mentor, Wendell, who admonishes us to
everyday do something that won’t compute. “…As soon as the
generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose
it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't
go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in
the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.”
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