I lived as a criminal for 14 years. I was a soft drug dealer who mostly sold pot and sometimes psychedelics. I didn’t deal with cocaine that much because as soon as that drug came out, it started getting a sleazy reputation and you ended up selling to addict types, which would make me feel guilty. Your buyers buy from you but resent you because you are the “cause of their drug addiction” because you get the stuff from them. Also the coke dealing scene was way more violent that the soft drug scene. The psychedelic dealing scene was very nonviolent.
I don’t feel bad about my past at all because we were hippies who thought the world would be a better place if everyone smoked pot and dropped acid sometimes. It was the Righteous Dealer thing. In addition, I wasn’t victimizing any innocent people because I can’t do that. I’m also quite proud of never getting caught. The rush you get committing a crime right in front of police (by, say, driving by police with a pound of pot in your car and them looking at you none the wiser) is hard to put into words.
I can also tell you that sometimes we got our pot straight from the police. And I had a relationship with narcotics detectives and turned in lousy people every now and then. I suspect they knew what I was up to, but if you turned in a scumbag now and then, they left you alone.
To tell you the truth, I’m such a good boy nowadays that I am terrified when I think of my past. I can’t believe I took the risks I did especially with the sentences they are handing out nowadays. I doubt if I would ever take risks like that again, or at the very least, I’d have to think about it real hard. Also I have far more to lose now than I did then. I did get arrested a couple of times on very light charges, but I’ve only spent six hours in jail, and it was long enough that my attitude is, “I ain’t going back.” I also sort of brought it on myself a bit by being an asshole and taunting and fighting with the cops like an idiot. I thought I was a badass back then.
It’s hard to describe how traumatizing it is for a middle class White boy to spend even a few hours behind bars. Plus some of the cops are really mean when they arrest you and some of the jailers are too. These cops were basically sadists in my opinion. Perhaps you have to be a sadist to be a cop. I have no idea. But I would think that non-sadist cops would be better than sadistic ones. My record is clean though. I only have one chickenshit conviction and I got it expunged. Summary probation is a joke, too. It’s not even real probation.
3
20
20
20
