Every One Who Has Ever Been My Drug Dealer

Bill

Bill used to buy booze for me in high school before I wised up and learned that the Circle K by Vanderbilt didn’t check IDs and made real friends old enough to buy alcohol or rich enough to have “fakes”. Bill was a creep, but I thought he was cute at first because I was naïve. Retrospectively, it seemed like he relished the opportunity to buy booze for 15-year-olds a little more than was appropriate. Once, he asked me to go on a walk with him. It was weird. He never seemed to come through with “the good stuff” always due to some problem: liquor store was closed, he was confused, etc. So usually he bought PBR that my friends and I drank in a pretty generic suburban fashion. He text messaged me habitually in a way that seemed indicative of hope for a more intimate relationship. Last time I heard from him was when he text messaged me “Happy Halloween! Whats up?” and a series of emoticons my senior year of high school.

Nathan

I didn’t buy weed for a really long time (at least compared to most adolescents). I guess it made me anxious or I was satisfied with procuring it occasionally at parties when some doofus asked if I wanted to “hit” whatever large and ridiculous bong was available. For whatever reason, sometime junior year of high school my friends and I decided we were bored or curious enough to shell out the cash for drugs of our very own. Nathan was someone my friend knew through theater and was not a real drug dealer. He was in our year at an art school that was known as a “real joke”. When I met up with him at a coffee shop, he looked very gaunt and was accompanied by a woman in her mid-forties who he was apparently dating. Later, I saw him play the lead in a production of Footloose. He was very good.

Sam

Bought acid from him junior or senior year of high school. It seemed kind of bunk. I don’t think I knew what to expect from a psychedelic experience, but I wanted to try more intense substances than weed or booze (I also had smoked opium once that someone had brought back from a music festival).

Man with Backpack

I bought acid and shrooms from a man at Bonnaroo walking around with a backpack muttering the names of different drugs. At the time, it seemed like an appropriate thing to do. I would describe his “vibe” as a Weird Al vibe. The shrooms were bunk but I saved the acid for later and it turned out to be pretty good. My friend and I took it at his parents’ house and wandered around all night. At first, I thought it wasn’t working and accidentally drove my car. Later, when we were “peaking”, he felt very drawn to his dog and wanted to play with the dog’s face. I was grossed out by that. I remember looking at his face and the dogs and thinking about people having wolfen qualities and feeling bad. I lay down for a long time and closed my eyes. He put on a Dirty Projectors album and I was scared by the way I could separate the sounds of different instruments. Some people seem to desire this experience, but I still do not find this aspect of psychedelic drugs to be a positive feeling. The trip felt long and I was relieved when it was over, though I had to work as a hostess the next day and felt paranoid.

Keebler Elf Looking Girls

Also at Bonnaroo. Two cute girls seemingly popped out of nowhere and sold my friends and I weed edibles (cookies, rice crispy treat) at our campsite. I was with ~5 girls I went to high school with. Walking towards one of the stages, progressively, we each began to feel bad. This culminated in my best friend and I breaking off from the group, buying a burrito and falling half-asleep next to it in the grass for several hours. People would pass by and comment on it, like “oh my god! look at that food!” but not remark on our behavior, which for the event, was I guess not at all abnormal or severe. I missed seeing David Byrne and could hellishly hear Dirty Projectors out of one ear and the comments of passersby about the burrito in another. Now that I think of it, it’s funny that two of my less pleasant drug experiences involved listening to Dirty Projectors and seeing the world as dystopian and grotesque.

Molly

I bought Adderall from Molly a couple times early on in college and used it recreationally. I vaguely remember ripping her off, though now, having prescription drugs of my own, I realize that it takes a lot to “rip someone off” for generic amphetamines or benzos. It was around this time that I got the idea that I liked “uppers” and wanted to try more intense ones, though I guess that was always something that had an allure for me.

Mike

I don’t really remember buying any weed early in college. I probably did. But Mike was my foray into “hard drugs” and probably my only “real” drug dealer. He rolled with a crew and seemed to have a pretty legitimate operation. I got his number from a friend of a friend. I told people I had tried cocaine long before I actually did. I think when I started buying it from Mike I had tried it once or twice visiting California. Mike was generally a very good drug dealer, though he sometimes would appear 2-4 hours later than desired. He “threw me” extra grams when I bought coke for other people/friends more skittish about “hard drugs” and referred to me affectionately as “babe” in text messages. He delivered, which was cool, and made me feel like a “fly bitch”, which was also cool. I would probably contact him again if I were in the area.

He is always very responsive and flexible about location, and suggests that we chill, which I appreciate even though I know it will probably not happen. I would like to chill with Mike and see what his life is like. Once, my apartment door was locked and I climbed down a fire escape to meet Mike. “Damn girl!” He said, and offered me a blunt. I think I may have been addicted to cocaine.

Anna

Anna ran a delivery service my roommates bought weed from the same summer I was giving my business to Mike. I think there was an unspoken understanding that I would take care of one thing and they would take care of the other while the drugs were generally shared. I did a lot more coke than anyone else and probably smoked considerably less, so it was a decent system. Anna never responded to my texts, maybe I didn’t seem that “chill” or had the wrong number. She was fairly responsive to my roommates though and would send a delivery person on the subway with weed in a laptop case. The strains had stupid names like you would expect and it was awkward to send these “minions” on their way as abruptly as you usually wanted to. Once, one of them kind of bonded with me and gave me a free blue ecstasy roll that I took at a Feelies concert in the park. This is the only time I have ever really felt heightened effects of ecstasy, which included drinking a Bud Light Lime, exclaiming it was the best beer I had ever had and having weird sex with my roommate later.

Robbie

In Ireland, weed was hard to come by. Robbie sold my friend and I terrible weed a couple times, but mostly sold unremarkable pills. He was kind of hot in a way of like, someone who would rage really hard at a Fall Out Boy concert. I had sex with many strange and awful people in Ireland and I partially wish Robbie had been one of them. He always thought my friend and I were making fun of him on the internet.

Darrell and Brother

When I moved to Ireland, someone told me if you want to buy drugs you just have to go down to the river Liffey and look for someone in a jumpsuit. This is more or less accurate. Darrell and his brother were initially solicited to sell us weed, which, like most weed in Ireland, was awful, but seemed especially awful due to how little they knew about weed. I remember once explaining to them what stems and seeds were.

Mostly they sold me coke, which, unlike Mike’s coke, was far too diluted with whatever else to become addicted to, but it was weird shit and put me off the stuff pretty much, probably for the best.

Though I don’t remember his name, it was Darrell’s brother who delivered the blow, carrying it in small torn-off pieces of trash bags tied with rubber bands and hobbling towards me sadly on crutches. I don’t know where they got their blow or why it was the yellowy color it was. It seemed cut with something bad. For whatever reason, I would describe them as “good guys”. I guess I would describe almost all of my drug dealers as “good guys”.

Alan

Alan worked as a bouncer at a relatively miserable club night called “CUNT”. The thing you tend to forget about in Europe is that the drinking age is 18, so when you go to events aimed at “young people” even most of the people of age to be there are teenagers and obviously there are many younger teenagers sneaking in with fake IDs or whatever.

My friend Chloe viewed Alan as a paternal figure, though I was slightly more skeptical. We compared his small foil packages of “weed” to owl pellets. On our last night in Dublin, I coerced Chloe to decline Alan’s offer to meet him at “Barry’s Hotel” for drinks after his shift, a move she has since thanked me for despite her resistance at the time. Alan always seemed very invested in futurity: like he knew his weed was bad and believed it would get better, and thought we deserved things that were good.

Stephen

Unless you are at Burning Man, that probably isn’t pure molly. Obviously, Stephen insisted that it was and gave it to me for free because I was sleeping with him. He asked me to be his girlfriend and I declined; I was still in love with my ex who I was having skype sex with on a daily basis. Stephen was more valuable sexually than as a drug dealer but was ultimately middling as both. He had a slight speech impediment that made him difficult to communicate with and was generally annoying, but I kept him around for a while because I was depressed and young and sorting things out and he was sexually competent and easily available. I don’t think he had met that many American people before and compared me to Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. He was pursuing a degree in zoology because he said it was the least demanding course of study at the university.

Hugh

Living in a small flat on the lower east side, I considered Hugh my drug dealer even though he was always very generous and gave me lots of blow for free. I don’t think I ever bought drugs from him. Once, he bought me a lot of sushi and when I offered to pay replied that he “made 12,000 a day, don’t worry about it”. I think I offended him once by trying to defend my ethical views when he was really coked out. The way he was reminded me of Boogie Nights. It was stupid of me to try to talk about whatever I was trying to talk about with him, but hey, that’s cocaine for you.

Coke Dealer Solicited by China Town Club Owner

When you look back and think about doing blow with Chinese businessmen in the back of a club opening, it seems bad, but when someone asks you if you want them to call you some and insist that it’s “on them” while delivering infused vodkas to your friend’s table, who’s going to say no to that? Vaguely remember “having fun”, talking to some French girls about something that seemed intellectual at the time. I don’t remember what this dealer looked like but his name was something like “Ricky” or “Tommy” and I imagined him to have a very Outsiders vibe.

Wilson

Black-listed by the community at large for selling bunk molly, I still felt and feel good will toward Wilson because he has always encouraged my poetry career. Small Midwestern college towns can get boring and sometimes you pay ten dollars for a drug that probably won’t affect you. Wilson let me snort a bunch of extra molly once because I am a pleasant person. I think he might have also been trying to fuck someone else in the room at the time.

Joe

Joe has been my weed dealer for the past year. I think his friend was beforehand and handed the reins over, couldn’t handle the heat or something and wanted to get out of the game. Joe is cute and smart and usually willing to trade for prescriptions I have. Once, he shut down business because my roommate prank-called him using an Alec Baldwin soundboard and he thought the authorities were catching on to his operation.

*some drug dealers and individuals names have been changed to protect their anonymity, some drug dealers may have been excluded or forgotten

You should like Thought Catalog on Facebook here.