The Big One: Part II

I am fucked. So fucked. These two asshole Jersey City detectives came walking over to where I was with their detective Sergeant with 89 bags of heroin cupped in their hands, laughing and with the biggest shit-eating grins on their face. The Sergeant looked at me like “Why did you lie to me?” and quickly pushed me up against the back of the paddy wagon there. Now there are two other cops talking to my buddy on the other side and about 10 cop cars there with 15-20 cops mulling around. But I kept my cool. I ran the scenarios through my head of how they knew because they knew. They knew what I was doing down there and how I had dope and all the details. The thought of me being on a wiretap did not even cross my mind at the time. That stuff is for the movies and for the big time drug dealers. Well, my guy was a big enough target for the time apparently. The fucking D-E-A was even there. Federal police. I am thinking this is a buy-bust day. Like a Taskforce Tuesday or something. And they targeted Duncan projects. That is the only thing I could come up with at the time. But I still had so many questions unanswered. Like how did they know there was more dope in the car hidden? They were adament about that. Was my guy an informant? No way. I’ve been buying off him for a few months now and quantities almost as much at times. They stripped search me in the middle of the parking lot at the Hudson Mall. Grabbing my nuts, making my squat and cough and doing every little thing they could to embarrass me. They threw me and me buddy into the back of a marked car, a cop got into my Pontiac and everyone cleared out in a matter of seconds. Off we went to the precinct.

Now I know the Jersey City precincts, so when we passed the one in West Side and were heading North up to the near Newport and the Heights I thought it odd. Where the fuck are we going? When I was arrested in Greenville, they took me right to the Greenville precinct. We arrive at this nondescript almost apartment looking like building. Right into the front door and up two flights of wooden, creeky stairs. It looked and smelled like an old school building. Right away they split us up again, but now they played good cop. I am still looking around wondering where the fuck we are. This wasn’t a precinct. I later found out it was the Jersey City Narcotics Squad’s and where they worked out of. They stripped searched me AGAIN. Even though I told him you already stripped me in the fucking parking lot, but I guess he got off on it or something. He was concerned “I had more on me”. After I satisfied his curiosity, we got down to business. The questions came. “Who, what, where, when, why, how, how much, how many times, how do you know him, how did you meet, who else do you know, how long you been buying at Duncan?” Etc, etc, etcetera. I answered what he already knew and shut my mouth for anything else because even I did not know what the fuck was going on. I am starting to get nervous now. We sat there for a good 4-5 hours in the office while they did paper work and my car got searched again. He did do us one favor and this I will never forget it. He knew, in his mind, even though there was almost 9 bundles that we weren’t ‘dealing’. At least in Jersey City. So he called the DA and told her the story how they popped these two young college kids from out of town with a bunch of heroin, but they were addicts and if he should book us into county. He was going to write us a summons and let us drive out of there right there and then, as long as she agreed to it. Well, she said no it was too much weight. So the car got towed. We waited another hour, got brought to BCI (Bureau of Criminal Identification) for mugshots and fingerprints and then to Hudson County Jail. We were both able to get bailed out in 2 days, and I was already on PTI for the previous possession charge.

Sick, depressed, upset, angry and with a massive drug problem I left school (never went back) and went right into a rehab in Pennsylvania 2 days later. The first of many. I am thinking now I must go to court in a few months to fight this possession charge and it’s going to be harsher than the first because a) it was more weight and b) it was my second offense in 6 months. Felonies. Well I waited, month after month after month for my court date. When it finally arrived in the mail with my date and charges listed, my jaw dropped.

COUNTS:
1. Possession of CDS (Heroin)
2. Possession w/ intent to distribute CDS (Heroin)
3. Conspiracy

Conspiracy?? What the fuck? When I finally went to my first court appearance my lawyer told me that this case was wrapped up in a bigger case targeting my guy and his crew. Wiretaps, 30 co-defendants, kilograms of drugs, DEA involvement, crossing state lines. Possibly a murder in there somewhere. What the fuck? I didn’t sign up for this. I am just some young idiot heroin addict who played with the wrong people. The prosecutor’s first offer to me was 8 years flat. My lawyer had to explain to him who I was, that I was a young, college kid with a drug habit and all I did was buy the drugs for my personal use. Ok. Second plea offer was 5 years with 4 no parole. Now my lawyer was angry at this young assistant prosecutor trying to make a name for himself with this case by putting everyone away. My friend I was with was getting the same deals as me. This is ridiculous.
After a few more months of back in forth in court and my lawyer talking to the ADA and judge behind closed doors, there was one piece of evidence that showed I was an addict and not selling, which was what they were claiming. And that was the empty bag that fell out the car door when I was initially stopped, which gave the cops probable cause anyway. That little empty bag saved my life. It went from 4 years upstate to 2 years supervised release (probation). BAM. *gavel slam*

It amazes me how these lawyers, judges and DA’s screw with people’s lives in a matter of mere seconds.

The 2 years on probation and rehab I went to in March 2009 are stories in itself. I will share them sometime.

The Big One: Part I

I started my heroin ‘career’ cruising the streets and housing projects in Jersey City, NJ in the mid 2000’s. I was lucky enough to have met a really good dealer as my first. He wasn’t just a street guy, but supplied a lot of the street guys. So as he got bigger on the streets, prices got cheaper and the drugs were better quality. And all that I could buy he could supply. The problem with that is a double edged sword though. He was constantly harassed by the police and always in and out of custody, mainly for bullshit charges. And since he was running all over the place, it became increasingly harder to get a hold of him and meet him. I routinely would wait hours for him. So I solved that problem by getting a bunch of other connects, mainly lower level guys who were always available. Eventually, he went to prison in late 2008 and that was the end of that. I caught my first heroin arrest in 2008 also as I previously wrote about, but that didn’t stop me either. By the Fall/Winter of 2008, I was at the worst point in my addiction I had ever been. I had no job and very bad heroin and coke habits. All the money I made through selling drugs went right back into drugs to go into my arm or up my nose. It was a lose-lose situation and I was spiraling down fast.

Like September/October 2008, my running buddy and I at the time made a new connect on Duncan Ave in Jersey City at the projects (which have been demolished since 2012). He seemed just like another run-of-the-mill, low-level, street dealer. He was always hanging out at the projects and available usually any time we called. We would call him and park on the side block and a few minutes later he would walk around the corner up to the car window and toss in the drugs. We would hand him the money and speed away. It that way for a few months with no problems. Eventually, my friend went to rehab just before New Years 2009 and I was on my own. I kept seeing the guy, and he was basically my go to first pick dealer for a while. One day he rolled up in a nice blacked out Lexus with tints brand new. I told myself this motherfucker must be making SOME money to afford that at least. Well, and I bullshit you not.. the next few times I seen the guy he was driving a different brand new vehicle. In a matter of 2-3 months, he must have switched cars three or four times. BRAND NEW cars. With tints and rims and all that nonsense. I soon found out that he wasn’t just a low-level street hustler, but was running a pretty big organization. Prices dropped and he became very paranoid and cautious. He wouldn’t even meet me himself most days, but had a whole crew of young runners whose only job was to meet people that called him and deliver the drugs.

Early February 2009, I remember calling him for a bundle and going and meeting a runner on Freeman Ave adjacent to Duncan projects. I still remember that day so vividly and can play back all my movements in my head now. Well, in hindsight now, there was a reason he started doing it through runners and being careful. He knew he was fucking being watched by the police, but he didn’t care and he was greedy. That chilly February day I am sitting there in my car parked waiting for the kid to come to the car and bring me my bundle. Unknown to me, a block away hidden in the park and in the surrounding areas there are unmarked, undercover units watching the whole thing go down. They have this guy under surveillance now. Not only that but his PHONE IS TAPPED. And I called him and spoke to him multiple times, so now they know who I am. They have me arranging a drug deal with him over the phone and are now spying on me. Watching me sit in my car parked, waiting. I think back on that and it’s just like “Holy shit”. This is straight out of a fucking movie. They watched the whole thing go down, but they let me go. They didn’t want to blow their cover just yet. But they still had the gall to follow me into another fucking county 20 miles away and keep me under surveillance for the weeks to come. Nice. Every time I seen him from then on I was followed by undercover narcotics police officers in unmarked cars. And my telephone conversations were recorded. I was only buying for personal use, so there was nothing to really gain by arresting me. They were getting ready to fucking fry this dude and his crew. What are they going to do with me buying a bundle or two here and there? I did have other dealers and would routinely switch up. Mind you, I HAD NO idea this was going on until later on in court. But keep reading..

I fucked up one day. I fucked up BIG TIME. February 26, 2009. I arranged a deal with him over the phone for a brick. 5 bundles. 50 bags of heroin. I am sure that got the cops attention who were listening and monitoring the phone taps. I told my guy I’d be down in JC in an hour or two. I got everything ready, met a friend and got the money together. I called him again and told him I was on my way and would be there in a bit and changed the order from a brick to 6 bundles. Then when I called him to say I’d be right on the block, I switched the order AGAIN to 9 bundles. Almost 2 bricks of heroin. The cops were just waiting and this is the time they were waiting for. And to top it all off, my guy rolls up in a blacked out, tinted mini van himself. I hadn’t dealt with him directly in weeks. Something was up and something did not feel right. I fucking knew it then. I was waiting there too long. And I remember vividly this suspicious black guy sitting on a porch on the block with a bluetooth headset who just looked out of place. He was most definitely an undercover cop now that I look back on it. My guy finally shows up and I get into his car (another first). I gave him the money, got the dope and hopped back into my car and drove away. We were about a half mile away, out of the ghetto heading down 440 South towards Hudson Mall, when I spotted a marked police car behind me. I stashed 8 bundles under my change console. I had 9 bags in my pocket and I had already shoved a bag up my nose. The minute I seen the cop cruise up behind me, I fucking knew it. I pulled a quick right into the mall to make it seem like I was heading there, just in case there was some sort of lucky break and he kept going. But no, he turned right behind me and lit me up. My fucking heart dropped. But I had already been arrested before, so the shock wasn’t as bad. In fact, I kept my cool for the most part. They had me dead to rights. They had all the evidence with the surveillance and wiretaps, but in my mind at the time I am thinking it is a random stop and search. Just a cop who saw a white boy driving around the projects and decided to check me out. I had no idea that this was involved in a major investigation with the DEA involved and ongoing for months already. The minute the cop pulled me over and out of the car, the 1 empty baggie fell to the ground and that was it. That was all the probable cause they needed anyway, plus the 9 bags in my pocket. So I gave them permission to search the car anyway. In a matter of 30 seconds there were about 10-15 unmarked and marked cop cars there. Detectives, Narcotics Unit, Patrol, DEA, etc etc. I was just dumbfounded. I surely thought at the time it was just a buy-bust day. No idea of any investigation into me or my guy and his crew. They ripped my car apart and after 15 minutes they still couldn’t find the other 8 bundles. Now, I got this narcotics detective screaming in my face “WHERE IS THE REST OF IT?” “WHERE THE FUCK IS THE REST OF IT?” I just told him that is all I had. Well they clearly knew I bought 9 bundles and they only found 9 bags and 1 empty. There were still 80 bags missing. I didn’t know they knew. I played tough as long as I could, but then I heard one the cops searching my car yell “BINGO” and come out holding the other brick and 3 bundles. Fuck. I am fucked.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2009/06/cops_35_busted_in_drug_traffic.html
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2010/08/jersey_city_heroin_dealer_sent.html

To be continued..

Montclair State University Recklessness: Part 2

Let me tell you the story about how I cheated death yet one more time. This occurred when I was going to college at MSU in New Jersey. I believe it was around the fall of 2007. I had only met one other heroin addict at school that was on my level of addict. I met a bunch of people that tried heroin and were willing to do hard drugs every now and then. But nobody I know was using to the point of keeping well or let alone using needles, except one other guy I met. His name was Dom. He was this overweight hippie who did a lot of drugs. Not just heroin, but anything he could get his hands on. He told me he had already been in rehab and used to cop in Newark, so he had connects. But I think he was trying to get away from the dope by going to school. Wrong move when he met me. He was the real deal because one night I could not get a hold of any of my phone connects and I did not feel like going to cold cop because it was like 11pm at night. I had done it before, but it’s extremely risky that late. He managed to get a hold of one of his old dealers in Newark by phone. So off we went. We met the dude at like 2am on S 12th St. in Newark. Got us a bundle each. Good stuff.

Anyway, this story we went to Jersey City to see my connect one night. Dom and I drove out from Montclair to Jersey City, copped and were on the way back. We shot up before getting back on the highway and we were sniffing coke and heroin the whole ride back. We each took a few Xanax too. So we were fucked up. I was driving in my car. Everything went smooth. We managed to get off the Valley Road exit and were coming down the road. I usually take the side entrance into the college if the gate’s open and it usually is during the school year. It leads right up into the parking lots and is a quicker way in. Well I wasn’t paying attention, I must have been nodding off or distracted or something because one second we are driving and I veer to go up the hill and the next second later we crash right through a steel bar gate going about 30-40mph. A huge metal bar came crashing right through my windshield and split right between us and landed in the backseat. A foot over to the right or the left and one of our heads would have been decapitated. The gate was closed and I wasn’t paying attention. Wow. We brushed ourselves off and high on adrenaline now, we raced out of there and parked the car in a lot somewhere hidden as best can be. My windshield was destroyed and the gate was totally mangled. We are talking a 10 foot wide thick barred steel gate that weighed like a hundred pounds.

Nervous I wouldn’t be able to hide the damage until the next day and completely trashed on drugs, I did the smartest thing (sarcastic) I could think of and turned myself in before the cops even knew about it. I called my roommate and got all the drugs out the room, just in case they decide to check on that. Well, I turned myself in and all the cops did was take a few pictures of my car. They kept me in the interrogation room at the MSU police dept and asked me some questions and I left. Never paid a dime or got in trouble over it. Don’t know if they ever replaced that gate. I don’t know how these cops never knew I wasn’t trashed. They didn’t even ask me. I must have played the innocent card well. “The light wasn’t on and I didn’t see the gate was closed in the dark.” I got the windshield replaced the next day. A minor inconvenience that was. My life? Didn’t even phase me.

Welcome August

The last week has been pretty shitty for me. I relapsed and went on a little 3 day run. Failed a urine at the methadone clinic so now I have to wait another 6 weeks for take home bottles AGAIN. I don’t know why I did it. But I was just angry, depressed, annoyed, overwhelmed, all of the above and went and copped. And the next day and day after that. And I honestly didn’t want to stop. I really wanted to get high yesterday and in fact I actually made arrangements to see my guy. The re-up was on the way and I was at his house waiting for it, but decided to go home because it ended up being another 2 hours anyway. I said I would see him later, but I fell asleep and didn’t feel like getting up that late. And today on the way home from work, I really thought about going to cop too, but I went right home. I made a pact with myself that starting August 1 was a clean slate, and I wouldn’t do this shit anymore. I am so lucky I am on the methadone because that little 3 day run would not have stopped if I wasn’t on the methadone. At least I have something to fall back on with it. But if I wasn’t on it and let’s just say clean completely from everything. No maintenance. I would have definitely still been emptying my bank account. I just started saving up a little bit of money too and I blew like $200 in a few days. Fucking pissed off about that now. But whatever.. money is just paper. And you can always make more of it. I remember the first rehab program I was in they made us do this stupid little exercise to add up all the money you spent in your addiction. I never did it back then. I just didn’t give a shit. But I actually sat around the other day and did it to the best of my recollection and knowledge. All the money I spent on drugs from 2007-2014 only, the height of my heroin addiction, totals over $300,000 conservatively. That is a house and a new car. Or a nice college ride paid full with some left over. Remember also that whatever money I spent on drugs I had to make elsewhere. Whether it was legal and from various jobs over the years but the bulk of that money was made selling drugs and crime. Think about that shit now for a minute. I wouldn’t have had that now if I did the right thing, of course. But still, as addicts we find ways of making money consistently. It’s usually illegal though. Over three hundred thousand dollars up my nose or into my arm. Fuck me. Hopefully things get better for me and my head gets in a better place this week.

Waiting for the Man

Just like it was embodied in the Velvet Underground song “Waiting for the Man”, everyone in the heroin industry has their own man. I’ve had my fair share of them over the years. Not just men, but women too. They are the ones that keep everything running smooth. They are the ones that keep the smack flowing into your veins. You become friends with them, sometimes closer than family with some. They were more important to me than my own friends and family. They relied on my business and I relied on them for plying me with heroin. It’s hard to count over the years how many heroin dealers I have had. I am not talking about random, open air street buys. I am talking about I knew their street names, had their phone numbers, sometimes became extremely close with them to where I knew where they lived, their families and their real names. Over a hundred, easily. That is also not counting the coke dealers and also other random shit I relied on drug dealers and other criminals for. I have dealt with heroin dealers in 5 states. Cities ranging from Newark, NJ to New York City to Philadelphia to Jersey City to West Palm Beach. All races, religions and genders. Men, women, 13 year old children. Black, White, Latino, Asian, Caribbean. From some such esteemed organizations such as the: Bloods on the East Coast, Latin Kings, Netas and Hells Angels.

It’s not hard to find someone who sells heroin as a full time job. It’s quite easy, on the contrary. Especially, if you know what you are doing, how to act and what to look for. Also, location is a big factor here. You can’t walk down a city block in Paterson or Newark without tripping over five of them. But it’s a job in itself managing these relationships. And also you want to keep the ones that treat it as a business. The ones with the best quality dope, best prices and that are available any time day or night. It’s a trade off sometimes. You might have someone who is reliable and cheap with mediocre quality stuff and the people with the extremely potent heroin are hard to meet and expensive. It is all about what you are willing to do. I’ve waited hours before, 2 blocks from projects where I know I could get bags for $8 and it could be a toss-up (good, average or shit) to where I knew my dealer had the best shit in the city at $5 a bag. But he wasn’t around and wasn’t going to be around for an hour or two. You wait. Sometimes I couldn’t wait and you take the chance of getting robbed, ripped off or making a new good connect out of the deal. Plenty of times I have had this happen. Sometimes you wait the two or three or four hours for that courier from a New York City based delivery service because it was the best heroin you have ever had. Sometimes you take the chance and buy off the first motherfucker who flags you down. It might not even be a dealer, but a middle man. Have had that happen to me too.

Very rarely do you keep the same dealers for long. I used to constantly delete numbers after a few months. Numbers change. People go to jail. Phones go off. The ones you keep longer than the year mark are the keepers. And bar them going to prison, you know it’s just going to be like you are married to these people. I had a guy I dealt with in New Jersey. Actually he was the first heroin dealer I ever had. My first connect was someone I dealt with for over two years until he went to prison for five years. I was lucky with that one. We knew each other very well. I gave him a shit ton of business and he was reliable. In exchange for my loyalty I was routinely rewarded with free shit, credit, access to other goods at cheaper prices, whatever I wanted. I had another guy I dealt with in Pennsylvania for over four years. We still keep in contact. He’s become a good friend to me. Again with him, for my loyalty, I can basically get anything I need from him anytime I need on credit. You can become very sentimental with these relationships, especially when you see these people every day multiple times. When I started methadone and didn’t talk to him the first week, I felt very weird. I called him the second week just to bullshit, just to see how he was doing. Not even for drugs. These people were the only social interactions I would have sometimes for months on end, so it became very intimate.

My phone used to be nothing but drug dealers and junkies. An occasional friend or family member. Acquaintances that came and go. Sometimes, very often, I would go through my phone and see names I didn’t even recognize. Mike from Sunoco? Who the fuck is Jerimiah Cash? I’ve probably had over a dozen drug dealers named Black. Black1, Black2, Black3. Who the fuck are these people? Nowadays, it’s the other way around. More friends, family. The occasional junkie. People I still talk to, but don’t associate with anymore. People grow close over years of contact. Constant or not. There are people I have only met a handful of times who are in my phone still after ten years. But remember that heroin dealers are people just like you and I. They sometimes have other jobs, they go shopping at the store, they ride buses, drive cars, etc. You might run into someone in public who has a pocketful of heroin on his way to a delivery with a phone full of contacts. Next time you are riding on the subway, that person sitting across from you might be on their way to meet their man. It is so common, it is unbelievable to the average citizen. I can spot it pretty easily. Next time you are loading groceries into your car at the supermarket, there might be a drug deal or two going on in the same parking lot. Or at the drive thru in McDonald’s, that car parked over there might have someone shooting up in it. We love public parking lots for drug deals and shooting up in. These men and women are everywhere. Sometimes blended in so well to society, you wouldn’t know. They are invisible to the law-abiding. But after years of doing the same things, I see things in a different light now. I see you. And I see you seeing me.

Life is Good

Life is good right now. Roughly ~6 months, almost to the day since starting on methadone and my life has improved ten-fold. No more waking up at 5AM sick out of my mind, waiting to begin the day’s hustling, whatever it may have been that day. No more shop lifting, pawn shops and crooked deals and scams on people. NO more of it. And I hope to never ever fucking go back. I have a job now. I work for an honest paycheck every week. It’s not the best job, but it’s a job and I really do enjoy working. I have never experienced this before. I want to make a good impression on management and my co-workers and I have. The girl who hired me (knowingly with felonies) said that the store manager personally told her that ‘I was a good hire.’ I have been praised all the way down to my department manager and co-workers. I have only been there under 2 months and already feel myself moving up the ranks. The company president even showed up to our store one day and I shook his hand and had a word with him. (Big deal for a big regional company). But this is not what I want to do for a career. And I just, yesterday, registered at the community college to go back and finally do what I want. I start class end of August. I am so excited about going back to school. It sounds so weird to hear myself say that. “I am excited to go back to school. I am excited about tests, studying and homework.” You take an education for granted, at least I did, during my late teens and early twenties. Especially with the drug addiction on top of the need to be accepted and party 24/7. A job and community college is what I look forward to this Fall. To stay clean on my methadone, work my little job and go to school. Just to enjoy what I have accomplished so far. Other things need to be handled, yes. I need to start working on the damage I did to myself financially and also legally in regards to my driver’s license, but other than that.. no criminal problems. Yay. Things have vastly improved from where I was in January to now. Methadone really did save my life. I can not stress that enough. Maybe I can finally find the right girl too. But let’s not rush things. 🙂

The blog has received a lot of positive reviews this last week since leaking it. A few negative assholes here and there, but fuck them. I do this for myself, not to entertain, but I feel the need to share at the same time. I will keep on trucking, keep with the updates and keep writing for myself. Thanks for reading.

Ten Posts And Counting!

Wow, I had no idea I would really take this blog so seriously as I did when I started. I figured I would write some stories and feelings down like journal entries for me to read for the future. But then I said “Fuck it” and decided to share it with the world. Other people can learn from my mistakes and learn more about me, who I am and what I went through. I am very proud of what I have accomplished so far, in life in the last 5-6 months but also with my writing and this blog.

I had 0 traffic for 2 months (May and June). I knew that would happen. And I have experience with SEO and driving traffic (hehe – IT major!). So after I had a few posts up, I decided to start to slowly disperse the link out through various sources. At first, I gave it through the typical big drug forums which I frequented (both public and private). And especially after a tragedy that befell two people that were part of that community, and which I wrote about after I gathered as much facts as I could. I e-mailed VICE and a bunch of other independent news, internet blog type websites and feeds about it since they did a story on Jynxie and HER blog. Then I slowly started giving it to about a dozen or so trusted friends/old junkie buddies (some clean and some not) through direct links. I have received a lot of good feedback so far from the people that have checked it out and I am so thankful for that. I am thankful for you guys and that you would actually read what I have to say. I write things that mostly every recovering or active heroin/drug addict can relate too. And I will continue writing. Writing stories from my past, my present and future. Writing about how I feel on certain days, what I am going through, what people I know are going through, anything to help a fellow addict out. I will write about things that all addicts can relate to about the addiction lifestyle and personality of a junkie. I will write about my experiences in jails, prison, rehabs, programs, days in the life, antics at college, at work and other reckless, dangerous things I did through my addiction. Things we all did. I just want to take this post as an opportunity to say thank you as a milestone. Ten posts. I will try to keep the posts more frequent, yet I don’t just want to write just to have a post. I write because I feel something, I have something to say or I have questions that need to be written down and analyzed. I will keep doing what I am doing. Still clean on the methadone. It has saved my life, I can’t stress that enough.

Thank you all for reading. Please share my blog with others. Junkies or not. Addicts, people who might be interested, authors, writers, anyone who will read. Once again THANK YOU ALL.

Montclair State University Recklessness: Part I

Fresh out of high school, I hadn’t messed my life up yet. Granted, I was abusing substances heavily, but I could drink, smoke pot and eat MDMA all night and go to work the next morning at 8AM no problem. My drug of choice at the time was oxycodone. I had an extremely cheap and plentiful connect for Percocets (5mg oxycodone + APAP) at first. Then I gradually moved up the ladder from fives to fifteens to thirties (And this is before the “blues” craze blew up). Oxycontin pills, the original OC’s, were still available and being made. I eventually made my way to them and there were only 40’s and 80’s at this time. The 160’s had been discontinued in the USA. I went to community college for a year, kept a part time job and partied the rest of the time. It was a good time in my life, yet I had no idea of the tidal wave approaching. From 2006-2009 I attended the esteemed New Jersey educational establishment of Montclair State University. I decided to fuck commuting and decided to live on campus for the experience, convenience and I knew a lot of people going there, including one of my best friends. That first year I wasn’t considered a Freshman, but a transfer so I lived in Freeman Hall which was a 7 floor honors dorm full of nerds and weirdos in a SINGLE room. The good thing was I had my own room with no roommate, the bad thing was I shared a bathroom with the other single room on the floor which was the RA. He was a square who kept to himself and others on the floor, usually studying or playing video games in his room. Never bothered me. That’s fine because I didn’t plan on causing trouble here where I lived anyway. I planned on doing that somewhere else. A lot of my friends lived in Bohn and Blanton, the biggest dorms centered in campus. Bohn Hall was like a project on a college campus. It was like 15 stories high (something like that). Tower looking building where anything went. I mean I lived in Bohn Hall the next year in a room with my best friend and it was absolute insanity. I can write a book about the things we did. So over the course of this blog, I will go into details of various stories in these segments. When I lived in Freeman, I was getting high and using heroin, but it didn’t skyrocket off until the following year in 2007 when I was living in Bohn. Needless to say, it was one of the craziest times of my life.

The 2006-2007 semesters when I lived in Freeman were boring. I went to as many classes as I could and strived for good grades, which I mostly got. I grew mushrooms (psyilocybe cubensis) in my dorm room for 3 months. In a cooler in plain sight. I received a letter from the RIAA, or at least the university did when I illegally uploaded 100 gigs of a flagged music torrent one weekend when I left my torrents running and I went home to visit. Two pimply, IT nerds came to my dorm door one day and showed me the letter. I stopped the uploading, but was on the verge of getting sued. Luckily, the college did not divulge my information to the RIAA. I had a floor mate I became friends with, probably the only one in my building, who really introduced me into the Montclair drug scene. He lived 3 doors down and was a hippie like kid from New Brunswick. I was still smoking a lot of pot and eating/sniffing pills and occasionally heroin at this point, so we became buds. He was getting cheap 80mg Oxycontin knockoffs from Mexico (the ABGs) for $10 a pop. I bought him out every week. Then I started bringing in the pills (the Oxy 15s, 30’s, OC 40’s, methadone 10mgs, Klonopin 2mgs, Ritalin 10mgs) and began to corner the drug market at MSU. The next year was when it actually happened. And for 2 years just about (Sept 2007 – Feb 2009) I owned the drug market at Montclair State University. If you were selling anything but weed or ADD meds (Adderall), then you worked for me or stopped the selling. I was the only one on the college campus selling hard drugs and the volume of prescription pills that I was. If I found out someone else was selling Oxy’s or coke, then I did a few things. I either got them working for me and gave them my products to sell. I bought them out and stopped them right then, and then I would get them selling or buying from ME. And if they didn’t listen, then we straight up robbed them. If you got coke, heroin, crack, oxys or methadone at Montclair during that time period from someone, it most likely came from me through my people. I’d bring $5,000 worth of product in each week or two and divvy it up amongst a few selected, trusted people I knew that dealt to everyone else on campus. I only personally dealt with maybe 20-30 people. And that was only the coke and heroin. I am not saying all the drugs and pills on campus were mine. I am sure people would bring in their own little stashes all the time, but all those drugs SOLD on campus were mine. All the pills went to my dealers every week. I would front it them, tell them this is how much I want back, you keep the rest and every week they would bring me my money. And I very rarely had an issue and nobody every tried to rob me. The MSU police department never caught me and we had the drug dog in our room twice. The RAs, the administration, nobody ever caught me. And during this whole operation I was transforming into a major heroin addict. I had a girlfriend at the time who was also an addict. She’d spend some nights at MSU with me, but more than not, I’d be at her house almost every night. I worked a part time job through this and managed to make it to enough classes to get grades! And I was going to Jersey City every day to purchase heroin and cocaine. For personal use for us, yes. But it was also a business. And it was routine to buy an ounce of coke to bring back to MSU, chop up, cut it and bag it and have it sold in a few days. That money was our lifeblood. Not only was I running the MSU operation. But I had clients outside of the college, many of them, who I had to constantly cater to 24/7. So it was work. But it was easy money, and it kept the drugs in our noses, arms and lungs. More to come..

Hurricane Sandy & November 2012

On October 29, 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit New York City. It was one of the worst hurricanes I’ve lived through and we lost power for 10 days. Gas stations were closed, supermarkets, stores, banks, everything was shut down. No power anywhere, at least the first few days. I slept through the 12 hour ordeal, doped out of my mind. I remember laying in my bed in my cold, dark room because the power had shut off at some point in the middle of the night. And all I heard was the howling winds, rain splashing down and things banging around outside all night. I woke up the next day to a candle lit house with no power. We prepared very little, so we suffered those first few days. It was way worse than expected. But my drug dealer was good and he was around and that’s all that mattered. I took the last $50 dollars I had in my wallet and drove through empty, eerie streets. It was so fucking weird. There wasn’t many people on the roads, there were trees down everywhere, power-lines down everywhere, none of the traffic signals worked. It was chaotic. But I remember driving to score that day to meet JoJo on 5th Ave and Broad St. in Bethlehem, PA. It was like 10 or 11 AM. I couldn’t get gas for my car or a hot meal if I wanted to at that very moment, but I could sure as hell get heroin mere hours after a major hurricane hit and caused over $60 billion worth of damage in the US alone. And I saw JoJo the next day on Halloween and the day after that. I went 10 days without power in my house, some people less, some people MORE. People are dead, scrambling to survive a hard time and here are my drug dealer and I doing the same thing as always. I vividly remember those 10 days. It all starts to blur together after a while. The cold bedroom because there’s no heat and it’s November now; the end of autumn. The stale breakfast sandwiches from McDonald’s every morning. No internet, TV or computer. The long boring wait, hoping the power would return any second. The first few days I was generally OK. I could cop my dope in the morning sometime and be well into the night. Then I’d wake up sick and do it again. But, as the days wore on and the situation grew worse, the money and resources ran out. Nothing was open so I couldn’t shoplift or pass a check at a bank. JoJo was becoming more unreliable, and I am sure he was running low on product unable to re-up. By the week mark, things were very hard and not only was I uncomfortable because I didn’t have basic social and human necessities, but I was growing dope sick unable to make a move and score for a day here and two days there. My job was shut down so I couldn’t even go to work or ask for an advance on pay. It sucked so bad I went out to Allentown to my uncle’s apartment to stay for 2 days on my last bit of gas and bags on credit. He had power back after 2 days because he lived blocks from a hospital and was on a more urban electrical grid. When I returned home 2 days later, dope sick and to a house STILL with no power I was at my wit’s end. Somehow I managed to find 2 roxy 30mg pills and 2 10mg methadone pills. The very last drops of what I had drug or money wise. I remember cooking those two crushed pills up in my cold, dark room. Trying to hit a vein in the dark so so hard. I remember having to use a little flash light. Then I went upstairs and laid on the couch, trying to enjoy the little, tiny bit of euphoria I had, waiting and ready to get sick again in another 12 hours, when suddenly the whole house buzzed on. The lights went on, TVs came on and central heat hummed. Finally. I vividly remember those days. More so than others. I was in a rehab in Fort Pierce, FL weeks later just after Thanksgiving. November of 2012 was a rough month.

RIP Jynxies Natural Habitat

Ever since I got on methadone in February of this year, I haven’t been much on keeping up on the old drug forums I frequented, mainly Bluelight and Opiophile. I used to be very, very ingrained in those scenes and threads, dating back to when I first started using (2006-2007). I met some cool people who I still keep in touch with and became some of my best dope buddies in my area. (Not condoning off-site meet ups since it’s frowned upon, but everyone knows it happens. Get real.) Especially since this last run that lasted the whole year pretty much in 2013 and these 6 months on methadone, I have been a ghost on the forums. It was very hard for me to get online and talk to people and keep up with the gossip and info when I was using so hard, but now that I am cleaned up and my head clear I check back in occasionally and drop by to see what people are doing and what’s new. Tonight I got a facebook message from a friend who frequents Opiophile to tell me two pretty well known users were murdered. I logged on and read through the 15 page thread, off site news articles and anything else to find out that it indeed is true.

Thanat0s (Bryan Vanassche, 34) and paups (Shelby Hughes, 33) were found dead in a burned down house outside Oklahoma City (http://www.koco.com/news/police-name-victims-in-midwest-city-fire/26726512). Rest in peace to them. And my condolences go out to their friends and family and ALL of our condolences go out to them. Everyone on Opiophile (where they mainly posted) have been hit hard by this. This happened over 2 weeks ago, but I just found out about it tonight and I had to write about it. I definetly know their online presences. They were very active users most times and their usernames are familiar I instantly knew who they were. They were very kind, funny people with stories. Bryan always had some crazy stories I loved reading. And paups as well. They met online through Opiophile (assuming) and moved to Oklahoma together. As far as I know and read, they were on a methadone program recently. So who knows what really happened. Us heroin users slip and fall all the time, we get into dangerous situations at times. I know I have. The police are labeling it ‘curious’ and a ‘possible homicide’ and are not releasing any information at the time. If anyone HAS information on this case, I would hope they could bring themselves to let the authorities know. We would all like to know what actually happened. Was it an accident? Or was there something more devious behind it? Either way they will be missed.

Only a few people in the know actually know this, but paups is also Jynxie who ran Jynxies Natural Habitat, the heroin stamp blog based out of Brooklyn, NY (http://dequinceyjynxie.blogspot.com/). She would take submissions from people all over the country, but mainly NY, NJ, PA, CT (states where the stamped glassine bags are king) and show pictures and ratings of each. It was a blog she started when she lived in NYC for a period of time and I followed it for a long time. And then one day it just blew up. People from all over the internet were checking it out. People that didn’t even use heroin. People who were just curious. It was meant to be a harm reduction and stamp bag rating and information blog for users, but it blew up big time. So big that VICE magazine did an article on it and an interview with her (http://www.vice.com/read/heroin-bag-art-dequincey-jynxie-interview). The blog received some more attention from the Brooklyn Paper after a user submitted a review of the heroin stamp that Philip Seymour Hoffman overdosed and died on (http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/37/6/all-philip-seymour-hoffman-heroin-reviewed-2014-02-07-bk_37_6.html). The blog has a lot of followers and was always very active with Shelby posting multiple times daily sometimes. Her last submission was April 10, 2014.

Shelby and Bryan will both be missed. RIP to them.

Photo credit: Opiophile User: chopstix