What is it like to be a drug dealer?

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Anonymous

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

In a single word, being a drug dealer was exhilarating. Immense rewards, more than I realized at the time, but also unbelievable stress, unavoidable paranoia, and most difficult of all, an existence in a world that does not ‘exist’ by traditional standards.

I can’t speak to what it’s like peddling product on the street or life as a cartel kingpin. But I can tell you what my experience of being a mid level trafficker was like. My entry into trafficking came about suddenly and ended just as quickly, turning those years into blazing memories, grandiose and traumatic. It's not easy to put into word

Towards the end of my freshman year at a California college, I found out that you could successfully ship weed. But that was only part of the puzzle. What made this all possible was a friend at a prestigious Ivy League school on the East Coast.

We eventually scraped together enough money to buy a quarter pound before the end of the school year. Roughly 1200 dollars at the time and I sent it to my counterpart. It was enjoyed by a small group of friends and that was it. While the profit margin on selling a QP wasn’t bad, several hundred dollars, it wasn’t enough to make clear that putting in the work to build the infrastructure could be more than worthwhile. It was one of the critical move that led to me and this best friend and partner spending the next few years of our lives fine-tuning our trafficking craft.

That summer, I spent in New York, where I was working for a prominent plaintiffs law firm. Already my third summer of working at a law firm, I was dedicated to going to law school and becoming an attorney. But another critical experience put me on the path towards trafficking. While out with my friends one night, we were hassled be police after a fight. Having weed on my person meant I would be spending the night in NY’s central lockup.

The only white person booked that night made for a lot of conversation. Mostly revolving around the unfortunate circumstances that led to our arrests. But more importantly, the discussions over weed prices in various states, sealed in my mind an opportunity too good to pass up.

Fast-forward two years; I had made enough connections that I was able to secure a ‘front’. For those who don’t know what that means; you give me a pound, I give you the money two weeks later. This is how most weed is sold, as small time distributers or beginning traffickers don’t usually have the cash to pay for product upfront.

While I now had the connection to get product without paying upfront, I still had to convince my friend that he could sell a pound. At that point, neither of us had any idea. And the idea of sending 3500 worth of weed, through the mail with no guarantee that it would get there or any guarantee that it would sell, was nerve-wracking to say the least. But I was young and foolish, eager to make money, and willing to take the risk.

With much relief, the pound arrived at our address back East and while it took twice as long to sell than we expected, the profit margin was some 35% of the investment. Giving us a taste of what was to come.

By junior year, my friend and I were basically supplying the entire school with our weed. We were selling three pounds a week minimum. But we were starting to exhaust our residential mailing addresses and struggling to return cash to California in a timely manner. Our sales were limited only by our trafficking infrastructure as opposed to our capital, because at this point, my connections were happy to supply the product.

Sometime around the end of the first semester junior year is when we started losing product. We lost our first package, a three pack worth roughly 12 grand which was a substantial hit and easily cut our cash on hand in half. Common sense might have told us to quit while ahead. But we (by this point) were still willing to take astronomical risks because how else can two unemployed colleges students make three grand a week? So after letting any heat die down, we went back to business.

Coming back to the second semester, we caught two fairly large breaks in both intelligence and connections. Not only did we find a way to pass commercial shipping security tests, we secured an ‘in’ at the Law School mailroom where we could send literally any amount of packages - and for the next several years, we never lost product to this location.

Towards the end of our Junior year, we had solved a lot of our risk issues and had been able to increase our shipments to 5 pounds a week (sometimes more). Saving up enough cash so that our prices in California allowed us to make some 2 grand on average per pound.

We were eager to make the rest of the school year count and knew that several major events were coming up. This is when cocaine came into the picture. Mostly through luck, we had stumbled upon an excellent cocaine connection. Not only was the product top notch, it was cheap as hell. It was however in Texas, not a convenient location but that didn’t stop us from packing our bags and driving overnight to Texas to buy our first kilo.

That first purchase made for a risky investment, having to spend 22 grand on a kilo of cocaine for only a few events we knew were prime for that product. Why risk didn’t factor into the investment, I’m not really sure. We were so determined to squeeze every ounce of profit out of this school, we lost sight of what reasonable risk, even by drug dealing standards, was. We were on a path and there was no turning back. Once you’re in the game, there are no easy exits.

Buying the cocaine turned out to be a huge mistake. One, we didn’t allow ourselves enough time to build a clientele or distribution. And on top of that, it tied up all our capital in product meaning that we went back on front for weed and our prices suffered. We had to discount our cocaine just to move it before the end of the semester, meaning our investment didn’t play out quite as we had expected. Caveat, Ivy leaguers buy a lot of coke before finals.

So while my friend, a finance major, for the investment, blinded by ‘potential’ returns, reality played out quite differently. We made a scant profit on a 20 thousand dollar investment. Hardly worth the time or risk.

By the end of junior year, we had done well but made some critical mistakes. We had established a viable trafficking system but lost considerable product. Not a deal breaker but substantial. Money packages had been replaced by expensive flights that were taking a toll on my health and academics.

We had built a distribution network and made our connections a lot of money. Having moved upwards of a million dollars worth of product over the school year. We calculated that over 100 thousand was spent cumulatively through living and business expenses mostly in the form of flights, shipping and prepaid cell phones. But we had lived lavishly that year and were able to split some 50+ grand going into the summer. I spent the first month of the summer working in a law firm, my last stint in the legal profession after some four summers. I spent the next two months in Bali.

When senior year rolled around I was feeling ambivalent but still very committed. But stress was starting to take a toll, my grades were shit, and while I wasn’t overly paranoid, the sight of a cop would make my heart skip a beat. I was 23 and my hair was starting to turn grey.

None of those signs caused me to slow down though; our business was flowing smoothly, selling the usual 5 pounds a week, sent to the mailroom of course. We were sending a few additional pounds to various residential locations and had invested in a safe house where we kept cash and product.
We had finally established a distribution network for cocaine, and that quickly started to pay off. The business wasn’t booming but it was turning more than 50% profit margin. But the toll of operating this business was really starting to add up. What started as a profitably hobby was turning into a full time profession.

But our business wasn’t without problems. We were losing too many of our cash packages, at a tune of 10 grand apiece. Often times almost a week’s worth of work. But our weed was still getting there no problem so we moved more and more towards flights. My partner, who was a more serious student, was less willing to fly and more willing to lose cash, while I was the opposite.
Consequently, I spent a lot of time in the air. I’d travel to a location, pick up cash, and fly back with 40 grand strapped to my chest. I had already written off school as a determinant for my future and was disillusioned with education through my experiences trafficking – convinced in part, that I had a future as drug dealer for life.

I was living out of multiple locations around the Bay Area and had bought a new car for 30 grand. Spending money on friends and expensive dinners, lavish purchases and non-business related travel. Life was good. So we expanded.

We started selling weed in Texas. The clientele was there, the market was there, but building the infrastructure was tricky. On a one way flight out of Texas, I was nearly stopped by a TSA agent, and then allowed to move forward only because the line was backing up. In retrospect, it was a very close call, I had a lot of cash strapped to my chest and legs.

Our business at school was going well and as we moved through the second semester, we were poised to leverage any possible profits. On one successful weekend, over prominent school events, we sold a kilo of cocaine and 7 pounds of weed. After a few sleepless days, I flew back to California with 60 grand on my person.

But as school started to wind down, so did our sales. Concerned about our ability to carry on our successfully operations past graduation, we moved into Texas more and more aggressively. Our market was unlimited but we were confined by our shipping limitations and our Texas connection’s cash flow.
Luckily our connection in Texas had close ties with cartel members whose attention we had caught. They requested that we put together a small pack; the only problem, this was outside of our wheelhouse, and we did not have the personnel to transport large quantities of weed.

By now, the business was clearly taking a toll on my person. It was clear that I wouldn’t be graduating this June, and what had started out as general stress had turned into unexpected and full-fledged panic attacks. I had trouble sleeping at night and started relying on over the counter sleep medication to rest.

After much deliberation, we did the unthinkable, putting together a plan to sell 50 pounds in Texas over spring break. The plan was not easy to execute. We had exactly one week to make it happen. My partner flew to California with all the cash we had "out of state". The plan was to use his parents Jeep while they were away for the week to drive to Texas and drop off the product then he fly back to school while I would then fly to Texas and drive the car and cash back to California.

I greeted my friend at the Airport and we went back to his house. Collecting our cash and heading up to Humboldt where I was meeting our California connection. After many hours, driving around looking at our options, we finally settled on product and spent two hours vacuum sealing the weed so that I could drive it back to the Bay Area. I left just before dark, for a 7-hour drive after eating just an apple for the day.

I was unbelievably nervous. I had never driven that much weed before and the only way from Humboldt to the Bay Area is through a stretch of road called the Gauntlet which should speak for itself. I had one spotter driving in front, and another behind me. The hours passed slowly as I weaved through traffic in the dark, often losing my spotter and trailing car. I left my partner’s house at 7am that morning and finally returned at 1am the next day. But this was just the beginning. I spent the rest of the night and the next morning vacuum sealing the product and packing the car. Then my friend left for Texas.

A few nerve-wracking days later, he arrived at the location, where things got off to a bumpy start. Our connection lost a small amount of product in an unfortunate robbery situation, but the cartel purchased the rest of our product for just over 200 grand. We were more than half way there. I arrived the next night in Texas at 12am. My friend picked me up at the airport and we went back to a location outside of Houston. For the first time in my life, I held nearly a quarter million dollars in cash. A triumph to say the least, I was 23 years old.

I left at 4am that morning without sleeping. There was not a single car on the road. Then out of nowhere, a car starts trailing me. Seconds later, lights flash and that car is pulled over. I can only assume that the cop pulling over the only other car on the road, in Texas, in the middle of the night, was coming for my car with California license plates. Without an option, I pushed on rattled, knowing that I very well might have made one of the worse decisions of my life. I drove from Houston to the Bay Area in 27 hours. Stopping only to nap for an hour at a time – so exhausted and sleep deprived that when I would awake from a nap, it would take what seemed like an eternity to figure our where I was and what I was doing. Thinking about it still makes me nauseous to this day.

How did I get here? What was I doing? I do not know. The gravity of the situations I found myself in, the effort that went into planning our deals, was beyond anything I could have ever imagined. My partner and I found ourselves only a few deals away from supplying a major cartel with quality weed from California. There was some talk of turning back, some reflection into our futures, and then the determination that you don’t come this far just to quit. Once you’re in the game, there is no letting go, there are no easy exits.

I arrived in California much relieved and with two shoeboxes full of cash, stashed safely in my parents house. Our business with the school had more or less ended, or wasn’t worth the effort and we settled in for a brief vacation. But we were poised to take over. We had a brief window of time before our California connection was leaving the country for several months. Anxious not to let the prospect die, we orchestrated an even bigger transaction, some 150 pounds for over half a million dollars.

But things had changed considerably, having survived our Texas trip, my friend and I refused to make the journey, arguing that as the main connections between California and Texas, we were too important to be transporting the product. Fortunately our California connections were able to secure transport at a hefty but reasonable rate. It was getting late in the season and prices were less than favorable. But we were able to source product that made the deal worthwhile. And after investing 200 grand of our hard earned money, the pack left California.

But somewhere along the border of Mexico our driver was pulled over. Brandishing a California driver license in a car with Texas plates, he never stood a chance and is still serving time. My only regret is that we were confident enough to put everything we had into the deal. You might say our luck had run out, and after getting one of the worst calls of my life, the deal was canceled. I was broke.

My trafficking business ended just as quickly as it started. Everything we had worked for over the past two years vanishing suddenly. I was lost and scared. Having completely abandoned interest in a professional career or a real job, my resume hadn’t been updated in two years. I was basically unemployable as we headed into a severe financial crisis.

I tried momentarily to rebuild our business but was exhausted and emotionally depleted. It was more difficult for me to accept the finality of this situation that my friend who was more apt for the professional world with good grades and a masters in finance. He had also been receiving considerable allowance from his parents while we had both been living off drug money. Saving considerably over the past two years.

The next year, I claimed only 5000 dollars worth of income. But at the very least, I had bought enough toys to keep myself entertained and I still had my car, for which I struggled to make the final payments, while I lived at my parent’s house. Out of desperation, I confessed to my parents who somehow, had no idea.

What I found remarkable is what we were able to build through hard work and determination. What’s it like to be a drug dealer? It means the things you see, people you encounter, and the life you lead have little foundation in reality. The risks are immense and the rewards, even greater.

We had reached a point, where we couldn’t turn back and to this day, I don’t know whether it was about the money or if it was the rush. After the first Texas trip, I realized that it wasn’t just about money, drug dealing is gambling with your life, a most sadistic rush.

But selling drugs was the best preparation I could have asked for, entering the real world. Now equipped to handle situations that it takes others years to prepare for. More than anything, selling drugs taught me to believe in myself and what I’m capable of. It taught me to trust my instincts and how to make difficult decisions.

I was the kid in high school that teachers and good students wrote off. But looking back, even with my stint as a drug dealer, few people in my past can compare successes to that which I have experienced. Of course with that success came immense failure for better or for worse. And the toll it took on my health and psyche probably wasn’t worth it. But had it not been for those experiences I wouldn’t be where I’m at now.

After some time, I was fortunate enough to land an excellent position at a startup in LA that suits my personality perfectly. My friend and I reminisce fondly, wondering what life would have been like had that one deal gone through.

Related questions

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How do drug dealers become dealers?

Anonymous

Updated 10y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

My experience is pretty different from Anon's, so I thought I'd offer another perspective. Though I sold a little of just about everything from time to time my meat and potatoes was crank. I was deeply involved in a pretty heavy tweak scene for two years.

For the most part tweak dealers are like the President of the Hair Club For Men: not just the President, but also a client. It's not a group of people who follow the adage "don't get high on your own supply." In fact the entire reason I started selling was so that I could get high for free. The first time I tweaked I knew I wanted to feel that

Over the two years following that decision I got pretty deep into it, did and sold a lot of speed, spent time around a lot of crazy people, and saw some pretty amazing things. I don't think I have a story as gripping as Anon's, but maybe I can provide some insight through a few sketches. Since my experience as a drug dealer is pretty intertwined with my experience as a drug user you'll get a little of both.

What's it like to be a drug dealer?

It's Magical
I got to be high all the time. All. The. Time. People say that drug use is a constant attempt to chase down the first high, and that it's never great again. Nope. It always felt great. I was very, very high for just about two years straight. I loved it. How much did I love it?

I did so much speed that my hair fell out. My teeth rotted in my head, to the point that I shattered my wisdom teeth one day by eating a piece of candy. I got nosebleeds that ran so hard I just held a dixie cup under my nose and let it fill. I did so much damage to my sinuses that when my nose bled I would get blood flecks coming out of my tear ducts. Yes, I actually cried blood.

I loved it enough that none of those things slowed me down. It felt so good that I didn't care. Unlike most people who had to slow down or stop when they ran out of money or speed, I never ran out. That was the magic of being a drug dealer. I could do as much as I wanted, all the time. I did enough that, on the few occasions I decided I didn't want to be higher, the people around me were shocked. Shocked. They were worried something was wrong.

It's Frustrating
I built up a pretty big roll on two occasions. Both times I lost everything. Once I was swindled and the other time I was robbed. Both times I could have recovered what was taken from me and prevented it from happening again, but I wasn't willing to take the steps I would have needed to.

I wasn't afraid of a fight but I was never willing to take the kind of severe retributive action that would have been necessary to intimidate people from stealing from me. I had acquaintances who were willing to take that kind of action for me but I wasn't willing to be responsible for it, and it would have meant some deepening of commitments that I didn't want to make.

The only solution was really to stay small. I was well-liked and well-connected enough that nobody would mess with me over a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately that meant that though I had access to bulk purchases and large fronts I wasn't able to really take advantage of them, and had to grind out 8-balls and quarter ounces. I didn't make enough for a real living and could have been making big money, but wasn't really willing to do what it would take.

It's Hot
Sex on speed is great. People in the early stages of a tweak are horny. Girls love drug dealers. Especially in the first year I had more amazing sex with more people in more configurations on speed than in any other period of my life. I won't go into more torrid details.

It's Terrifying
I was threatened with knives. Once a guy with four spiked rings on his hand was a second from punching me in the face. I've had guns pointed at my head.

Once someone started a rumor that I was a narc (I wasn't). For the next several weeks I didn't know if I would get killed. I walked into the houses of dangerous, paranoid men hoping that the strength of my reputation and or my relationships with them would get me back out the door again.

When I say "dangerous and paranoid" I mean men who took care of problems with soundproofed rooms and ball peen hammers. The only way to deal with them was to walk straight into their paranoia without showing any fear. Inside I was terrified that I would never leave the places I walked into, but not showing up or panicking would have convinced them to kill me, and so I had to hope they wouldn't believe the rumors.

It's Tragic
So many people are dead. Friends overdosed and crumpled to the floor in front of me like puppets with their strings cut. A girl I knew borrowed a car once and brought it back with a ding. The guy she borrowed the car from shot her to death. She was pregnant. More than one friend committed suicide. People I knew were beaten, robbed, murdered for money or drugs or slights.

Others are in prison, or spent enough years in prison that they'll never be accepted in society. Friends were in and out of juvie from the time they were 14. People thought of jail as a regular place for people to be coming back from, like college or a family vacation.

A few wound up in mental institutions. Speed can crack your brain open, and some people don't come all the way back. Most of those people wind up on the street or dead, so I guess an institution is actually less tragic.

It's Insane
There were many occasions when I wasn't in my right mind, but once I had a complete break. I had been up for 8 days and I had spent the night hanging out with someone who was incredibly sketchy and set off every cop alarm bell I had (I don't have any idea whether he was a cop and I never saw him again after that, but I heard a couple of months later that he got hit by a car. Twice.)

Between the long time up and the sketchy night I cracked in the morning. I went to another friend's house for a while, but when I left there I knew I was being followed. I saw the truck across the street where they were set up watching me. I saw the footprints in the snow that proved they had been getting in and out of the truck.

I dumped everything I had, and I got one of my only truly trustworthy friends to pick me up and take me to his house. I posted up at his window and watched the cars that were driving by his cul de sac watching me. Two snowplows went by, and I knew they set up a road block around the corner.

Lots of cars went by, enough that most people might not notice the cops. I did though. They were in red cars. There was a red pickup. A red minivan. A red coupe. A red jeep. Those ones kept circling, and they had the cops in them. Every time I saw a red Jeep it was more proof that they had a red Jeep.

I was terrified that they were going to come take me away to prison (though I had nothing on me). I knew this was the end of a long operation to catch me. I came about 15 seconds from walking out the front door and showing them (in a permanent and dramatic way) that I wouldn't be pushed around.

Luckily my friend, who had long experience with this kind of thing, convinced me to hold off. Somehow he convinced me that I should get three nights of sleep before taking the kind of drastic action I was planning, and that if I still felt like taking action after that he would be right there beside me. Thank God.

It actually did take three days. After the third night of sleep it all melted away. I can still remember with crystal clarity just how sane I felt. It's very humbling to think about just how sane I felt during a complete psychotic break.

It's Lonely
Big rock in my pocket? Lots of friends. Down to my last ends? Not a lot of people around. Need a place to stay? Not a lot of people around. Down for the count after an illness? Well, you get it.

Not a lot of people around. It was easy to think I was popular and awesome when things were going well, but it was when things were going badly that I found out who my real friends were. They were easy to spot because they were the only ones still in the room. Those people still get Christmas calls and birthday gifts. Those people will have me on a plane with a phone call for anything they need for the rest of my life.

It's Risky
Once I had a backpack full of drugs and paraphernalia including a digital scale. The drugs were weighed and bagged up for selling. My friend's vehicle broke down and as we got out, a police car pulled up behind us. One officer went to talk to my friend, and the other came to talk to me.

He asked me where I was going, and I told him I was headed to a friend's house to spend the night. He asked me what was in the bag, and I could already feel the cuffs on my wrists. I knew I was going to go to prison for a long time. I started pulling the bag off my shoulder to open it and he said "you don't have to show me, I'm just curious what you have in the bag."

Somehow I managed to keep from sobbing with relief and I told him I just had some clothes and CDs. He believed me, the other officer helped my friend get the vehicle started, and we were on our way.

It's a Learning Experience
When I was a teenager I was wicked smart, but not socially adept or empathetic. I had a high IQ and a basement low EQ. That changed in two years.

I was pretty unimportant but I was adjacent to some fairly impressive people. If you've ever seen the show Gangland on the History Channel, I know a couple guys from one of the episodes. I learned a lot just being around and watching them.

I came out of that time significantly less smart than I had been. I'm sure I killed brain cells. I'm not as good at math or science as I was before. But I'm also pretty well liked and pretty good at communicating. I don't scare easily. I know I can survive things worse than most of my peers can imagine. I learned how to trust my gut and how to judge people quickly. My snap judgements about people are usually very good. I have a stronger sense of ethics and loyalty than many people I know.

All In All
It's not something I would recommend. I got very, very lucky. I don't regret it any more than I regret any of my life, since I wouldn't be the person I am today without it, but I'm sure there are easier, more pleasant paths to success. They probably go through Stanford or something.

Thomas William

Lives in Los Angeles, CA (1978–present) · Author has 972 answers and 20.8M answer views

· 1y

After much deliberation, we did the unthinkable, putting together a plan to sell 50 pounds in Texas over spring break. The plan was not easy to execute. We had exactly one week to make it happen. My partner flew to California with all the cash we had "out of state". The plan was to use his parents Jeep while they were away for the week to drive to Texas and drop off the product then he fly back to school while I would then fly to Texas and drive the car and cash back to California.

Anonymous

11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

Dealing drugs was fun and profitable until I was scared into giving it up.

It made me more popular and I felt like a somebody. A few were scared of me.

Some of you know me on here. This a lot of trust in the old Anonymous feature but f** it. This isn't the whole story. I have so many stories I'd never get to them all.

I'm an unlikely candidate to be a drug dealer. No beer until sophomore year in high school.

"Athlete of The Year" my senior year. All-State in every sport. Raised Catholic. da dada dada

I've sold weed, coke, steroids, and ecstasy. But mostly weed.

When I got into colleg

Dealing drugs was fun and profitable until I was scared into giving it up.

It made me more popular and I felt like a somebody. A few were scared of me.

Some of you know me on here. This a lot of trust in the old Anonymous feature but f** it. This isn't the whole story. I have so many stories I'd never get to them all.

I'm an unlikely candidate to be a drug dealer. No beer until sophomore year in high school.

"Athlete of The Year" my senior year. All-State in every sport. Raised Catholic. da dada dada

I've sold weed, coke, steroids, and ecstasy. But mostly weed.

When I got into college, I liked to party. A lot. So much that I started missing class and got kicked out. Then I went and persuaded the school president to let me back in. "I promise I won't let you down." Later I got kicked out again for the last time.

I moved into an apartment with my girlfriend and another room mate. She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. She used to work at a grocery store at the checkout. I would go to her line every day when I picked up my 5th of whiskey.

One day I asked her when she was going to take me out to dinner. She said, "YOU'RE going to take ME out to dinner" and I got her number. Voila.

She was cool. I got mad at her once for making out with another girl at a party without asking me.

After a while I got depressed and quit working. An old friend from high school contacted me and we went out one night. I was honest with him about my problems. I knew he dealt but never really talked to him about it. He said, "I have a way for you to make some quick money." I was against it at first but later it started to sound good.

It just so happened that he was going to pick up a delivery that day and asked if I wanted to go with him. It made me nervous and I passed.

When he came back to bring me my front, he said, "I want you to see something". He was kind of crazy and had always been the class clown. I went out to his car and he popped the trunk. Inside there were 8 cardboard bank boxes each full with pre packed 16 oz cans that looked exactly like those massive canned goods in the stores with peaches or whatever. It was over 100 lbs.

The cans were rapped in a foggy cellophane plastic. I was floored. I had never seen more than a quarter ounce at a time.

He explained the process to me. The weed was packed into the cans then sealed.

After that, they put a kind of detergent in between the cellophane and then rap them air tight. This was supposed to keep them from being smelled.

He cut out ten cans and gave them to me in a bag. I felt rich.

I kept all of them except the one I was selling behind the seat in a broke down truck of my room mate's in the parking lot.

After a few months, I had 4 guys selling for me. The would show up, and I'd sell them an ounce at a time. The weed was actually poor quality, full of seeds.

Throughout this whole time I had constant feelings of paranoia, pride, confidence, fear, guilt, and a loss of identity. This was definitely not the person I grew up as.

I felt somewhat confident that I could front a pound to one of my guys, which later turned out to be a mistake. He became hard to reach, and then impossible. I showed up at this restaurant where he worked washing dishes. I went straight to the back despite being told I can't go back there. I threatened him and told him, "these are the kind of people you don't want after you, don't make me come back here."

I eventually left him alone and he never paid me. I wasn't the type to actually hurt anyone. Although he made me mad enough to want to because it put me in a real bind.

Somewhere during this time I got into selling steroids or "juice". You'd be surprised how many people are on juice.

Most of our "clients" were Army or ex-Army guys. A few college wrestlers. Meat heads and gym rats. A dirty cop. High school athletes.

One time we gathered money from 10 or so people and drove to Tijuana. We didn't pay for a tank of gas the whole way. The first few places we robbed we actually felt comfortable because we knew that they didn't prosecute drive-off's.

We carried a huge gas tank in the trunk and filled it as well, to use later. Somewhere near Colorado we started smelling gas. The lid had popped off and soaked all of our clothes.

When we got to Vegas, we washed our clothes in the pool at Excalibur, where we stayed. But the smell didn't come out.

Later that night we brought some girls back to our room from the club and had to tell them that the hotel sprayed our room for bugs, "let's go to your place." They were staying at MGM Grand. The girl I slept with was an editor of Vogue magazine, or so she said.

It was funny how we got picked up by them. It was one of their birthdays. The were arguing who was going to sleep with who.

I had never smuggled drugs across the border up to this time in my life.

We went straight across the border to a pharmacy, and bought everything on our list, costing nearly $3000.

We brought panty hose with us to wear under our sweats. We went to the back room and strapped everything in layers from the ankles up, putting duct tape in between each section.

Then we would go have some beers and shots of tequila. One time my friend rode a mechanical bull with his legs strapped down. I thought it was hilarious. And when we didn't give a shit anymore, we'd cross back into California.

Down near the border I was always entertained by the signs:

Got a lot of good laughs from that.

The first two times I smuggled, we got away with no hitches.

The third and last time, I got ballsy and kept a bottle of Winstrol in my pocket in addition to having my legs and crotch strapped.

One of the guards was suspicious of me and pulled me aside. The conversation went like this:

Guard: Do you have any illegal drugs or substances?

Me: No sir. (Heart pounding out of my chest, still acting calm as possible)

Guard: Empty your pockets please.

I then carefully pulled out everything but the bottle.

Guard: Is this all?

Me: Yes sir.

Guard: What's that bulge in your pocket?

Me: (oh f**k, and I pulled it out)

Guard: What's this?

Me: I intentionally mispronounced, "Stanozololo?, it's for me"

Guard: You know this is a crime?

Me: Yes sir, I don't know what I was thinking.

Guard: Do you have anything else on you?

Me: No sir

Guard: Are you sure? Because we are going to take you in the back room and if we find anything, you are going to jail for a long, long time.

Me: (Reach into my crotch and grab handful of whatever is there, and laid it on the counter.) That is it. That's all I have. I promise. This is my fault sir, I was stupid enough to do this.

Guard: (Spends about 5 minutes explaining the gravity of this situation, and then tells me,) I don't want to ever see you again. Get out of here.

He let me go. I didn't get it, but I didn't care. When I got to the car my two friend were waiting there. "Let's get the hell out of here before they change their mind!" I felt like they were watching us.

I have trouble telling this story because it sounds untrue. We got away with most of our juice and were happy because if we didn't, we'd be out $3000 instead of making money. I never went back again.

I sold weed for a while after this and eventually quit when the cops came to my apartment one night because of noise. When they smelled weed in the air, they barged in. They searched through everything and had us sit on the couch while they did it. My younger brother, who was a minor was there. The cops had us pour out over 40 beers into the sink.

I had two pounds of weed sitting in the closet inside of a book bag. They came out of that room and said, "it's clear".

WTF?? I still can't figure that one out. Maybe because they didn't have a warrant? I don't know but I was puzzled and can't remember being more scared.

Two days earlier:

At some point in time I thought it would be cool to grow my own weed in the closet. I had it all set up with lights, potting soil and some small plants. Our cat discovered this area and tore up my plants while using the soil for a restroom. I pitched everything.

All this was persuasive enough to get me out of the business for good. I doubt most people have been that lucky...

Related questions

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What does a drug dealer do specifically?

Anonymous

Selling drugs is exhilarating at first, but soon the burden of being a 24 hour on demand courier drags you into hell.

My background: I was a cocaine dealer for 6 years. My clients varied from grams to ounces, but most of my weight moved about an ounce at a time to 7 guys who stomped it and flipped it in grams and 8 balls.

Selling drugs is exhilarating at first, but soon the burden of being a 24 hour on demand courier drags you into hell.

I'm a businessman at heart, and during college my roommate did a lot of coke. I mean he'd call in an 8 ball for him and his friends on a Friday afternoon, one late night, and one in the dawn hours of Saturday morning, and then he'd turn around and do it again on Saturday. I had dealt weed and smoked my fair share in high school, but cocaine was new to me. His dealer was a decent enough guy after he'd met me about 30 times, and one day while I was walking in to the apartment as he was leaving from one of his 6 trips for the weekend, I joked "I should just buy a couple ounces and save you the trips." Half an hour later, I had an ounce of coke fronted to me for 48 hours; he must've really hated the revolving door he had at our place.

I made exactly zero dollars on that first ounce; he fronted it to me at exactly what he would have charged my roommate. The next weekend, we worked out a better deal, I took all of the cash out of my bank account, bought another ounce of coke, and stood to make a quick 20% profit on it off my one built in client. By 10 PM friday night the original ounce was gone; having an ounce in the house was a great reason to have a party in my roomate's eyes. I bought my second ounce that night, and by the time classes started on monday morning, that too was gone.

What started as a way to make a quick buck off my roommate's habit and his dealer's laziness quickly snowballed into supplying coke for five, ten and twenty people. Soon I was buying a couple of ounces a couple of times a week, sometimes up to a eighth kilo, usually on finals week. I was pushing the limits of what my dealer was willing to sell, and he wasn't eager to jump higher up the distribution chain or introduce me to his dealer; it took returning to my home town over break and talking to friends to find a lead on someone who could get me more weight.

Meeting my new supplier was harrowing; I knew one coke dealer, so I had no frame of reference on how he'd act or how I should act. Was he going to have a guy hold a gun to my head and grill me about whether I was a cop or not? Rip my shirt open and check me for a wire? Nothing of the sort happened. We didn't even talk about drugs the first time I met him at the bar he managed. By the second time he was willing to meet me I assume he'd already had me checked out, because talk immediately went to business; 4 ounces a week, 4 grand. The businessman in me couldn't agree fast enough; A 30% profit margin before I even cut it.

I profited just over $100,000 in my first full year of dealing. At 19, that's like making a quadrizillion dollars a year. Things grew steadily, and soon I was getting called every 20 minutes to "come hang out" meaning "bring some coke, I'm going to try to get some for free and then maybe I'll buy some." I don't mean 20 minutes for 8 hours a day, it was becoming a 24 hour job. Getting woken up at 3:30 am with the coy "hey dude, wanna come chill?" got old. Quick. The money was great, but it is the most inconvenient job in the world; tired of doing all the on call leg work, i decided it was time to get some employees.

Finding people to work for me was easy. Most were already my clients. Slowly over the course of the next two years, I transferred almost all of my business to them, roughly doubling my volume, halving my profits, but drastically reducing my exposure to something bad happening.

I never caught any heat in my time as a dealer. No raids, busts, or arrests, and only one close call when I went through a light as it turned red after dropping off the last of what I had on me. One of my guys did get busted, and spent a number of years in jail because of it, but he was honorable enough to keep my name out of it. How lucky I was does not escape me, it wouldnt have taken much for me to get locked away for a long time.

In the end, having a child was what pushed me towards leaving the business. The transition from illicit work lo legitimate work was rough, to say the very least. My first "real" career job at 22 paid just $12 an hour, $100 a day- chances are I had made that before most people even woke up while selling drugs. I've never returned to the level of financial success I had while dealing, and every once in a while when the stack of bills pile up high I can't help but to consider returning to it until I see my kids and I think about the possibility of never being able to hug them again, or watching them grow old through a pane of glass.

Ms. Jackson

I Know A Couple Things · Author has 1.5K answers and 1.1M answer views

· 1y

It's the ugliest, grittiest existence in the world and anyone who says different is LYING. Anyone who says it's exhilarating has never sold drugs a day in their life. I can't even bring myself to read their responses after seeing that because off rip I can tell you it's not true and neither are their responses. My response is factual and based on personal experience which is less the drug courier, smuggler or middle class dealer. I can only speak to live in the street.

First and foremost, let me give you this disclaimer…silly drugs and street life means sacrifice… and by sacrifice I mean a full

First and foremost, let me give you this disclaimer…silly drugs and street life means sacrifice… and by sacrifice I mean a full understanding and acceptance of the fact that you will sacrifice your future for that money. You will sacrifice your conscience for that money. You will sacrifice your freedom for that money. You will sacrifice your friends and family for that money. You will sacrifice your sanity for that money. That is what I mean by sacrifice. I will never glorify the experience by any means, and have no intention of doing so now. I will often say “they” in my response, because saying “we” is no longer appropriate. By the grace of God I made it out.

There was a published study done recently that talks about how most drug dealers suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. And it's true. Anyone who has been in the game can tell you that they have been exposed to trauma, more often than not through violence. Either they have experienced it or they've witnessed it. Most times, both. I know personally, I've experienced both. I've been in more fights than I can count, I've been robbed and had a gun pulled on me more than once. I lost my best friend. My brother lost his best friend as well. That being said, losing people is a regular part of the life. It's normal. And normalizing trauma causes post-traumatic stress disorder. That and the fact that drug dealers become naturally paranoid. They are constantly on the lookout for police who are trying to lock them up, for stick up kids who are looking to rob them (many Stick up kids exclusively rob dealers as a badge of honor), for other people that want their customers, their money, their area to move their own work in, and will take their life to get it, and for their own customers who are unpredictable, unbalanced, and oftentimes desperate. Imagine living like that. Day in and day out. For years. And the longer you are in the street, the more paranoid you become. Only fueled further by the need to be in the street. Why would someone need to be in the street you ask? A lot of drug dealers sell drugs to do drugs themselves. For example, Joe you're friendly neighborhood drug dealer, might be moving around, selling cane and making it look like easy money… but what you don't see is that Joe took 4 percs before he even left the house. Joe didn't sleep last night, because when Joe sleeps, he has nightmares. He sweats. His wife knows. He wakes up screaming… So Joe doesn't really sleep. And Joe keeps her up. Joe also beats her up. Joe can't stand the life he lives, so Joe takes percs. But you don't see that. You don't know anything about that at all, because they don't rap about that. They don't glorify that in movies. So let me go back to my earlier point - anyone who says that type of life is fun is lying. There is absolutely nothing exhilarating or fun about crippling paranoia, losing the people you love, being in and out of prison, dysfunctional relationships, normalizing trauma, or doing drugs yourself just to get through the day.

Personally speaking, having been out of the street life for some years now, I can say with the utmost sincerity that I still live with terrible guilt. And I always will. However, I do like who I am now. I just hate the road that I had to take to get here.

Michael Santos

Consultant / Podcaster / Author / Speaker

· 12y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

I have many memories of what influenced me to traffic in cocaine, and I have memories of how I felt about the decisions I made.

Back in the mid 1980s, when I was in that reckless transition between adolescence and adulthood, I didn't grasp the moral implications of selling cocaine. Frankly, at the time, it didn't even feel like I was committing a crime. I equated my actions with the owners of speakeasies who sold alcohol to consenting adults during prohibition.

I remember watching shows like Miami Vice and Scarface. They convinced me that I could enjoy a glamorous lifestyle, earning a large i

I have many memories of what influenced me to traffic in cocaine, and I have memories of how I felt about the decisions I made.

I remember watching shows like Miami Vice and Scarface. They convinced me that I could enjoy a glamorous lifestyle, earning a large income while having fun. I moved from Seattle to Miami in pursuit of that fantasy when I was 21. It led to my driving Italian and German sports cars, having ocean racers, and a beach front lifestyle. But it didn't bring much in the way of happiness or fulfillment.

I wasn't a drug user and I didn't hang out with drug users. For me, trafficking in cocaine was a way for a stupid kid like me to make money quickly. It allowed me to live the illusion that I was something different from who and what I truly was. Inside, I was just an insecure kid looking for a way to have external possessions define me.

In my book Earning Freedom, I wrote about the transition in prison. The reality is, I found more peace in prison than I ever had as a drug trafficker. That peace came through a disciplined strategy and a commitment to emerge with values, skills, and resources that would translate into success as a law-abiding, contributing citizen. I learned that it isn't fast money or possessions that define a man, but rather, an individual defines himself by his willingness to work and contribute to the making of a better society.

Jennifer Corado

Decade long survivor of the Federal Bureau of Prisons · Author has 283 answers and 4.8M answer views

· 6y

For me at first, it was like I was on top of the world. Everyone was my friend, I stayed as high as I wanted for as long as I wanted, and the money…. What can be said about the money. I never knew it could come so fast and what seemed as so easy. I didn't have to worry about a real job, a boss, a start or finish time, I pretty much did what I want, when I wanted to do it and I liked it.

After a while you start to realize that everything that goes up, must come down! I lived this lifestyle for about 2 years before I really became tired. I literally mean every word of that, TIRED, in all aspects.

Everything was all good as long as your schedule lined up with those you were doing business with, if it didn't conform to their needs it became a living nightmare. Calls all hours of the night and day. I was constantly clearing my voicemail because it would be full constantly. People start to get angry or desperate and when that happens they also get careless.

I got to the point to where I felt like other people's actions were putting me at risk. By that time it was too late, in a sense I was trapped. Trapped in my own mind, in a hell I myself had created.

I no longer cared about the money, or the high. I was falling quickly towards what I would come to know as my “rock bottom.” I just wanted to be able to go out in public without being harassed or bombarded by someone who saw me.

I hadn't seen my family in months and my husband threatened to leave me if I didn't quit. I slowly tapered off from everyone and my usuage. It wasn't enough and I came home one morning after falling out at a motel the night before only to see my apartment half empty.

I thought I had been robbed. After doing a quick walk through though, something dawned on me. Nothing of mine was missing it was all my husband's belongings. Come to think of it he too was missing.

I immediately went into panic mode, I couldnt believe it, he held true to his warning before about leaving me. I felt so empty inside, so alone.

That is pretty much the way I felt the entire time that I was dealing drugs and living that lifestyle. Yet in reality I was never alone, as far as people physically being around me that is.

A couple months after he left I ended up losing it all including a decade of my freedom. I have a lot of time to think about what path I had chosen to take the last couple years before my incarceration. When I reflected back upon all of it I couldn't believe what a great life I thought I was living at the time. I seen the toll that it took on me mentally, physically, emotionally. I seen the stress that it laid upon me, along with all the pain and sadness I caused myself and my loved ones.

So while in the beginning it may have seemed great like I was unstoppable and on top of the world, the reality is it was just a road to the bottom. After enough time it gets tiring, I imagine it does for everyone, whether they want to admit it or not.

Anonymous

12y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

The year is 1980 and I’ve just crossed the Georgia state line from Florida on Interstate 75 in a big Buick with special shocks. I’ve got 300 pounds of marijuana in the trunk and I’m smokin’ a joint when a Georgia Highway Patrol car deposits himself directly behind me. Please. No. His flashers slash my rear view mirror where I watch the next 20 years of my life pass instantly.
Was it the steady 55-mile-per-hour speed limit I’d maintained that gave me away? Or did they deliberately let me cross the state line as a tactic to secure an
interstate transport conviction? Before I can nudge the wheel to pull over, let
alone answer the questions in my head, he grabs the left lane, stomps his
pedal, and starts to disappear. My tears dry on my cheek and my sense of relief
is in direct inverse proportion to his fading flashers. What did I do with that
doob?
* * *
Risk and reward, it’s central to life. From our first breath, we’re betting we’re goingto get another and learning to avoid the smack on the ass that induced it. Some of us learn more quickly than others and males often have their learning
experiences negated by the effects of drugs. The most powerful
judgment-impairment coursing the veins of males is the hormone testosterone.
“Hey everybody, watch this!” Is there a better explanation? I call it
testosterone poisoning.
As with drugs, combinations of hormones can intensify the effects of each. If you combine testosterone and adrenaline, you’ll get a 25-year-old impaired enough to risk a frightful prison sentence to savor the I-did-it satisfaction of
adrenal glands emptied by drug smuggling. The money’s not bad either.
* * *
I used to go water skiing with a friend of my older brother. “Doug” had a driver’s license and a car with a trailer hitch and I had use of a small family boat. We were a good team in pleasure as well as in business nearly a decade later. Doug was always an entrepreneurial type. He bought a bunch of jeans and opened a clothing store.
After that he owned a bar with some friends. They would shut off the cash
registers at around eleven o’clock in the evening and pocket all the proceeds
until two a.m. Stealing from themselves kept their accountant puzzled and the taxman confounded.
Doug and my brother weren’t nearly the potheads I was at the time, but Doug knew I was entrepreneurial, bright, and most importantly, trustworthy. He needed a “mule” and offered me the job. He would drive to southern Florida in his Camaro and I
would fly down after he arrived. The Buick would be loaded when I got there and
after resting a day or so, I would drive it back to Ohio with Doug following in
the Camaro. Presumably this was to insure against mechanical failure in the
Buick and to keep me from driving off with $120,000.00 worth of bud. Only later
did I realize it was Doug’s risk management tactic. If anyone was going to get
pulled over with 300 pounds of weed in his trunk, it wasn’t going to be Doug.
The only thing worse than having your mule drive off with your weed is having
the cops drive off with it after they’ve locked your ass in the slammer.
He’d pay me five bucks a pound or $1,500.00 for two days work, all expenses included, plus
I could sell as much of the weed for as much as I could as fast as I could. I
remember making a grand a week, so I must have sold 50 pounds a week because I marked up each pound by 20 bucks. That’s not bad money nowadays; it was big money 31 years ago. How big? According to The US Inflation Calculator,$1,000.00 a week in 1980 is equal to $2,741.77 in 2011 dollars. That means a legal gig today would have to pay me $192,472.25 a year to equal what I earnedin 1980 tax-free and would place me in the top 5% of wage earners easily. “I’m sick of going out to eat. All we ever do is go out to eat.” my girlfriend
complained. What does a woman want?

Besides my mom wondering how her
son with no job had a paid-for car and a new camelhair jacket, I had to watch
for nosey neighbors. I took the hide-in-plain-sight tactic with mine. “Goldie”
was a talkative and corpulent welfare mother with three kids whose bedroom
window was separated from my kitchen window by the width of my driveway.
Instead of being secretive, which would have tipped her off, I continued to chat
with her regularly. We were friendly, but she would have loved to have turned
me in just to read her name in the paper. I wondered if the clerk at the Kroger
store found my purchasing 15 boxes of gallon Ziploc bags at once unusual or
not. Maybe she thought I caught a bunch of fish.
* * *
Bulk marijuana comes in bales wrapped in plastic held with duct tape. Each bale has something like #56, 48.7 lbs, #27, 36.5 lbs, etcetera, written on the duct tape. This is business; they’ve got to have some inventory controls I
suppose. I mopped the vinyl kitchen
floor of my bungalow and like a kid at Christmas, started unwrapping bales and
breaking them apart. I had pot from cabinet to cabinet two feet thick. “Get
this shit outta here!” my girlfriend exclaimed. That’s the idea, babe.
Bulk marijuana is as dry as a
jailer’s joke. This is an opportunity to make more money and increase the
quality of the smoke. An industrial spray mist bottle of water weighs about two
pounds and will resurrect about 50 pounds of weed quite nicely. At $800.00 for
a bottle of water, and I need six of them, the economic incentive to remoisten
beckons with the subtlety of a twenty-dollar streetwalker.
Every time I read about someone busted with a large amount of dope and a large amount of cash, I just think “Dumbass.” The first thing they teach you at drug school is to never keep your money and your dope in the same location for this very reason. If the worst happens, at least you’ll have money to mount a decent defense and believe me, you’re going to need it. You don’t want a public
defender. I paid a bank teller friend in pot to count and keep my cash at her
place. She was fast and professional and we remain friends to this day.
* * *
After a while on the dark side and coming back again, it’s kind of amusing to hear people complain about how stressful their jobs are. If you screw up the
McGillicuttey account what’s the worst that will happen? You’ll get fired?
Fired? Big deal. Lose that attaché case with the quarter million dollars in it and
a firing will feel like a toddler’s kiss on the cheek. A commercial pilot could
survive a plane crash that killed hundreds of his passengers but unless he was
drunk, he isn’t going to go to jail for it. The stakes are much higher in the
illicit trades, as are the rewards. Job stress? You can’t feel the meaning of
the words until you’ve been illegal.
That’s not to say the folks I worked with weren’t some of the nicest in the world.
Virtually all were middle class business owners with families. It’s just the
risk/reward thing again. The profits are lucrative and tax-free especially when
compared to the hurricane shutter business. There are exceptions. Doug and
another associate ventured to the Philippine Islands once to try to put a pot
deal together. They met some guys in a bamboo hut in the jungle and were
promptly relieved of $5,000.00 at gunpoint. Oopsie.
Then there was the time Doug loaded the Camaro, eschewing the Buick and mule, and had car trouble. He made it to a mechanic who fortunately never needed to look in the trunk. I can’t decide if Doug has the biggest balls of any guy I’ve ever known or is just insane.
I recall the election of Ronald Reagan not for any particular political reasons, but because the vote tallies were on the evening television of a regular customer when I dropped off eleven pounds.
* * *
Getting ripped off is the second worse thing that can happen to a pot dealer. The first, of course, is getting busted because you not only lose your inventory for which you owe lots of money, you face the likely possibility of a jail
sentence. I was never busted for dealing, but I did get ripped off. I “fronted” (loaned marijuana for promise of
payment upon subsequent sale) a friend three pounds and he never paid me for
it. The bastard fell off a roof several months later and was permanently
paralyzed from the waist down. Karma’s a bitch I guess. My buddy Artie Johnson
killed himself on his motorcycle owing me 168 bucks.
Long before my volume dealing days,
I did get a visit from an agent of the local Metropolitan Drug Enforcement
Unit. A guy named Jeff Huenfeld, who had played on a baseball team with my older brother who was killed in Vietnam, knocked on my door and flashed his badge. He was firm but friendly and together we pulled up the five-foot-tall marijuana plant I had growing in my backyard. He was going to let me slide on the plantif I’d just roll over on some associates. “No thanks”, I told him. I
appreciated the break, but I’m not a rat.
He came back several weeks later with the whole Metropolitan Drug Enforcement Unit.
Guns drawn and screaming, they surrounded my house and kicked in the front
door. When I asked to see a warrant, the back of a nark hand smacked the
glasses off my face and someone said, “There’s your fucking warrant, asshole.”
They held my roommate at gunpoint and confiscated my girlfriend’s period-cramp
pills because they were in the wrong prescription bottle. While some ransacked
the house, pouring shampoo over the towels they tossed in the tub, others sat
at my table and ate the French fried shrimp I had prepared for dinner. “You’re
a pretty good cook, man”.
They were so busy pouring shampoo, eating my supper and ransacking my house they missed the pound or so I had stashed under the shelf covering the tub faucets but did find the ounce in my dresser. As the jail doors slammed shut I recognized a voice in the next cell as an associate I refused to rat on. We were all sweptin one day.
I faced cultivation and possession charges,
but the charge that concerned my attorney was “Obstructing Official Business.”
That’s the one they threw in for my asking for the warrant, pesky Constitution
and all. Fifteen hundred dollars in lawyer retainer fee later, they dropped
everything but the possession charge and I paid a $50.00 fine.
Agent Huenfeld attended a party hosted by a mutual friend over a decade ago. He apparently expressed regret for his gestapo-like tactics and those of his police associates.
Like any other business, I am responsible for my subordinates and this will be my economic undoing. “Jerry” called one morning, explaining that the 18 pounds I’dfronted him had been sprung from the trunk of his Rivera the night before. I went over and saw the trunk lid languishing permanently open, the lock punched neatly. It reminded me of a pretty girl too drunk to keep her skirt from
blowing up in the wind after she’d fallen, her legs askew. Jerry didn’t have the money he owed me for
the pot, but that made no difference to the people I owed. Losing seven large
to cover for Jerry was incredibly painful; it was all my operating profit and
capital. That’s almost twenty-thousand in today’s dollars. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was
the best lesson of my business life. I still had the things that mattered most
to me, my freedom, my family, friends and girlfriend. I realized it was only
money and that I could just make more.
* * *
I’m quite anxious to release most of my essays to the world through the Internet, but with this one I’m more circumspect. This and the pornography I wrote and posted under a pseudonym. What if I want to run for city council one day and my opponent digs up this thing? Will it be perceived as romantically as we
nostalgically view old Uncle Bob, the heroic rumrunner during Prohibition?
Uncle Bob’s been vindicated by the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. Will my
vindication come upon decriminalization, medical use or legalization? History
is replete with vindicated lawbreakers. Nicholas Copernicus was jailed for
insisting the earth revolved around the sun 600 years ago. John Brown killed a
few innocents in his quest for the abolition of slavery. Or will my future
opponent try to make the case that since terrorists make money from drugs, I’m
somehow one of them? I’m arguing that it is the prohibition itself driving the
profits in the drug trade. Were legalization enacted tomorrow the terrorists
would be out of business, their profit incentive eviscerated. If you’ve ever inhaled some imported marijuana, you’re as guilty as I am.
In Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, author Ander Monson says of his juvenile delinquency: “In my life, there is a tension and pride in recollecting my
criminal past. I can’t avoid it. I am proud of these transgressions…They are
what I’ve done whatever claim to glory or ignominy…I’m not exactly penitent,
nor am I flat out apologetic.” Monson has the excuse of youthful indiscretion;
I can make no such claim although we share the ambivalence and pride of our
experiences. He is not a felon through the generosity and foresight of the
juvenile criminal justice system. I am not a felon through training, luck and
skill.
I couldn’t drive a load of weed today if you paid me a million dollars. I don’t have what it takes anymore, even though my doctor said my testosterone levels are normal for my age. Just like the tempting cuties at college that I keep off limits,
the urge to earn a large amount of cash relatively quickly is easily
controlled. As we age, our perspective of risk, reward, and the fear of getting
caught changes and make us more conservative. The tragic life cards dealt by
the hands of fate remain invisible to the younger players. Their friend Arty
isn’t dead yet. I could have done twenty years in prison thirty years ago; now
that’s a life sentence. It’s a young man’s game, and I played it with a young man’s heart and hormones. Both elude me now.

Anonymous

10y

Been there done that, and survived 4 close calls, yes 4!

Although i see lot of great answers but still i would like to share my story

I had been using weed and booze since second year in my college, though i started quite late and kinda proud of it. Things were pretty clean till my last year in college. I had very good connections with security guards and students representatives of the college and was a respected senior.

Once at the middle of the night i went to get some weed at my friend's room who was small distributor in the college. I smoked there and this is when he told my about his share

Been there done that, and survived 4 close calls, yes 4!

Although i see lot of great answers but still i would like to share my story

Once at the middle of the night i went to get some weed at my friend's room who was small distributor in the college. I smoked there and this is when he told my about his share in deals etc and i was astonished to hear that. 25% is what he gets to keep. Where I was making few hundred bucks with part timers he was earning thousands doing nothing(This is what i thought then). Since i knew him since 3 years i did i ask him about any chance he can get me hooked up with some deals and he agreed.

He gave me around $100 worth of weed and asked me sell it. and i did in just 5 days and made $20 out of it. I assumed the profit will get better with the time and experience. Till now i had no idea where i was leading. And i still get nightmares thinking of what was going to happen in next few months.

My friend was a businessman and knew how he could extract the most out of me. He didn't give me weed this time to sell but asked me to be his partner. Though it sounded awkward at first but i assumed it was for my good. He used all my connections to get weed in and out of the college. We payed every link heavily to keep their mouth shut and maintain the smooth flow. I was mozart in disguise. We were now importing pounds of weed and because major distributor from minor making around $2.5k a week.

This is where the real story starts

1. My first close call
Since we were importing huge amount we decided to cut the middle men and get the product directly from the dealers. We used our savings of around $20k and made a deal. On our second deal we were driving back to college with around $10k of weed when a cop pulled us over just looking at our worried faces and clothes drowned with sweat. He was sure something was wrong, So he asked what were we hiding. By now we knew we were dead. But then got an idea. I had around 2 grams weed in my pocket which our dealer gave as a demo to try but i was not in a mood so i didn't use it then. I gave that to the cop and said "Our friend gave us and this was our first time were going to try weed". And luckily cop bought it and called our parents over the phone told about it and gave a long speech, but he did let us go. We reached our room and we didn't knew weather to laugh or cry over the situations. Our parents now knew we did weed but we escaped big trouble.

By now cash was flowing in but at a cost of my grades and relationships with other friends, i hardly saw them because either i was busy with settling some deal with smaller distributors who worked under us or sleeping(i hardly slept 4 to 5 hours)

2. Other competitors at the college started a rivalry because they were lacking behind. Our exams were near so i thought it would be best if i spare few weeks for my studies. We had around $4k of weed in our room but we almost halted the business. One night our friend came up who was also a distributor and told us he was running short and wanted to supply to his few permanent customers. We agreed and gave the entire stock without a profit. Two days later some rat opened the mouth and college authority hit a raid in our room. Luckily all they got from our room was a box of cigarette. Had that weed been in our room that day, we can't just imagine the post scenario.

Exams were now over and i secured to get a decent grades. I got some job offers but who wanted job since i was already earning sufficient.

We were out of the college but still got connections inside and our product was flowing in. Our greeds were increasing day and night and we wanted more and more. Over a period of six to eight months we became a middle men who supplied to the distributors. I bought a luxurious car, rented a condo but at a cost that i can't tell anyone including parents that i owned all of it. Dinner at 5 star hotel and new girl every weekend was no biggie.

3. One afternoon at my dealer's place we were having lunch, he also introduced us to his friend who dealt with coke. Just for our old dealer's sake we got coke for no prior deposit. Coke was more profitable. We made few deals with him and he was impressed with our work. One night we went to him get some coke but we sensed something was wrong at his place. We were made to sit in the backyard since he was dealing with some other deal which went wrong. All of a sudden gun shots were fired, few buzzed over our head and all we did was duck and get cover behind a statue. Our hearts were racing like anything and minds full of thoughts.
Our coke dealer opened the door to the backyard and saw us hiding like a mouse and laughed, He told us to keep calm and things have been settled. He and his men killed four men and that was nothing to them, just a regular night. We could have died there accidentally but luckily nothing happened.

This is when we knew we were in deep shit hole and there is no coming out of it.

It had been 2 years in the business and we were almost equivalent to some dealer. I and my friend were stacking money in locker we had in my basement since can't buy anything, nor we can keep it in bank.
We did couple of deal, made huge amount of money. while our parents thinking that were lazy bastards with no job and no house.

4. Most threatening experience in my life
Now we were making deals worth hundreds of thousand dollars. One night we were kind of representatives of our coke dealer and went out to meet some distributor to settle a deal. We had a good amount of coke with us and few dealer's men just to ensure the safety. Deal was arranged in abandoned factory. Everyone arrived, We exchanged the terms and price and they agreed. We confirmed they brought the money and they confirmed we had coke. But then they took out the guns and we realised this was an ambush. Without thinking for a second I ran towards the car to get cover. Luckily my friend never left the car drove us both out of there. Shots were fired from both ends. My dealer's men were out numbered and no one survived. Though the revenge was taken later and he did kill that distributor.

That night I and my friend decided this was it and we left the business before we were got ourselves killed.

We took a loan from my parents and friends just to show the world we were broke and started the business. We slowly mixed the money we had in our business and made it a quite an impressive one.

I am 44 years old with a loving wife and a lovely daughter. I and my friend are still partners in the business which is still booming.

Till date we still share the memories from our past rejoice it, thinking one wrong move at that time and things would have been different now.

Anonymous

I was only a drug courier, so I'm not sure this experience entirely counts. I'm British too, and grew up in the West Country, so it was actually quite a cushy gig.

It was my first job, and it was the best paid job I've ever had, so it kind of sets you up for unrealistic expectations about money and the world of work. I spent all of the money before I was 17, but it did allow me to afford some amazing experiences, even though a lot of it ran through my hands like water.

I started working when I was 11, and finished when I was nearly 14. For some reason, the age of 14 is a turning point with the a

I was only a drug courier, so I'm not sure this experience entirely counts. I'm British too, and grew up in the West Country, so it was actually quite a cushy gig.

I started working when I was 11, and finished when I was nearly 14. For some reason, the age of 14 is a turning point with the authorities in the UK when you suddenly become old enough to know better and stop being treated like a victim. At least, it was in my area anyway.

I only delivered Coke, and I lived in a tourist area so I had most of my high-paying jobs in the tourist seasons, but it was actually fairly consistent all year-round.

Because I was quite a shy kid and I've never been the sort of person that people take notice of, I was pretty good at the job. When you're delivering drugs, this is a really good quality to have. I'm the eldest of four brothers, and very much the odd duck out. The other three are all athletic, good looking and were popular at school. By comparison, I was a very boring, unpromising child. I was well-behaved but plain, and I avoided drawing attention to myself. I looked very much the innocent schoolboy, unassuming and rather dull. I got recruited for this reason, and generally sent to the posher places to do my deliveries, which meant purer stuff and more money usually.

I was also a bit of a loner, so nobody ever really suspected me of doing anything interesting. At one point, I had several thousand pounds in a shoebox under my bed, next to my diary and my bible. My parents had no idea about my job, and I was careful not to splash my cash around where they might see it.

The closest I got to being caught was when I was just turned 13 and I was cycling past a corner shop where we used to mix the cocaine with various other substances. The police were doing a raid, and the family that owned it were outside. The daughter was sobbing heavily and I was surprised because she had always made out like she was hard as nails. Her dad was being put in a police car and it was a very weird moment. I felt like time slowed down, like those slow-motion shots in films.

Cycling past, I slowed down and gaped like a nosy kid, but all I wanted to do was peddle away as fast as I could. Two police dogs started barking at me, presumably because I had several pounds of pure cocaine in my rucksack. But with the commotion, I was ignored, and once I had turned the corner I cycled away as though my life depended on it.

When working, I always referred to the job as my 'paper round' and still do now. It was pretty much the same deal anyway, except less deliveries to do and better pay. I think if I had stayed in the job then I might have gone down a bad path, but my family moved away and so that was the end of that.

I don't regret it at all though. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had.

It also stopped me getting bullied at school because I had informal 'protection' from being part of the gang, and I was unassuming and respectful to everyone, and I didn't swagger about or show off, and I was reliable, so I got this strange respect from other people. It helped a lot with my adolescent self-esteem and gave me some good insight into how a business is run and how to behave around your colleagues. Also, being so young, I wasn't interested in doing the drugs myself, and having first-hand experience in mixing it, I didn't want that shit in my system.

Overall, it was a very strange experience. It was mostly good, and it wasn't traumatic or damaging, and it was about ten years ago now. It feels like another life to think about it, because the kid that I was and the man I am now are so different. I'm still quite unassuming though. I don't talk about this often but when I do people are always surprised. Don't judge a book by its cover, I guess.

What I would say, is get out young and don't get too involved. I didn't witness anything first-hand but I did know people who were beat up or murdered or became addicts on other stuff and OD'd. One of the kids I used to work with (same age as me) now has a criminal record, and that's screwed over his employment opportunities. He doesn't have many options now but to continue dealing. I hope that the British police will follow Durham's example and stop prosecuting small-time dealers.

Quora User

I like to recreate with drugs occasionally. · Author has 2.5K answers and 7.4M answer views

· 9y

I'm not a drug dealer but have known several. Its not a life I could live for several reasons. The phone rings constantly. You are dealing with drug users so they're constantly trying to trade you this for that or get you to front them drugs. Its hard to get your money out of a drug addict that don't have any money to begin with. The females are always trying to get you to trade sex for drugs. That might sound good but after awhile it is more of a pain in the ads. There is the obvious necessity for watching your back for people getting ripped off or ratted on when somebody gets caught with drugs and makes a deal to set you up. You won't make any money dealing if you're using drugs because basically you become a slave to the streets. Your social life will be that of mostly business. You can't sit through a movie without your phone ringing and it's a desperate customer. There's always someone bitching about your dope or the size of your bags. For the most part the only people you meet will be criminals of various levels. Many of them bad news and very few of them good news. The girls you attract aren't quality and most quality girls don't want anything to do with you and even if she does want to be around you she will quickly tire of you having to stop what you guys are doing to sell someone some dope. That's the cons of being a drug dealer. If you like being in great demand, the most popular guy around, you might like the life. I guess there is allot of money to be made but few do. I've seen really decent people turn into greedy Assholes trying to sell drugs. The physical labor is pretty light so if you don't like hard work being a dealer could appeal. In case you haven't noticed I don't recommend this life. The dealers I've known keep doing it because they're in a vicious cycle but most want to get out of it after they see what it's like. If you're a person who doesn't want to be able to trust anyone then you might like the life.

Anonymous

13y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

I want to comment and reaffirm that the experiences are indeed very
different based on the type of drug you sell. I sold marijuana,
mushrooms (psilocibin), cocaine, ecstasy and pills.

Marijuana dealing was exactly how the first Anon User described it. In
fact, I also shipped weed and it worked beautifully until someone went
to jail for it. The margins were very similar to what Anon user 1 described, and his story is not unique.

Cocaine dealing is a completely different game and involved staying up
late to deal with the clientele, dealing with much riskier and often
violent suppliers, and w

I want to comment and reaffirm that the experiences are indeed very
different based on the type of drug you sell. I sold marijuana,
mushrooms (psilocibin), cocaine, ecstasy and pills.

Cocaine dealing is a completely different game and involved staying up
late to deal with the clientele, dealing with much riskier and often
violent suppliers, and watching more people's lives get ruined.

Ultimately it was one of the best experiences of my life because I
learned a lot about business and am now an investor making a solid
living. My sales skills in drugs translate to solid soft skills when
negotiating legitimate / legal deals. At the same time, it's extremely difficult to not be dragged down by the environment and it can be traumatic as you watch people's lives slowly take a turn for the worse.

Quora User

Video Editor at Decline To State (2004–present) · Author has 69 answers and 464.3K answer views

· 9y

Did it for two weeks at my lowest point. I felt so sick to my stomach knowing I was ripping people just like me off. These people that weren't "bad people", they were just addicts like me, and every one of them had a very similar story to mine as to how they got where they were. Started using pain meds after an accident/surgery/athletic injury/work injury etc. then lost their insurance...or their doc suddenly decided to cut them off and they turned to heroin because they knew it was an opiate and it (at first) is a hell of a lot cheaper than the $1 a mg you'll pay for a pill that lasts half a day at most. And I was jacking up the price, ripping these people off so I could get my fix and avoid getting dopesick. There was one girl though..... it hit me hard. She was a beautiful, tiny little girl of about 21, just barely old enough to be stripping. I'd meet her before and after her shift. She'd pull up in that pretty white, brand new Mercedes of hers and hop into my car to fix before work. She played herself off as young, hot and a party girl with lots of cash, and I had no problem jacking up the prices to dip into that wad of money she'd make every night. I figured she couldn't be too bad off. Then, one night, things went south for the both of us. I got in a very minor car accident on my way to score for her. It only damaged my vehicle's bumper, but it was enough to slow me down to where I missed the opportunity to score....not just for her but for both of us. I met her there and gave her the bad news. So she was going to call her backup for us both. A few hours later I got a text intended for this backup, and had been sent to me by mistake. She was chewing me out and talking about how they made her miss work and also miss out on spending time with her baby. We met up later that night and she broke down and told me the whole glamor girl thing was a lie. Her car was about to be repossessed for missed payments, she was a month behind on rent, her parents had cut her off, and baby daddy OD'd about two weeks before I met her. I felt like the biggest piece of shit in the world for ripping this girl off as I had been. I told her I was going to go home, and get clean. I did. It was hell. For obvious reasons I never could talk to her again, but I will never forget her.

Anonymous

Updated 11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

I read all the weed dealing stories, and I think: "How different is the Dutch experience. 'Tis silly.". Marijuana is not really considered a drug in Holland. It's a soft drug. But it's such a strong soft drug, that I was totally addicted to it. It's called "soft" because getting over it is rather easy: get a girlfriend. Or grow up.

Anyway, some guy I knew was growing a rather ill looking plant under a neon lamp and it smoked "mkay". But it got me thinking. Next day I went to a so called grow shop and I bought a proper professional lamp. And all kinds of material including 30 clones of super skunk mixed with silver haze or whatever they called it. The sort of weed that makes you high just looking at it. I actually had to make an appointment to go to some secret location, where 5 other socially awkward growers were standing around trying to avoid each other, until some car would pull up handing out our little preciousnesses. I let them grow for about a month, and then let them blossom for two more months. After 3 months I had 14 ounce (400 grams) of the best weed in town.

The cutting of the tops was fun in the beginning, but after 2 hours of cutting, 3 blisters, and a headache induced by the mind blowing stench... it was still fun! I would let it dry, and immediately bought the next round of little green beauties. This way I could make 4 harvests a year.

I thought it would be easy in Holland to sell it, considering that I lived in Amsterdam with three coffeeshops in my street alone. The price of good weed in Holland was 12 euro's per gram, so I figured I could ask 6 euro. Times 400 grams makes 2400 euro. Times 4 months makes 9600 euro a year. Enough to pay my study. So on my bicycle I went. With 400 grams of weed in a plastic bag dangling at my steering wheel. But I found out that most coffeeshops only buy quantities of a kilo or more. I think I visited at least 8 coffeeshops. Some where really nice (the smaller ones), offering me a nice cup of coffee. Some acted like Pablo Escobar (the larger touristmagnet ones like "the bulldog"). But 400 grams was not good enough. Some offered me their help in setting up a larger installation, or tried to persuade me into buying more lamps. But I always refused "help" (and get dependent), and never used more than one lamp (and get visited by the police eventually to check your too high energy bill. Not to mention the smell...).

I finally found a nice little coffeeshop that wasn't too demanding. On top of that, they had a lot of famous musician customers (Lee scratch Perry for instance). Which is a nice extra when you're only 20 and susceptible to idolizing.

One time, being stupid, stoned or both, I subscribed myself to a free energy consummation check from the energy company. I totally forgot it, and when the energy guy was suddenly standing in front of my house, I just put one plant in the living room and locked the door to my smelly paradise. I let him in and told him that that one plant was some nasty smelling specimen wasn't it? Oh and by the way, that room is locked, but it's the same as any other room so ehm, you know... The energycompanyguy didn't say anything. But when he left he told me that 400 Watt lamps can be very energy consuming. Oh and check your carbon filters! How the hell did he know?

One other time the house renting company send two technical guys to check something technical in the house, without making an appointment with me. They stepped inside my house and said, "Hmm that smells good!". So I gave them 5 gram each and everybody was happy.

Then, finally, after 2 years, I grew up and got a girlfriend. And out the door it all went.

Now, how was this period like? Dude, I totally, like, forgot man. It's 20 years later, and I'm still recovering my short term memory!

Anonymous

My best answer to this is second-hand (my college buddy) (it really *was* my college buddy, not me). Story takes place in the UMass/Amherst/Smith/Hampshire/Holyoke region of (western) Massachusetts.

My buddy (we'll call him "Daniel") was primarily a pot dealer. He had somehow gotten involved with some South American guys who shipped cocaine into the country (exact shipping method unclear), and, amusingly, they used marijuana as packing material to pad/cushion the sides of the box.

Every weekend, Daniel would drive from College-Town, MA to New York City (about 3 hrs each way), pick up the four-

My best answer to this is second-hand (my college buddy) (it really *was* my college buddy, not me). Story takes place in the UMass/Amherst/Smith/Hampshire/Holyoke region of (western) Massachusetts.

Every weekend, Daniel would drive from College-Town, MA to New York City (about 3 hrs each way), pick up the four-ish bundles of 'packing material,' and carry it northwards. He paid something like $750 per bundle, and sold at a modest markup in Massachusetts; thus, before expenses, he grossed between $1000 and $2000 each week. He did not adulterate or cut down the product, as far as I know, but he did (lightly) partake of his own supply.

Daniel experienced two or three unusual 'problems' associated with this lifestyle.

First, and most obviously, his Mass-to-NYC-to-Mass drive was always a harrowing, stressful experience; though his working relationship with the South American guys was 'good,' he never knew with 100% certainty what might happen once he got down there, or, worse, during his drive back north. He wasn't really 'big-time,' and he could have given up his suppliers, if caught, but that... might have carried its own dangerous consequences.

Secondly, storage and handling of the cash proceeds became a minor annoyance. Daniel took frequent cash vacations (he said the Florida Keys were the perfect compromise, because they were most 'exotic' without carrying all the hassle and paper-trail of an out-of-country trip), took care to buy used cars, and rented two floors of an antique Brownstone house. I don't know what he claimed for tax purposes; probably some (very part-time) 'student' status, which became more and more difficult as he aged into his thirties. At 2K per week, he wasn't a millionaire or 'wealthy' by anyone's standards, but the juggling of paper currency was still a concern.

Thirdly -- and, in Daniel's opinion, most distasteful -- he became inextricably linked to ("friends with") (at the beck and call of) losers, on a 24x7 basis. He was constantly at the mercy of his pager. He had to keep at least minimally-friendly relations with people he wouldn't have wasted his time on otherwise. And, though he wasn't on the move all day every day, his life was punctuated with "Hey, can you come over" calls every 2-3 hours, unpredictably, generally late-evenings and weekends. This, to hear him talk, and maybe the (collegiate) age differential, was why Daniel eventually gave up the profession.

Even now, twenty years later, I don't know how to summarize his situation. Raking in something like $100K per annum, tax-free, he was surely two or three standard deviations outside the norm for his demographic/socioeconomic niche. And, save for 40-50 interstate trips in a beaten-up Mazda, his existence wasn't particularly "dangerous" for that reward, though one wrong time/place/police-stop might have proved his undoing. I do vaguely remember Daniel becoming something of a risk-taker -- phoning up various girlfriends with a "be here in 25 minutes wearing a trenchcoat and nothing else, or we're done" ultimatum, drag-racing in underground parking garages, trying extreme sports like parasailing and windsurfing along the Florida coast, etc. -- I don't know whether that risk was innate to his core personality, or if he simply found the life to be "not enough," not sufficiently lucrative, not sufficiently dangerous, not sufficiently well-known or distinctive, just sort of aging in place as the gap between young college co-eds and older flew-the-nest career yuppies continued to widen. Maybe that's what convinced him to stop.

Epilogue: Daniel ended up lying (falsifying multiple college degrees) on his resume, bluffing his way up the ladder through various software and publishing firms, and ultimately stalking the NYC club scene in a (successful) attempt to marry into a rich Jewish family. Though I imagine he's quite "respectable-looking" these days, he has a vague character-from-a-Bret-Easton-Ellis-novel vibe which sort of unnerves me. Did he really travel so very far from his collegiate drug-trafficking roots, in the end?

Joe La Garbo

Ex dopeman · Author has 2.7K answers and 8.2M answer views

· Updated 3y

Selling weed isn't dealing drugs. That shit's almost legal anyways. To be a dope dealer takes a special kind of person. One that's respected, feared and is always in pocket. I sold Coke for close to 15 years. It all started with the "Free Base" day's. Got tired of getting paid on Friday and waking up Saturday afternoon without a dime left of my check because I smoked it all up the night before. Met a dude who was a bad ass running back when he was in college he had the second highest amount of rushing yards next to OJ Simpson himself while at CCSF in San Francisco. He got me smoking the base and it was a mother fucker spending all your dough trying to get that "First Hit" feeling that never comes.

He gave me the opportunity to sell some myself and I started with my first ounce. That first one is the one that determines whether or not you have it in you. With Scar Face just showing up in the theatre's it made one want to do it more then ever. At first you want everyone to know that your the "Man". You flaunt your fat wad, fat sack and all the toy's associated with slingin. I'd move every couple months switch cars almost bi weekly and to the cops I became known as "Wandering Joe" while they wasted a lot of tax payers money breaking doors down only to find that they just missed me.

Selling Coke was easy once word spread around that you have the best stuff, un cut(by me), and your bags were always on weight. Coke is a working stiff's drug. Done mostly at night Friday's and Saturday nights were the money making day's. Was selling a pound every other day and smoking close to a quarter ounce a day as well. The money was good but the toys you acquire through slinging is off the hook. Harley's, Hot rods, Fine women and never have to worry about how much this or that costs. Was rolling hard until I met this Southern Belle and she too smoked as much as i did, that's when shit started fucking up. She ended up getting shot in the chest with a 44 Bulldog pistol. Over too much Tequilla and another woman. Tried to grab the pistol while she had it pointed at herself figuring the first chamber was empty, like I had kept all my six shooters because having one in your waist band at all times made ya think "What If" it accidently went off and blew my pecker off.

For those of you who have seen what a bullet can do from close range it's a sight to see and one you'll never forget. Met another woman who I got pregnant and decided to call it quits because if I...

Thierry Blancpain

Designer · Author has 257 answers and 2.2M answer views

· Updated 13y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

As Quora User notes, the following "is only true for the subset of drug dealers who work in large, inner-city organizations that are set up as top-down command-and-control enterprise."

Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame held a pretty good TED talk about the economics of crack dealing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UGC2nLnaes
It's based on Sudhir Venkatesh's research, living in public projects and crackhouses for ten years, studying the daily life, the accounting, and other aspects of a gang in Chicago.

Organization
Overall such drug gangs could best be compared to McDonalds, in terms of organi

As Quora User notes, the following "is only true for the subset of drug dealers who work in large, inner-city organizations that are set up as top-down command-and-control enterprise."

Organization
Overall such drug gangs could best be compared to McDonalds, in terms of organizational structure, wages, their basic franchising system, and other factors. The upper-most echelon even calls itself Board of Directors. J.T., Venkatesh's guide throughout his studies, had a college degree and was a local leader of the Black Kings. A local leader would have an area of about four blocks under his control, and gets to use the brand/name of the gang and exclusive drug-selling rights for his territory.

Wages
Foot soldiers: $3.50 per hour
Local leader: $100,000 per year
Regional leader: $200,000 per year
Board of directors: $400,000 per year

Sounds ok, but:

Why is it still a horrible line of work to be in?
While the wages compare (on some levels) to that of a McDonalds employee, in the drug gang you're getting shot at. Be aware that the following data was collected during a period of intense violence, but it's still telling.
The death rate was 7% per person per year, and then there's still the risk of getting wounded or arrested. For four years in the gang you have about 25% chance of dying. Other seemingly dangerous walks of life are much less risky: even on death row you have only 2% yearly risk of death. An American soldier in Iraq in 2006 had a death rate of about 1.5% per year.

Reasons why someone would still do it
Drug gangs used to be something young people did, and at some point in your life you got wealthy enough and dropped out. But the rules changed: the people leading the major gangs in Chicago at the end of the 1980s still ruled them when Venkatesh did his research. The leaders did great employer marketing, basically tricking young people into believing that the gang was a place for them to get rich.
Also, and more importantly, for young people growing up where this gang was active, the gang was one of the very few economic opportunities. Levitt says that in his view, despite all the negative factors, it seems like the best economic opportunity widely available for those young people. One in half a million (this number is pure speculation) may find his way into professional sports, and others may find low-wage jobs at legal companies. But for the most part, the drug gang is your best bet.

TL/DR: In conclusion, drug gangs very much work like any other company. But Levitt makes clear that it is capitalism unfettered of the rule of law: foot soldiers may get twice the hourly wage during a gang war, but because of a general lack of economical opportunities, they are for the most part bound to work for the gang.

More on this topic can be found in the book Venkatesh himself published about his ten years of study, called Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. The third chapter of Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, is based on Venkatesh's studies.

Justin Olson

Lived in Austin, TX

· 1y

It’s fukin stress man. All the time. There is no relief from it. It’s generally disappointing in terms of revenue, supply, or the customer base in general. I’ve seen the worst of people, it’s hard to look at them the same now. It’s sad as fuk.

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Anonymous

11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

A Mexican drug lord’s house was busted and let us just say… everything you would assume about a drug lord’s house is totally true. Actually,
any house owned by any drug lord is probably going to look pretty similar to this. The
http://www.pgr.gob.mx/cmsocial/bol07/mar/b11007.htm (Mexico’s office of La Procuradura General de la Republica) announced a successful drug raid on a Mexico City home and
published pictures … and. Wow. Who know that being a methamphetamine producers could result in something so… awesome? (Aside from the whole “arrest” thing.)

Raids like this one have typical loot, like

Raids like this one have typical loot, like a gun a with golden Virgin Mary on the handle.

amjones58

Classy violence.

amjones58

This drug lord had a gun collection bigger than most museum’s.

amjones58

The adorable little cottage you see here? Bought with drug money.

amjones58

There’s no surprise that there is a grotto with a hot tub….

amjones58

And lots of exotic animals.

amjones58

There were eight lions on this property. Eight.

amjones58

And also a rare white tiger.

amjones58

amjones58

Rare, stolen and illegal art was found throughout the house.

amjones58

And, of course, more guns.

amjones58

A cash pile this size is approximately $200 million.

amjones58

That’s… a lot.

amjones58

Ooh hey, more guns!

amjones58

When raiding a drug lord’s house, you learn to look for cash everywhere.

amjones58

amjones58

And I mean everywhere.

amjones58

Walk in closet? Nope. Cash.

amjones58

Filing cabin… nope, cash.

amjones58

Apparently selling drugs can be very profitable for these criminals.

amjones58

amjones58

So much so, their personal protection is typically gilded.

amjones58

If that doesn’t scream “drug money,” I don’t know what does.

amjones58
Here’s what you should take away from this story: don’t do (or make or sell) drugs, kids. Because if you do, your piles of cash, golden guns and pet panthers are going to get taken away from you and you will go to jail for a long, long, long time.
And then someone like me will post pictures about it.
Source: Reddit

Quora User

I grew up in a Northern California town, where the drug culture flourished · Author has 1.2K answers and 14.1M answer views

· 7y

It all depends. I began by selling some dynamite Indica buds by the eighth oz. I was getting 1/4 pounds and making quite a good amount of money. I had the best weed around which was grown by an old timer friend of mine so I had the exclusive connect. For about a year I kept the business rolling…Then I was introduced to a fellow who had just gotten out of prison for cooking crank. He liked the shit out of my weed and traded me ridiculous amounts of pure shit for buds. I was a true rookie in those days and lost a shit load of weight, stayed up for weeks at a time…detailing my Camaro in the parki

I had the occasional idiot try and rob me, but I always carried my snub nose .38 which kept that from being successful. One night, I was sitting with a beautiful young lady, in my Camaro, in a city park, chopping a line on the console…when a park ranger rolls up. Long story short, They searched my car, found a couple of ounces in the trunk (when weed was still way illegal), found my vial of crank (which, in those days, assumed it was cocaine), took me to jail.

Dealing drugs is fun, and lucrative…until it is not. If you are smart, deal with only people you know, and do good straight up dealings, you are all good. I have known people who sold dope for decades without the slightest problem. These are my favorite people to deal with because once you are in their circle, you are golden, trusted, and there is no bullshit. I have dealt with crazy motherfuckers…the ones who get out of prison, run like Hell with no restraint, straight up outlaw shit without fear, until they get busted again..then it’s five, eight, ten years before they get back out…and it’s on again.

I was in an interesting position around 2000 when people were still cooking meth domestically, but the precursors (ingredients) were becoming all but impossible to get. One of these, red phosphorous, was the hardest to locate at the time. One night, a friend and me were trying to figure out how to get our hands on some “red”because we knew if we had red, we would have unlimited screaming crank.

My buddy showed me an ad that had been placed in a magazine for firework supplies. My friend calls the number in Pennsylvania, and asks about having red phosphorous shipped to California in bulk. The guy didn’t miss a beat. He said he couldn’t help, but his brother had several 55 gallon drums of it in his back yard. The brother was contacted, a deal was made, and suddenly we had 20 pounds of the freshest red anyone around here had ever seen. This is when things got a bit sketchy. At the time people who manufactured dope were paying over $100 per ounce of weak red. All over northern California it was the same…when word got out, I began meeting some interesting individuals from all over. I was dealing to the kingpins. I must add that these were some of the most straight up, no bullshit people ever. No punk dope fiend maneuvers. These people were all about good business. I had ten different sacks of the best of the best product, which was just gifted..they were all proud of their shit, and wanted to show me how good it was. Crazy.

My buddy…well, he liked to fire his dope…and, of course, I would give him half of what I got. He was basically a lunatic who never slept, and carried six guns everywhere. He went very Bozo.

I kept slinging the red to a few chosen cooks, and had a great run, which I remember very little of. I do remember the black Crown Victoria parked at different places each day obviously watching me. I was on the radar. I tried to stop selling it, but, the cooks would show up with handfuls of money and persuade me to sell them more. Then came 9–11. That was the end of getting red phosphorous sent in the mail…with labels like, “delicate instruments”, in fact, that was a wrap. No more contact with our friend back east. I cannot imagine how shit could’ve gone had things progressed…I would probably still be in a federal prison somewhere.

Anonymous

11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

There is nothing like having two cop cars following you for blocks in your homies car with a bunch of hippie ass bumper stickers on the ass of it with a suspended license, on probation, five grand of dirty money in your pocket and enough weight on you to go to jail for a very long fucking time. I literally was running over contingency plans in my head how and where I was going to ditch his whip and run to if the police lit me up. That is what it is like to be a drug dealer..shit is exhilarating.

Anonymous

I'm not going to glorify this but it's kinda a life long experience.

I was a small time drug dealer once, i sell meth, ectasy and weed. I was 18 at that time, it's kinda fun since you have cash flowing, girls and even people's working for you.

We started from 7 and built up to 34 people working as a dealer, collector and protection of course. Others sees us as fully loaded despite of our age and began to vague.

I even have contact with gun dealer, son of a mafia boss and other illegal business such (and yes) actual human trafficking. But it didn't last long. I'd lost 3 good friends, been at a gun

I'm not going to glorify this but it's kinda a life long experience.

I was a small time drug dealer once, i sell meth, ectasy and weed. I was 18 at that time, it's kinda fun since you have cash flowing, girls and even people's working for you.

We started from 7 and built up to 34 people working as a dealer, collector and protection of course. Others sees us as fully loaded despite of our age and began to vague.

I even have contact with gun dealer, son of a mafia boss and other illegal business such (and yes) actual human trafficking. But it didn't last long. I'd lost 3 good friends, been at a gun point, almost got killed by two dude holding knife and machete, and we started to go on separate way.

I quit instantly when I'd realize that my life was at stake, I mean that i could have died so many times! But yeah, business was booming right? since you got all the respect and people followed you like a bodyguard. But all of it doesn't worth for your life.

Nothing ever last forever, especially when you are living with sins that are never ending.

Anonymous

11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

After I left the Army, I began working as an assistant manager at a men's clothing store at the mall. Unrewarding, and the pay sucked.

I would go to a club every now and again, and one of the regulars took a shine to me. After a month or so, I knew the owners, and was friendly with most of the staff.

One day, she took me to the back room. Two guys were sitting around a desk in a dark room with one desk lamp. In between them a pile of coke as tall as a Big Mac. I checked myself, and my friend gave me a comforting pat. After a minute or so of them doing stuff, he asked, "What do you do for a livin

After I left the Army, I began working as an assistant manager at a men's clothing store at the mall. Unrewarding, and the pay sucked.

I would go to a club every now and again, and one of the regulars took a shine to me. After a month or so, I knew the owners, and was friendly with most of the staff.

I told him.

"Wanna work here? Pay's $2.10 and hour, and you get a cut of the tips."

$2.10, huh? "I've got a job, actually."

"I know. The mall," and then he opened a desk drawer, pulled out a zip-loc bag with pills in it and tossed it me. I caught it, looked at it, then at him.

"X. Sell it to you for $300."

I tossed it back, saying, "I don't have that kind of money."

"You will. Soon," and tossed it back. My friend took me by the arm and we walked out.

Out by the bar, she said, "Sell them for $10 each -- there are 50 in there."

I would go back for two more bags that night. I made $600 in about 5 hours.

Once people knew I was the guy, I was pulling in 4 grand a week in four nights.

I was 'recruited' with a guy I knew as a nodding acquaintance. There was no need to be competitive, as there were only one or two others at a given time, and outsiders were dealt with quickly and severely, typically with a sustained five-minute beating in the back room bathroom. I witnessed one. A bouncer had to have a piece of tooth tooth extracted from his hand with pliers. Times, it still haunts me.

At first, it didn't bother me to be so popular, but I soon felt like the owner of a dog who's given it a treat -- 'Can I have another? Can I have another? Can I have another?' I soon realized I had no friends, just a lot of pets.

As that summer drew to an end, I was rolling in money, closets full of clothes and shoes. Stacks of money in shoe boxes. I'd lost ten pounds I couldn't afford. I was unable to sleep without drugs, and not able to wake without them.

It all ended when I showed up to 'work' one night -- red and blue strobes, people in cuffs. A couple of EMTs were wheeling out a body bag.

I would find out that it was the guy who started with me -- dead from catastrophic kidney failure. I lucked out, I guess, showing up late for work that night, and certainly for surviving the ordeal.

Quora User

Lives in Estonia · Author has 3.2K answers and 2.9M answer views

· 4y

I don't know. However, I heard an interesting story.

Please note that this happened in a country where using drugs is not illegal. Dealing drugs is of course another story.

I had a conversation with a young man. At the end of the conversation he told me he was going to visit his grandmother. It took me a moment before I realised he couldn’t have a grandmother from that country. I pointed it out. He said: “She is not really my grandmother. She has a lot of “grandchildren” like me. We visit her, drink coffee with her, talk about life and give her money. She gives us a small gift.”

Needless to say,

I don't know. However, I heard an interesting story.

Please note that this happened in a country where using drugs is not illegal. Dealing drugs is of course another story.

Needless to say, the humble grandmother is a drug dealer. I found her lifestyle fascinating. I don't think the police suspects a frail retired woman who goes to the market in the morning and who looks so innocent. Not like a criminal!

I also find it sweet that she is not a heartless drug dealer. She actually has a warm relationship with her “grandchildren”. Coffee and cake included. She is almost like their real grandmother. And all her “grandchildren” call her grandmother.

Kenneth Moore

B.A. in Business & Pharmacology, Bonnabel High School

· 11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

it depends all on what particular "drug" your selling. weed ,for instance,is the easiest product to sell.providing you sell only ounces or higher.i was "the guy who sold to the guy who sold to the streets"i sold Lbs.Basically what would happen was i saved ALL my money from my job

to buy 5 LBS cash...the dealer i had known since i was 8 years old so he was a personal friend. Whatever i bought for cash,i would get the same amount on Page on consignment.so usually what would happen is while i was working my day job,i would get a page or a text with a code knowing they had arrived.i would stop on my way home,pay for 5lbs and take another 5 on a front.i would go home and break 2 of them down(1 into 16oz's and 1 into 4 qps) the other 8 stayed whole.i would then call people who had been waiting and sell them a lb for 200 more than what i paid wholesale.usually all 8 would be gone in just a few hours and THAT WAS A THRILL! I made 1600 bucks just meeting older people (i always did biz with older people...they have money) so BOOM! 1600 in a day plus i had my 2lbs that were broken down still to make money

off of from people who couldnt afford a lb.BEST PART,everyone knew not to contact me on sundays or after 11pm.very easy job

with a HUGE profit margin! it gave me a thrill to have safe deposit boxes,at least 3-5k stashed in my apt at all times,it gave me an air of confidence and Page on worth.to know that i could just "forget" to cash my paycheck was another thrill.i owned a brand new car,about a 10,000 dollar wardrobe and lots of jewelry.once a month i would get out the ironing board and place one hundred $100 dollar bills and iron them between a handkercheif to make them crisp.when i had all 100 just like new id shrinkwrap the bundle and deposit it a safe deposit box. $20.00 bills went into savings and checking accounts

and the overflow was my spending money.Of course,only a VERY select few knew what i was doing but everyone knew anyway.how could they not? a 22 yr old kid comes into a gentlemans club,drops 400-500 and leaves like its nothing and does it all over the next weekend.the fact that i came off as "mysterious" (espescially to women) made me feel 10 feet tall!

fast forward 6 years Page on later.my buisness was going great but i wanted more excitement.i did the math,so how much i could make and after thinking long and hard,i went out and bought 2 ozs of cocaine.i bagged them into 8 balls (3.5 gram bags) that i sold for 150 per and grams that i sold for 50.00-60.00 per putting a cutting agent on it of course to stretch my product.i tell you,another high all together came with knowing that now i had outgrown my weed buisness and had incorporated coke into the mix.the first few bags sold SOOO QUICK! i was happy! but the cocaine buisness is different than the weed buisness i found,the clientele was shady,money was never right and my phone RANG AND RANG every 10 minutes. some from people who just bought it less than an hour ago.i bought a pager,no use...now i had a pager AND a phone going off 24/7 (and i mean that literally)coke heads are night owls so it was nothing to have a geeked out coke fiend beating on my door at 4am.still i felt proud as punch that i profited a little over a 1300 dollars a day on that saturday.i knew if i could get a crew working for me to didtribute this i would get rich quick but i wasnt that big time at that moment.still i took my profit and just bought more weed and decided that street level cocaine dealing was not for me.

last thing i went into was Pills.In late 90's and early 2000's hydrocodone and oxycodone were a hot commodity.this was a "sideline" to my marijuana buisness and you HAD to have a plug.(someone who went to the doctor,got the pills he didnt need and i would buy a few hundred for half of what they were worth and sell them at full price.Alot of females were into pills so this gave me a GREAT status with them,once again i was that "mystery man" and i think being seen in that light by them was just as exciting for me as it was for me. i had alot of sex! lol

well,those were the days...my buisness ran from 1993-2004 uninterupted.then i met a wonderful woman,put my "bootlegging" days behind me and have been a working stiff ever since. id be lying if i didnt tell you everyday i think of going into buisness again.that high from the hustle,that excitement of making an illegal buck, to me,IMO money made that way is twice or three times as sweet as money earned as a working stiff.

Anonymous

12y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

I recommend Sudhir Venkatesh's book
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
( http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X )

When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago’s most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded in

I recommend Sudhir Venkatesh's book
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets
( http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp/014311493X )

When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago’s most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JT’s protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang’s complex hierarchical structure. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ambitious men a universe apart.

Here is a short video excerpt:

Anonymous

12y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

This is at the smallest scale possible, but I sold my Ritalin to other college students when I was at NYU, and it felt wrong (because it was), a bit exhilarating (because it was illegal) and quite satisfying (because I made $400 by doing nothing.)

Obviously there a more exciting stories about dealing drugs—but I think what I did might be part of a trend.

Pati Baumberger

Author has 385 answers and 3M answer views

· 6y

This is a very well written article which was written by a friend of mine and was featured in Newsweek magazine.

Worth the read…

My Life as a Drug Dealer

Nigel Brunsdon

Harm Reduction Trainer and Blogger

· Updated 13y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

Steven Levitt's talk has to be understood in context which he gives during it. This was an unusual time for the gang in question and it was at the height of the explosion of crack use in that area.

However what it does do is help to dismiss the myth that all drug dealers are rich guys leading a life of luxury.

The question of what a drug dealer's life is like would have a different answer depending on the drug, the environment (both geographically and legally) and the quantities being delt.

In most cases a drug dealer is likely to be someone who also uses a drug and just sells/gives to friends.

Steven Levitt's talk has to be understood in context which he gives during it. This was an unusual time for the gang in question and it was at the height of the explosion of crack use in that area.

However what it does do is help to dismiss the myth that all drug dealers are rich guys leading a life of luxury.

The question of what a drug dealer's life is like would have a different answer depending on the drug, the environment (both geographically and legally) and the quantities being delt.

In most cases a drug dealer is likely to be someone who also uses a drug and just sells/gives to friends. In the UK you can be prosecuted for supply for being the guy who buys the pills for him and his mates to go clubbing (therefore you are by legal definition a dealer). At this level being a dealer is like being anyone else in the group, in fact in some cases it'll mean you have less money.

Of course the higher up the chain of supply you get the rewards are greater (this then reduces back down as we get closer to the point of drug production , eg opium farmers who get a tiny fraction of the money). At higher levels, though, the risks faced are also arguably greater. This not only includes risks from the law, but also from other criminal elements.

All in all I'll stick to my jobs though.

Anonymous

13y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

I shared an apartment with the university's chief dealer.

When we just moved in, both freshmen, he wasn't in the business, that came only later.

He was very careful with his business, buying under 5 pounds of weed each time and dealing only to students from the CS department, which we both studied at.
He figured that the few "students" who were actually undercover cops were not studying CS.

He never expanded his customer base, turning down any referral requests even for customers' best friends. He finished 1st year with good grades and loads of money, but dropped out anyway, hoping to become a fu

I shared an apartment with the university's chief dealer.

When we just moved in, both freshmen, he wasn't in the business, that came only later.

Albert Fish

11y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

I can't say much for obvious reasons.. including I'm using my account rather than posting as anon even though it is a fake name, (bit paranoid with the internet) anyway I was introduced to dealing in small doses like a lot of people, but first there was holding mass amounts of drug money when I was 9 because police can't search young children on the street and my brother didn't exactly have a nice guy look on his face or by what he wore, pretty suspicious to police if they saw someone like him and he would often get searched, lot of local police know him also, my brother was heavily involved with and addicted to heroin and we grew up in a rough area where a lot of normal people who had stuff and didnt have to do what we had to would call scum. It didn't bother me because, we kind of were and I knew this from a young age, my mother left when I was about 3, so I lived with my dad but was raised by myself, my dad drank a lot and took my mothers leaving pretty bad so my brother and I could do what we wanted with no punishment other than when he was drunkgetting overly aggressive after hearing of something we did and whenever it happened we just walkedout and left him to it because there was no talkimg to someone like that in his state.. but from carrying money to dropping off bagged heroin/cocain/paste (speed)/weed to whoever was looking for some for my brother eventually lead to me selling paste, e, yellows and blues (sleepers) on my ownat 15, my brother had devastatingly became mentally ill from the heroin and other drugs, being taken care of by his girlfriend, who was surprisingly 'only' took sleepers, paste and weed because she couldmt drink due to stomach problems, but wasn't out of like most of us were. I remember the day I became my own man. Makimg money for me, puttimg my neck out for drugs and to make a living, I knew the situation I was in was completely fucked up, but it was my only choice at the time, I was in school til I was 13 and I just stopped going the school never even seemed to care as a was constantly getting sent home or taken in by police while avoiding going to school or even caught with weed in the school toilets, I had basically no education other than counting, reading and talking to people. I may have been brought up in a drug fuelled environment but Iwas neber stupid enough to take it, not after seeing what it does to the people around me, only a fool would touch class A drugs and ill argue thoroughly with anyone who disagrees, all drugs are bad, but I've smoked skunk since I was 8 and I don't personally feel as if it has altered my decision making as I regret none of the choices I made to be successful in dealing, not one. I regret being involved but I couldn't help that so I made the most of the life I was stuck with, others may not agree with what I said but I saw more in my life as a child than a lot of adults will experience in their adult life. I have witnessed a brutal gang beating on one person leaving them with permanent brain damage (I knew both the boy and the dickheads who done it, police laterfound them though), a boy got his shins hacked and bashed in inside a children's park leaving a puddle of blood (I was on my way to drop off more gear for my brother and I heard shouting then saw the boy sprinting and 4 lads chasing him and I then hid in bushes I would never dare go near at night and that I'd been told to stay away from to hide from their sight as they were fucking animals and knew who I was and would take everything I had on me or worse, it was over money anyway that I can tell you, £750 to be exact), our house was robbed by junkies when we were out, an old man got a hatchet to his skull for a fucking tenner by a little scummy, nasty, no good, liberty taking lousebag, he stole £200 from his granny for smack, steals kids bikes like he would walk up and take it from them if seen, robs people with lockbacks etc and everyone wants him dead, my brother was offered a half oz of heroin to do him in but didn't get involved smartly and strangely enough, saw my dad smash a glass bottle of lucozade (anyone from Uk will tell you the glass from these were so thick you could drop it from a height or throw it trying to smash it and it would not smash, lol anyone remember those? Those were lads having a brawls buyable with no id, weapon of choice. But I was walking with my dad after I got him from th pub and another guy was making random conversation with whoever walked past and he decided to have a talk with my dad and my dad made it clear he didnt want to talk but the bloke wouldn't give it a by and started walking beside us and talking amd no matter how much we tried to walk away he didn't take the hint and continued talking until my dad told him, look, fuck off he's had a few himself and he's on his way home, he isn't standing about talking to random folk off the street at that time of night and the bloke went mad 'fuck off? You fuck off you such and such.. and that's when my dad lost it and told me to give him my bottle of lucozade and run home but I gave him it and stood and watched incase anything happened to him and he turned around and smashed the thing off his head and that was that, the man was out cold on the ground and I could see the glass stuck In his dripping blooded head and walked away then I got a sore slap for not walking away when he told me but wasn't arguing, that gave me everything I needed to have the right mentality for what I was soon to become a part of. It was gruesome seeing it happen, I couldn't see how he could just do that to someone, but after witnessing so many things like that I started seeing things from a different and darker light from then on. I realised the world is a cruel place and you have to be prepared to do anything to stay a non victim. Anyway years later after my dad died and my brother mental illness started I startef selling skunk, as I didn't want to associate with the likes of most of the people I grew up with anymore and I knew the only way to do it while still making money was to drop all the hard drugs and sell green in bulk. I had a friend who rents out 'houses' at a time to grow.. lets say a shit load of skunk, so if one went down he hadmore to profit from and he sold me an oz of bangin at 150-200 depending on if he needed the cash as opposed to £250, I made more than enough as I charged buyers the full price but no more, regardless of quality since I got it cheaper. It brings in more business, people who would be buying shit brought in from the Dam would pay £280-300, where as if I got a hold of equal stuff to that it'd remain the same always. I done this for 10 years with my door being kicked in on the 10th and made more than enough money, no legit normal job in the world can give you the money drugs can. Other than politicians, footballers, etc. But I was one of the luckiest cunts involved in dealing to get away with so much and after making so much money. They punished me with possesion and intent to supply and I got but (initially) 5 years for a key but got reduced to 2 and a half and i was out on leave at christmas and nearing the end of my sentance, leave for the weekend for good behavior including volunteering to help out when I wasn't in the gym, but once the judge sentances you that's it. in the eyes of the law after my sentance was over and I had payed my debt to society, the feeling a weight had been lifted and the overwhelming sensation was unbelievable, i danced my way out of that court room by fuck lol, straight after i headed to the pub and bought the lads 2 rounds I was literally the happiest I'd been my entire life not having to live in fear for police coming through that door one day. but this never happens, I am not using this as a point for you to start selling as it was genuinely a 50/50 chance i'd get caught and I had little choice. It was that or struggle to get by my whole life because of my place in the world and I wasnt going out like that without trying to make something of myself and I had enough experience to do it on my own, I was never robbed but only because I knew everyone and people had respect for me due to my reputation I made for myself over the years. Anyone can sell drugs, its logic that makes you a success, watching who you talk to and luck. What I lacked in school education I made up for in street knowledge. Knowing people is a big part too though so if you have no connections it will be a challenge gaining trust of a drug dealer or someone you know who knows a drug dealer, it can be intimidating if your not sure what to expect or don't know how to act. There is no smiles and jokes in the world of mass drug dealing, just be loyal if your given a chance and show your serious about making money. If you think its worth the risk or your in a similar situation to what mine was like the expression on your face, body language and how you speak can show sincerity but not everyone can remain calm in a situation like that, just how it is you either can or can't. Its not an act its your genuine look about you and how you are as a person. Or it can be much simpler and your given an oz and a deadline for the cash or your in trouble. No messing about, if your not prepared to deal with what comes your way whether it be holding your own physically or mentally then your success will be limited. Act on what you feel you should do, don't break or let them see your not prepared to go all out for yours, they see your weak they will break you. It sounds stupid but you get knocked down but you know you can get back up, bounce right back in and bite, eye gouge, hands on grab by the balls, pick up whatever is close to you that will inflict pain on someone and don't stop on them til they can't take anymore and the tables will turn. Wise to have protection nearby everywhere if your paranoid. If your definitely about to sell drugs regardless of whats been said by me and others which is stupid if your really afraid of the reality of getting jumped at your home with unpredictable consequences and also the risk of a criminal record and jailtime then best of luck, its a big, bad and cold world out there always be prepared for anything

Abdul Haseeb Kamal

Digital Entrepreneur | SEO Analyst | Blogger

· 4y

Stressful, lots of organizing and planning meetings and things of that nature. Staying up on the latest market trends and hottest products while maintaining a happy and most importantly trustworthy clientele.

It’s really more work than it’s worth when you are a real dealer. If you want to sell pot to the local kids eh whatever that’s easygoing and keeps you high for free.

In the end everyone comes to a crossroads where you give it up forever and put the skills you have honed to practical use or you sell drugs forever. This typically ends in prison or death from competition or over dosing on your

It’s really more work than it’s worth when you are a real dealer. If you want to sell pot to the local kids eh whatever that’s easygoing and keeps you high for free.

I’m out and clean for over a decade now. Successful in legitimate business and enjoying family life without worrying every time I see a cop.

Edit: forgot a word

Anonymous

Updated 13y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

Sorry for my English. Here is my experience as a very small scale dealer.

I never planned to be a dealer, I started growing my own pot for supplying myself. I turned out to be good with plants, so I yielded more than I smoked, I wasn't a heavy smoker either. Because of a disability I had a hard time finding a job, so I decided to sell what I didn't smoke.

Sorry for my English. Here is my experience as a very small scale dealer.

I learned a lot of things during the two years I sold dope to friends and acquaintances: the importance of hard, dedicated work and structure. It definitely made me believe in myself, something I didn't before, mostly because of my disability. But it was also very, very dangerous. The cops were my least worry. They really don't hurt you, like some of the gang members I was acquainted with were able to do. I was never really treated directly, but sometimes framed for cheating with the weights (I didn't, really, I didn't) and similar stuff. I quit because of all the violence, I didnt want to get hurt. Guns are rare where I live because of very strict laws and gun control, but the gang members still were very dangerous, extremely paranoid and often psychotic too.

If you stay in the drug business too long sooner or later you will end up hurt, or killed. Stay away from dealing.

Anonymous

Very very lucrative and Hella fun, but along with this type of career (we all need a job and income so take a seat), if you are in it for cash, we all have a shelf life, so get in, get out, and avoid becoming a poster child for what you sell. I had tons of fun, but I also never cut anyone even a .01 of anything EVER, customers can get cranky, remember those people pay your rent, make them happy, throw people who use ANYTING a rope here and there because the outcome of you not throwing a life line can end badly if they are super sick, I used to let some do my laundry, or clean up to show them they were valuable to me and they EARNED that life line themselves. A great man taught me this and said help a brother out with an honest helping hand that they actually earned thru some work, detail car, clean house, call my job and say they were told to call and say I was in the ER super sick and would be out 2 days, whatever works and absolutely ye always.keep an honest job if possible, even 15 hours a week.. but This Great mansaid “If you help a brother out, he may not rob a hommie later” words I took in, saw the value of and did myself. So!! Luctative… there is no such thing as you selling to get high for free because it NEVER EVER works out, it can be wild and fun but don't ever take for granted or abuse the power you can have over other's! It may not only get you killed, but makes you an asshole in my eyes. But don't forget selling does have a shelf life, what sista or mista wanna be 50- 60- or even 70 if you donit wrong still running the stree everyday? I didn't so stuck to my “job" and the morales that every good retail sales person should have and it will be a lucrative blast. Hope I passed along some good thoughts, ideas, and broke down some of the stigma of it all

Muhammad Uzayr

Lived in Odessa, Ukraine · Author has 167 answers and 495.4K answer views

· 4y

It's quite stressful especially , if you're doing it for a while .

The constant fear of being caught by authorities and your future getting destroyed by any chargesheet.

The risk to reward is far higher. Not worth it.

Zohan Mitra

Lives in Hauz Khaz (2011–present)

· 5y

EXPERIMENT#1

Aim:Trying to find out what it is like to be a drug dealer even though have been one in the past. #whatashowoff

Materials required: a taxi, a tuxedo, aviators and $13 cash only.

Procedure: Zohan steps out of the room thinking that he will visit his former place from where he operated.coming out of his 1BHK apartment he saw two ladies walking towards him.

lady 1 : hey ! hi i am ur new neighbour.meet my girlfriend stacy.

lady 2: hi. i am stacy.

zohan: move bitches i gotta go.

stacy : where u heading to? maybe we could drop u.

zohan : u have a car.

lady 1: yes. maybe u can come with us.

zohan:

EXPERIMENT#1

Aim:Trying to find out what it is like to be a drug dealer even though have been one in the past. #whatashowoff

Materials required: a taxi, a tuxedo, aviators and $13 cash only.

Procedure: Zohan steps out of the room thinking that he will visit his former place from where he operated.coming out of his 1BHK apartment he saw two ladies walking towards him.

lady 1 : hey ! hi i am ur new neighbour.meet my girlfriend stacy.

lady 2: hi. i am stacy.

zohan: move bitches i gotta go.

stacy : where u heading to? maybe we could drop u.

zohan : u have a car.

lady 1: yes. maybe u can come with us.

zohan: sounds good to me.lets go! *becomes happy as a 3yo by saving his $13.*

lady 1 in the car : hi i am isha. we just moved here recently.thought maybe we could meet our neighbours today.

zohan: i think i am the wrong neighbour.

stacy: why u say that?

zohan: cause my neighbour is ms dodgeson. who has a 5 yo old whose diapers keep tossing around as north korea’s nuclear bomb.

isha: just stfu.i dont think u are very mature by nature. u act like a 12 yo.

*awkward silence in the car for 20 min*

zohan: *interrupts the awkwardness* am i part of a new fake taxi edition? *visibly afraid*

stacy: wut?? huh….

isha : u have arrived.this shithole is where u wanted to reach.

zohan: thanks ladies.

isha : a thanks would not do the job .maybe u could join us later for some drinks.

*winks at her friend while zohan is scratching his butt and smells it*

zohan : when are u guys free??

stacy : ewwww! he just scratched his butt and smelled it .

isha : f**k off creep!

end of story

THIS IS A REAL INCIDENT.any facts and figures have not been tampered with for the sake of humour.

IF U STILL ARE THINKING ‘but dude where”s the answer to the question’ .{i tend to switch answer’s to questions if u know what i mean}

John Qu

13y

Originally Answered: What's it like to be a drug dealer? ·

What's
it like to deal drugs? First off, my background dealing is very small
scale marijuana deals. There are a lot of things I noticed that are
worth mentioning about the job:

-You will smoke a lot of weed with people, and it will give you an aura
of brotherhood with these people, that aura is very fake and
superficial. While if you are a reliable and good dealer, people will
have your back, these people 95% of the time look at you as the guy who
sells them weed, not as a friend who has their back or vice-versa. In
other words, you will have A LOT of superficial friendships that are
meaningless. All that is important is that these people have your back
if they do get arrested. I guess what I also mean by this, let's say you
go into college and start dealing drugs, you aren't really going to
make friends persay.

-You can get high all the time; awesome, but at the same time, the sentimentality of smoking is lost, the appeal is still there.

-You have to be conscious about your surroundings where ever you go when ever.
You really do not know what to expect when on the job, or even while
you aren't doing anything. People you don't even know might have beef
with you simply because you are competition. You don't know if someone
narcs your name to cops a lot of the time, with small scale deals you
don't have to worry about undercover activity to any actual extent, but
you still have to be weary of the people you deal with.

-In terms of the people who might have beef with you, you need to be
conscious of deals you do, and the potential sketch factor of them, I
had a kid try to buy a quarter from me with a fake name, and I knew he
was lying about it, but paid no attention to it. He took my weed and
punched me in the face, I caught up with him running away and 'politely'
took my weed back, but the fact still remains.

-Occasionally you will be the victim of theft, whether it be someone
punching you in the face, someone breaking into your car, your house,
putting a gun in your face, etc. When you are a victim of this, you
cannot call the police, obviously, but you will try and reason yourself
to take the matters into your own hand. Listen to the advice of KRS-ONE,
please, Stop Skeemin', just walk away from those situations, unless you
are truly confident you can get your stuff back, it really is not worth
the risk. I can just say from experience, you can take my advice or
learn the hard way, it's better to just walk away.

-Unless you are really dealing drugs, chances are you won't make much
money off it, it's mostly supplemental income until you make it into the
big league. I know small scale crack dealing works its way to average about 3.50$ an hour, like seriously, come on.

Rene A Diedrich

I've lived la vida loca and it makes more sense than a life that is la nada Nono · Author has 578 answers and 1.6M answer views

· 7y

People have no idea how stressful and unrewarding it tends to be.
There is an unending day. That's for unsuccessful as well as successful and often in every mutation of the trade.
People are adamant and desperate about their Jones and these are not always reasonable people. Drug dealers need authority as well as a cutthroat attitude. If they use, it's unlike they'll save yo and escape with enough to build a great life. The drug dealer lives in fear of robbery, busts, a grudge, his competition, their bosses, their junderlings, the suppliers. It sucks. They may go to prison or end up shot in the face by some thugs. They can lose their humanity and they will be dogged by crazy karmic debts .
Everybody likes him until he puts down the law. Drug dealers or trai stars have often made their lives an unbearable mess by choosing to be rich and popular instead of legit and ethical.

John Gil

Has previously Consumed recreational drugs · Author has 658 answers and 3.6M answer views

· 8y

In my past life I sold a few drugs: weed, pills, shitty half potent crack, edibles, and some weird Chemicals. Selling weed is like being an Uber mixed with a mailman, all you have to do is drop of the product and get paid and all in the ‘safety of a car, plus stoners never try to rob you. I sold pills and edibles on school grounds because they were easily, Edibles look like normal food and pills are easily concealable, it was usually a short handoff in a hallway and no one was gonna try shit in a school. the “weird chemicals” was only one time when my friend gave me half the profit to just dis

Brandon Melton

Well ill tell you how it was for me i live in a small town in kentucky yall proably aint even heard of no im not a meth head with no teeth but this is how i got set up in te business i was 11 when i first started smoking weed and i loved it from the first time i smoked i had a friend ill call him nick we had been friends since kindergarten i started smoking with him and i never really thought about selling pot but we ended us selling just to the kids who lives near us we was making a good 30 dollars a day then we started experimenting with other drugs by this time i was 13 we had tried xanax percocet loracet methadone acid shrooms we only tried the stuff and then sold it. Well we got impatient and started dealing in school (that was our first mistake) i loved the thrill of meeting people an sellin them drugs i loved it and nick loved it we was making more money than Most of the teachers at my school we got cocky felt untouchable i was always what people had called a bad kid i really didnt get in trouble for talking or cussin or anything like that i had a bad temper and if your ever gonna be a drug dealer lesson one you cant get mad easy. by this time i was in middle school i was still dealing makin about $80 a day had new clothes new boots new dirtbike any huntin gun i coulda wanted didnt have to worry about anything. But i was setting in class and a boy named dakota was acting bad an callin people out he sold pot an thought he was the shit but i still had no reason to fight him if i woulda just kept walking i woulda been okay i was walkin outta class an he bumped into me well this made me mad as hell then he pushes me and we fight he has to go to the nurse with a cut on his head and i had to go home and that was fine with me untill two days later the cops pulled up to my house i had almost any drug you could think of in my house and 6 pot plants in my back yard they told us they was chargin me with 2nd degree assault harrassment but then they checked the house and found everything i had finally been caught i was charged with posession of narcotics with intent to sale loirteing and a list of other charges i faced 6 years in juvie but only stayed 3 it was the worst 3 years of my life i had made up my mind that i was never going back but i was to stupid to give up the dealing game i was 16 when i got out i was in high school freshman year and i had finally got off probation and was sellin again. I didnt learn until i got out that my best friend nick had been took to a alternative school for minors i was sellin by my self with no back up the paranoia killed me i developed a drug problem rule 2 ( never get high on your own supply). I was so stressed out i couldnt even sleep the constant worry that i could have to run from the police which was nothing new we had always run from the police and we had fun doing it but it was alot less fun now. The only other true friend i had was a guy we will call r well a year passed by i was 17 he was driving to work one mornin cause he was outta school and i was ridin the bus to school i didnt find out till i got to school that he had wrecked and that was nothin new either he had wrecked a hundread times he was one of the worst drug addicts i have ever known but he had turned all that around had a job a soon to be wife after he tried so hard to get his life together and just like that it was taken away from him i think thats bullshit how is that okay. About this time i was selling more than i ever had and partying 24/7 non stop sex liquor drugs and music i was livin the life i had it made untill i realized i had a problem i never went for treatment or anything i quit doin drugs and next is when i learned the biggest lesson in the drug dealing game. Never trust anybody not even family always look out for your self and fuck everbody else cause at the end of the day its just you vs everybody else the main point that im tryin to make here is if you wanna be a drug dealer be smart dont get cocky stay humble keep digging and watch your temper. It was bout middle of december and one day in school i was sellin 60 xanaxes to my cousin dylan and a dime of weed we met in the bathroom it was goin good i got in an out quick went back to my class and set down bout 20 minutes later the school security busts in and takes me with them dylan had ratted on me he bought all that just to turn me in i was set up and didnt even see it comin he set me up because i had fucked his woman at a party my own blood turned on me i was 17 facing 1 year in juvie and another 6 in prison i spent my year of juvie and 4 of my 6 of prison im 23 now and still sell pot just on a smaller scale i learned that the drug game has two ways out dead or in jail there is no endgame if you really wonder what it feels like its a mix of anger paranoia constant worry never sleeping but its the best thrill you will ever have and theres no easier money i had it made but now that i have a record nobody will hire me im stuck selling pot wondering how im gonna get food but if you still wanna do it make sure your smart about it follow all the rules dont make any mistakes watch your back trust nobody especially blood keep your circle small dont let the wrong people see or hear about the money your makin dont flash your cash stay humble and be thankful play your cards right and you might just have a chance of beating the game

Elliot Blythe

Internet Marketing Expert | Entrepreneur | Geek

· 9y

Just like being a salesman...selling fruit in the street. Only the fruit you are selling is poison and people are losing their families, children, lives etc. Kids are growing up in hostile environments. And you always know one day it will all be over. Whether it's 50 years in jail or a gun shot that ends your life. Any questions?

Nathaniel Fry

10 years of a quest to try as many different drugs as i could find...twitch

· 9y

Ive delt drugs for 2 years. pot consistantly and everythign else as i could get my hands on it. I did this in the North West Territories, Canada. I was arrested for it but ill get back to that. I hope my experiences will be able to give you a very rounded view, good and bad.

Being a small kid from a town of 2000 people i was qeite smittin when moved with my now ex to edmonton for 2 years. Quickly making friends with some pretty cool people and apon explainign to them the prices increase on illicit substances when travelling north they quickly talked me into investing 2000$ and bringing up 4000

So actually being a drug dealer is crazy i hit my small town and was able to make alot of money fast, a very good life style was provided for my friends and I all while doing my best to never sell to a minor. That being said when 3 younf men live in a house and have much substance much takes place. i remember throwing a party and feuling it it was crazy everybody was high or drunk and i was rich, it was very powerfull feeling i got laid more and the partys where great

The partys ARE NOT GREAT if your doing illigel shitt keep your life on the downlow. i got arrested i was at my job at the local resteraunt and a officer walks in and tells me i can give him everythingand we can talk about it or we can wait and drug dogs and my rommmates are arrested and awfullness. my life collapsed around me, insanly i was never charged and have no record and have never been to court or in jail.

another bad thing was attention, while being at its center was thrilling for a while eventually u watched your friends turn into junkies and you see the cycle of hate and loathing that you create.. especially in a small town my best friend sold his tv to buy drugs from me it was pretty shitty experiance.

all in all id say dealing drugs is a fucking rollercoaster the harder teh drugs you sell the more of a roller coaster. afetr i got busted i quite sellig hard drugs got my life together went to school and just sold pot.

Scottct

Former Organ Harvester

· Updated 11mo

Oh man it’s great, rolling in dough and pussy. i haven’t been this relaxed in years. it’s great having my friends dropping in all the time——- Bullshit. it’s nothing but constant stress and fuckin headaches all the time. it’s a 24 hour shift, people think nothing calling on Christmas morning or any night at 3 am. Then there’s the worst part—when you get busted, not if. it’s when/ then the that the real nightmares begin

Hunter Parker

It sounds very easy its not you always gotta be watching for the police make sure u keep it right beside you and once the police find out what you doin they will always make up a story to pull you over and search your truck but when I'm dealing dope I keep it right there in between me legs covered up so if the police try to stop me I can run and throw that shit out because I would much rather have a evading arrest

Kitty Beshears

I tell you this is sickening when one trys to help those who have addictions to see someone does care about them and drugs out here will mind f* u off along with the gang stalking done to these lost lonely souls it worst ever . Then to have realize u are in jail because these sickos made sure they left drug related items in building u forced sleep in no light to see that they made sure item be found so when called law hoping one face drug charges would help in trying to make one look as dope head as these sickos is worst realization ever especially when u know people judged and they don't know