>Like most addicts in denial, potheads live under the bogus assumption that every bong hit will be their last.
Uh, what? While there may be some people that have hit problems and want to change because their life is being negatively impacted, most "addicts" are quite fine where they are. I personally don't like pot, but I've never known any pothead to keep saying "this will be my last hit" - quite the opposite. Like Snoop says "Smoke weed everyday".
Edit: Also, he disses his pill clients ("depravity"), while simultaneously noting that they're the wealthier ones, pouring him "expensive scotch".
Seems like he had some odd delusions of being cool, and wanted to show how hard being a delivery boy is ("read three books a week"), while also showing his superiority to "addicts".
In my experience, weed smokers are the least likely to be always wanting to quit. I've known plenty of people who wanted to give up cigarettes, or drugs like coke, but I can't think of a single person who was wanting to give up weed and not managing.
I quit using marijuana just over 8 months ago now. It was extremely hard for me to stop. The physical withdrawals are minor -- a slight headache, trouble sleeping for a few weeks or months, crazy vivid dreams -- but psychologically it can be as addictive as anything else.
Years ago I was a daily cocaine user, tried heroin a few times, etc. but letting go of those was easy for me. When I decided to stop, it was over and I haven't touched them since. With marijuana I had wanted to quit for at least a year before I succeeded. The adverse effect on my life was clear, but the ritual was completely ingrained. I eventually managed to quit by radically changing my lifestyle so that I was no longer surrounded by the culture and the drug itself.
I still definitely have cravings, especially at night, and very occasionally I need to go have a few beers as some sort of substitution therapy (even though I don't really enjoy alcohol, and never drank before quitting).
That said, I agree that the author of the article is being ridiculously presumptuous and is wrong about the mentality of most marijuana users. (Edit: I also think this guy is totally, totally full of shit and making up the entire story.)
I guess your luck balanced out given you tried heroin a few times without getting hooked, and coke can be tough to give up for lots of people (out of interest, mind if I ask how much you were using daily? just curious). Congratulations on managing to kick the weed use, anyway!
Maybe 3 or 4 large lines (high quality) a day for around 6 months. Not a crazy amount, but enough that I was surprised how easy it was for me to stop.
Weed on the other hand I used in massive amounts, so I'm sure that was part of my fixation. It was ingrained into all of my daily routines (exercise, waking up, sleeping, eating, coursework, socializing), plus I began smoking during a rough period in life so maybe that's why it had such a hold on me. Thanks for the encouragement!
Of course, there are lots of people who are totally happy w/ their consumption, and have no desire to change, and/or if they did have the desire, did so.
But people w/ problems really do exist. I've personally known people who wanted to stop smoking, but found it very, very difficult.
(I feel like these stories don't get heard as much because there's a popular perception of weed not being a "hard" or a "real" drug, and so you sort of get laughed at if you say it's something you have a problem with.)
It's more a stylistic thing / linguistic tic than about the savings in characters. Without would be "w/o". Like, "I'm going to the dance, w/ or w/o you."
Or imagine an album titled "W/ or w/o you". Has a nice look to it. Also, check out the Google results for "w/ or w/o you". Impressive expansion on the part of Google.
(Edit: I originally said it saved three letters, but of course, that was me forgetting to count / as a letter. :)
I seriously question the authenticity of this piece, especially the last bit about the pill clients being the more "wealthy ones". Either that or this guy worked the most atypical drug dealing job I've heard of.
In a more common situation, clients that are of a more permanant wealth would demand higher quality pot, hashish and perhaps opium. "New Money" may dabble in cocaine but if they're not uber rich or don't keep it in check that money won't last long.
Plenty of high-level professionals use opiates (pills like Oxycontin). Look around for some rather tiny pupils on people doing high-stress, high-paying jobs. Opium tends to make you lay around and usually need to vomit, so I'm not sure why that'd be preferable to [semi]synthetic opiates.
>Plenty of high-level professionals use opiates (pills like Oxycontin)
Perhaps, but I still question the likeliness that the mainstream pot dealer would move to selling pills still distributing from the same source. Pot, cocaine, mdmda, etc are available in bulk from illicit sources. Prescription pills usually come from a legal source at some point and come in smaller quantities. From what I hear opium is more expensive because of the difficulty to transport it in its raw form, and therefore sought after.
Wealthier clients usually have a doctor that will write them the prescriptions for a fee. It's not unfathomable that his dealer also had a line on prescription pills, and he did note that he went dry from time to time but still...
Again purely anecdotal from my own small sample, but I've known people taking prescription pills illegally by buying through a dealer, haven't known anyone keeping their habit going based on legitimate doctor prescriptions. Have also known dealers who had pills available - though in what quantity and from what sources I've no idea.
I've also known junkies who buy 1 or 2 oxy at a time from a dealer, who buys 30 at a time, but his source who buys 1000 gets them from a doctor.
My experiences with this are based in canada so there may be a cultural difference there. But the pot dealing crowd and the pill dealing crowd are far removed from each other unless you are in DTE vancouver, and then it's only physical proximity.
I laughed out loud when I read that idiotic part about "this will be my last hit" too.
I do like John McAfee's take on chronic weed use though: “Marijuana is the drug of illusion. It creates the the illusion that you’re thinking great thoughts and doing great things while you’re sitting on the sofa and growing a beard.”
Anyways, if this guy was delivering Oxy he's lucky he is still alive. Oxy drivers are almost always jacked where I live. All the major crew members here are addicted to it because it calms them from being paranoid since they are all marked for death by each other and constantly looking over their shoulder. Gangster anxiety is best explained in the classic song My Mind Playing Tricks On Me by the Geto Boys.
Kind of strange this guy didn't mention any anxiety of being busted or having a gun shoved in his face. He just slammed all his customers leading me to believe he didn't actually deliver drugs. If you don't wake up in the middle of the night panicking after dreaming of your door getting kicked in or don't think that everybody on the street is following you then you aren't in the game.
I wouldn't think think low level delivery guys in Manhattan have that much to worry about. The types of customers he presumably was delivering to aren't the types to go buy an illegal handgun somewhere and then mug a delivery guy for $1K in drugs given they obviously make several times that in their job.
As far as being busted goes, if he's taking cabs/walking everywhere and its in say Midtown Manhattan and he's dressed like any other 20 something with a laptop bag, its unlikely he'll be randomly stopped and frisked.
True, but other crews pay for intel on competitor delivery driver operations because that's their ATM machine: robbing and taxing weak criminals. Especially the pill customers, it's likely they have other delivery drivers since they are addicts and wouldn't think twice about dropping a dime on this guy for some free Oxy. The other crew then sticks a gun in his face, and demands to know where the boss keeps the safe house and it's all downhill from there. I guess his 'boss' paid taxes to avoid this.
I learned all this from an unfortunate but informative stint in jail for a minor computer tresspassing charge. Guy's in there close to release form new crews and when they get out the first thing they do is rob a delivery driver to start their new business. They approach existing org crime outfits and receive loans, guns and vehicles to go conquer and tax new territory.
> ... most "addicts" are quite fine where they are.
I think he just might have had older clients. People at some age that are stuck in the routine all have dreams how to change their lives to make them more fulfilling. But they can't get out of their current semi-comfortable lives (which in those cases pot was part of).
I guess I've never known the really sad people like the ones he describes. A lot of my friends smoke, and they tend to come in two varieties:
1. Those that smoke every day, who will skip on other luxuries to pay for weed.
2. Those who smoke very casually, and typically go for months at a time without smoking. They'll usually only buy more when an opportunity presents itself.
I know very successful, highly skilled and well paid people and I know people who aren't very ambitious - in both categories - and I know those same types of people who don't smoke, or drink at all.
I guess I should count myself lucky that I've never managed to fall into a group of people for whom smoking is a problem, and an addiction, and a weight holding them down.
Not to mention he mocks them for not making huge live changing moves during the small time frame that he actually knew them, and that he actually thinks these clients weren't just casually lying to some kid who brings them their weed.
Not to mention he himself took the job out of desperation. He admits he couldn't make a better life choice for himself but acts like he's superior to the people conducting business with him.
He also suggests they were spending $60/day on weed.. wouldn't that be at least $1200/month? He had few enough clients that he never saw the same first name twice, so his clients were probably earning more than he did.
As easy as it is for him to judge the pill clients, he could have made an effort to think of reasons why his wealthy clients were hooked. People get addicted to opiates all the time, and its not always drug dealer delivery guys who introduce them to narcotics.. sometimes its a doctor.
I suspect that captures the entire article, one would like to walk up to the author and snatch away their laptop bag and say "You don't have to live this way."
And perhaps, at some level that was the point. The lack of self awareness is endemic to all the participants.
The sales incentives make no sense. He made 1/3rd commission on the smallest bags, 1/5th on the medium and 1/6 on the largest bags. It is better for him to sell lots of small bags than 1 big one. In addition, assuming most customers buy the small bag, then upselling to a medium bag would bring no extra financial reward. Putting aside the idea that buying the biggest bag might lead to faster consumption, and assuming that the customers were tied in to the supplier, he would have been better off downselling as the customers would still buy the same amount, just in more transactions, leading to higher returns for him (especially as his transport costs were paid).
It makes sense to me. Each sale of a bag takes time. It's no good getting a higher percentage of a small bag if he has to run around for an hour to sell 1 small bag and could've sold 1 large bag in that hour instead.
If the majority of users take the small bag, which seems logical, then I can't imagine you would be able to upsell them easily to a product that was 5x the price (indeed the author acknowledges that), the upsell opportunity there would be to a medium bag, but as there is no difference to him financially in the sale of a small or medium bag, what is his incentive?
...If there is no difference to him between a small and medium, doesn't that instantly explain why he's trying to upsell them to a big bag even though it's so difficult?
The differentiation here would be that this guy doesn't have inventory risk (or benefit, for that matter). This guy doesn't own the customer relationship, or the supplier relationship.
It's the difference between owning a pizza restaurant and being the pizza delivery person.
There's different kinds of 'drug dealers'. I've known many 'part-timers' who would buy in bulk and just sell to their friends to make extra cash. Then there's the cops that give drugs away at almost-nothing prices to their friends after they've confiscated them from the dealer who pissed off the club owners he was working with and gave him up. No two dealers are the same...
Looks to me more like someone sold a few bags of weed to friends and got lost in his delusions of being a runner, and made the rest up to try impress people.
Uh, what? While there may be some people that have hit problems and want to change because their life is being negatively impacted, most "addicts" are quite fine where they are. I personally don't like pot, but I've never known any pothead to keep saying "this will be my last hit" - quite the opposite. Like Snoop says "Smoke weed everyday".
Edit: Also, he disses his pill clients ("depravity"), while simultaneously noting that they're the wealthier ones, pouring him "expensive scotch".
Seems like he had some odd delusions of being cool, and wanted to show how hard being a delivery boy is ("read three books a week"), while also showing his superiority to "addicts".