I always worked, usually construction. When I had no work I would hack to get my money.

Yeah, I was a doper, but I never dealt. I worked, I hacked, I bought my shit, and I did my shit. I didn’t like the drug scene—the hanging out part. I just needed my shit. I was major ADHD in school. It was a fight to get me to school every day. I hated sitting still; wanted to play, to work with my hands. They pumped me full of school drugs until I was old enough to get signed out. So, for my twenties and into my thirties I pumped myself full of my own shit to keep level.

One time I’m hacking, over on Route 40 driving this dude to one of his houses. A guy will supply more than one house. This dude uses buses, cabs and hacks to get around. An army of cops pull up and I have five of them dragging me out of my car; spread eagle on the asphalt, my elbows and knees getting skinned, my face in the gravel, a knee in the back of my neck and a gun against the upside of my face.

These cops are screaming at me for being a piece of shit. Some of these cops are my regulars who took half of whatever dope they found on me and let me go on my way. But when their bosses decide to grab you that tax don’t hold. Of course if you snitch on a cop, well then you’re either in prison for life or dead. There are only so many places you can go to get your shit. The cops know all of them. They’ll catch you coming out and either arrest you with a lifetime worth of trumped up charges or shoot you dead.

A dead doper?

Nobody gives a shot about that.

They take me in for interrogation, beating my ass and screaming in my face for five hours. They want to know where this guy’s houses are. They want to know about other suppliers. They want me to commit suicide.

I tell them, “Look, I’m a doper. I get my shit from a dozen different guys on street corners, and I get gone. I don’t deal. I don’t snitch. Snitches get stitches and then they die. You guys have to be crazy if you think I’m snitching.”

After five hours they let me go. Of course the car is impounded although I have done nothing but give a dude a ride who did not even have any dope on him—they found nothing on him. I don’t have the impound fee, so I lose the car and can’t hack anymore. Some fuckin’ cop probably got my car for change at auction, and now I’m on bus stops.

It’s better than dead.