I’m Not Mad at the Scumbags Who Sold Me Heroin

After what heroin did to me, logically I should hate every molecule of every man (or oftentimes woman) whoever sold me a single bag or button of the shit.

Far from your friendly neighborhood weed guy, heroin dealers are just the worst.

They are rude, they carry guns, and punctuality is a trait which I have yet to discover in anyone involved in the sale and distribution of street-level dry goods.

Be this as it may, my drug dealers became my best friends. As a matter of fact, there were many times where the dope-man would be my only human contact for the day.

Nothing would make me more excited than receiving that coveted text telling me that they were just around the corner (drug dealer slang for “I’ll be there in 20 minutes”) — yet pragmatically enough I hated every fiber of their being.

The way I saw it they were willingly selling me the poison that they knew one day, maybe even this day, would surely be directly responsible for my premature demise.

However, the simple fact remains that while they peddled poison, no drug dealer has ever forced me to consume their products. I’m not saying these guys were saints, and to be honest I hope that these shitbirds are in prison where they rightfully belong.

Still, I hold no ill-will towards any of my drug dealers, and I hope that the following article might clarify how and why I no longer hate the scumbags who sold me heroin.

If I Were a Dealer, I Wouldn’t Like Me Either

Looking back at myself from the outside in, I was an even bigger scumbag than the dealers who were serving me.

First of all, let’s just take a long, hard look at the reality of the situation here. I’m a young, white, male in the United States of America who is college educated.

I had everything imaginable available to me in order to live a happy, productive life. Be this as it may, somewhere along the way I took a drastically wrong turn — which resulted a series of other drastically wrong turns but that’s another story for another time — and I decided that all of my time and resources would be best diverted to getting high every chance I could get.

On the other end of the spectrum many if not all of the people who sold me the dope were felons, addicts themselves, or both. They were men and women trapped in an exponentially fucked upcycle of providing for their families or supporting their own habits by any means necessary.

Most street-level dealers are not getting filthy rich. Don’t get me wrong. I saw a Mercedes here and there. However, I also met quite a few dealers who either didn’t own a car or couldn’t afford to fix the one they had. They too, just like me, also took a series of wrong turns along their journey. Honestly who the hell am I to judge them?

Some Heroin Dealers Actually Gave a Shit

Albeit few and far between, I had a couple of dealers who actually did give a shit about my well-being. I’m also pretty confident that even the worst of the worst of them didn’t actually want me to die.

I had one dealer who was a surprisingly nice guy, and despite the fact that I don’t know his real name myself let’s just call him “B”. Now, no dealer is ever going to tell you the true strength of their product; it’s always “fire” no matter what.

B, on the other hand, would actually let me in on when his dope was a little weaker, or warn me to be careful if it happened to be particularly potent this week. It made absolutely no business sense on his end, and admittedly when the heroin wasn’t as good I’d almost always go through one of his competitors. One afternoon while doing our little daily ritual I eventually asked B:

“Why are you selling this poison?”

I’ll never forget his response:

“Why are you buying this poison? I wish every day that you people would quit buying it from me.”

To this day I still wonder whatever ended up happening to B. If he kept selling dope I hope he ended up in prison before he killed someone (or anyone else for all I know.) While there is not even the slightest chance that addicts will ever quit buying, I honestly hope that B found a way to quit selling.

I Made Me use Heroin, Not the Dealers

Okay, so I will frankly admit that they highly encouraged me to use their shit. Free samples were a commonplace, check-in phone calls were annoying and frequent, and advertisements for new shipments were an almost daily nuisance.

While these shady business tactics are most definitely overt calls to action, no dealer has ever forced me to snort, smoke, or inject their product. Ever. Period. I was the one gladly accepting every free sample I could get my hands on. I was the one answering their phone calls to catch the latest deal of the day.

Ultimately I was the one slowly killing myself because I was so completely and utterly embarrassed simply to be me. In recovery, we talk a great deal about acceptance, but acceptance can be a very dangerous tool to anyone in active addiction as well. At the end I had accepted I was going to die, and it was highly unlikely I was going to be around in another month or two. I — as in me, myself, and I — had accepted that I would be dead soon.

If we’re being real here, at that time death seemed like the better alternative to the life I found myself stuck in. At the beginning of this article I talked about what heroin did to me, but the reality is that I was doing to myself exactly what I thought I deserved.

I simply hadn’t yet come to the conclusion that whatever mistakes I had made, and believe me I made my fair share, I had paid for through the pain and suffering of addiction…and then some.

I had to determine when it was time to finally quit punishing myself, and unfortunately, I still am not entirely sure why I finally decided to throw in the towel.

Heroin Hurts, but Fear and Anger Kill

Whatever my dealers were selling it wasn’t going to be what killed me. Look, if there is anything I have learned in this life it is that fear, anger, and the inevitable shame that follows are the supreme toxic trifecta of what really keeps us sick.

This universal rule is not just applicable to addicts, and I wish I had come to this realization a lot sooner.

Heroin, painful though it may be, was not my real problem at its core but rather a solution. I have come to realize that both the fear of the unknown future and the anger towards the well-known past began to dictate my every move. Fear and anger ruled my life, and conversely, the heroin was merely a highly effective medication that would provide me with some sense of temporary relief.

The nightmare it created was a hell on earth and the loneliness I felt is something that I can’t even begin to put into words right now. However, until I addressed (and continue to address) the underlying reasons for my fear and anger I was never going to be able to get better.

Obviously fear and anger are quintessential emotions that are never going away, but what I can change is my ability to recognize them when they decide to show up.

In my using days, fear and anger were the main actors in my life, but anymore they merely make cameo appearances. Screw those guys; I like it that way.

I Forgive You

On a final note, I highly doubt any of my heroin dealers are trolling through Medium or Googling “that blonde white guy I sold dope to” in an attempt to find out where I ended up.

What I do know is that I have forgiven every man (or oftentimes woman) who has ever sold me a bag or button of the shit.

I’ll even go a step further and say that I have forgiven every dealer that has ever sold the fatal dose to a friend of mine. I hope for the sake of their friends and family you are found and given the strictest punishment possible, but as far as I’m concerned you are no different than me. I was the scumbag buying and you were the scumbag selling.

Don’t ever call me again…but the way I see it we’re even.