to devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively <addicted to gambling>.

That is what the first entry says. It amazes me how you can come across a lot of people that take it upon themselves to decide what you can and can't be addicted to. If you lose your house because you spent all your money on Pogs (100 points if you remember those lol) that's an addiction I don't care who you talk to. Oh wait it's only an addiction if it causes harm on a massive scale like losing your house right? If you want to believe that you are entitled to that thought process but why does that give you the right to tell someone who has that addiction they are just using it as a crutch for something. I've heard people say Jesus is a crutch but they must not have seen him do the things he has done for me either. I never thought the desire for money was an addiction. Yes I believed gambling is addiction worthy when it comes to money but what's wrong with the desire for money? Nothing... well that is until you have had the desire removed and felt the weight of it lifted off you. Then you start to look back and say "Wow how did I live my life so centered on something so trivial?".

Another big player in how you view things is society. What we see on tv, in movies, online and in magazines either turns us on or turns us off. That's why you will have one person look at Paris Hilton and think "I wish I had her life to buy whatever I want" and someone else thinks "I can't believe she paid more than I make in a month on the outfit she is wearing". I think one of the reasons the thought of being addicted to money eluded me is because although I loved the idea of buying some rediculously expensive car one day most of my desires were pretty pure of heart i.e. I just want to have a famliy but have the freedom to enjoy being with them instead or working 80 hours a week or it would be nice to randomly help people who had tragedy strike (Extreme Makeover Home Edition always makes me cry). So with good intentions behind you its easy to reason with yourself on why a law you are breaking isn't a big deal because you don't think it should be a law anyway. Or the stuff you stole doesn't matter because the company you stole it from has billions in profits and you are just trying to feed your family.

So let us jump in the time machine of my life and go back to high school. I was someone who blended in, I wasn't popular but I also wasn't unpopular. I knew a lot of people from many of the different high school stereotypical crowds. I had some friends that were huge potheads and a couple of them grew up on my street so I had know them for 5 years before high school hit. Being that they were friends before they smoked pot I had no reason to not hang out with them after they did. As I've already stated I think drugs are a waste of money so I didn't participate with them but because i hung out with them my stepdad did the whole "guilt by association". Because of that stigma and as I got closer to graduating high school I had been labeled a drug dealer by my dad because a couple of my friends who were older sold pot. So not too long after turning 18 I had been tired of being labeled something I wasn't so I chose to start selling drugs. Here's the catch though I didn't start selling pot I am very business minded and logical. Pot is very big and bulky when you buy it. I still lived at home and aside from the fact that a pound of weed is bulky it is also very strong in smell. My dad when he was young in high school DID smoke pot so he knew what it smelled like. So pot wasn't my choice of drugs to sell instead I picked another drug that was pretty big with my friends... Cocaine.

It's funny the stigma you get when you tell someone you've sold drugs before. When you say drug dealer you think of people carrying automatic weapons protecting their shipment or killing rival dealers. Yes that is real but that was in another world compared to my life when I sold drugs. I grew up in a middle class area didn't have gangs or a ton of crime just kids having a good time if you will. I stumbled on to selling when I went up to my buddy's house and as usually he was waiting for a number of people to call him back so he could buy some weed. My thought was how hard can it be to get weed we live in southern cali lol. Apparently most people who sell pot do so to support their habit and don't really treat it like a business. he called a few people and the responses he got were "I'm sleeping, I'm eating, I'm at the beach, you live to far away, and sorry bro I'm with my girlfriend" needless to say I saw a big flaw in the rules of business when applied to the drug trade where I lived. With that I started asking my buddy about how it all worked. See he smoked pot and every now and then did coke but he was also the go to guy for our friends when they wanted cocaine. He told me he really didn't want to deal with it but figured he could make a couple bucks since nobody else wanted to do it. Enter me and the dollar signs in my eyes.

Lets do some math:

1 ounce of cocaine cost me $750 and because of who I knew it was very high quality which was very cheap at that price it could have sold for more. There are 28.3 grams in an ounce which would fit in a glass vile in my pocket instead of a big block of weed that would need to be in a backpack. It also doesn't have a strong smell so should I get pulled over for a ticket the officer wouldn't smell it the way he would a pound of weed. Now common practice would be to buy an ounce then use a vareity of substances to mix in with it so you could increase your profits. I didn't do this for a few reasons. Mainly because a lot of the stuff used to cut cocaine aren't things that should be snorted and being my "clients" were my friends I wasn't interested in harming them. Sure cocaine isn't something you should snort either but doctors use it in its purist form so I figured if I kept mine at the purity I bought it at (which was about 90% pure I tested it with science) then I don't have to worry about it. I also liked having the better quality product I kept clients. So I pay $750 and without doing anything to it could double my money and that was generally done in a few hours on a Friday or Saturday night. Not to bad for someone that is 18. hindsight is always 20/20 though and as it sounds like I'm giving you every reason why selling drugs is a good idea here are things I didn't really pay much attention to. I sold cocaine which I know came up through Mexico... never cared to think about it back then but thinking about it know I know 100% people died for the exact drug I sold. I don't mean "ya there are people killing over the drug trade" I mean people died somewhere along the line before the ounces of cocaine I personally sold got to me. There is no doubt in my mind about that. If that isn't enough I could have ended up in jail and think the only reason I didn't is because I didn't branch out to people I hadn't know for 10+ years already. I know for a fact based on my personality if I had ended up in jail I wouldn't have reformed I would have become a better criminal and made "business" connections.

So how did I stop selling drugs? well because the money was easy and made quickly I also liked blackjack. I honestly didn't take me too long to realize that I was selling drugs to make money to lose gambling. I figured it was time to stop taking stupid risks to just blow my money at the blackjack tables. So I joined the army...

Next up

Fraud, Theft, and the Porn Industry as a career path...