The events listed in the drug stories below are fictional, any similarity between the stories below and actual real actions by attorneys, college professors, deans, medical doctors, nurses, insurance agents, bank managers, PhDs, reporters and chartered financial analysts are coincidental and entirely unintended. Also, this economist is a liar.

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I do not condone recreational drug use in any way shape or form. Drugs destroy lives, while it starts as fun you have no idea what kind of nightmare you find yourself in, people die. Some things that happened were great thrills like getting off the train in Amsterdam in 1998 to smoke pot legally, many were funny like the time I made federal law enforcement officers that had me under surveillance watch gay porn orgies for hours or the kinds of antics you get involved with on LSD and many were tragic like the multiple overdoses, suicides and arrests of friends.

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One of the most pressing social issues facing modern society is the drug problem. I started using tobacco at 12. Classically, marijuana is considered the "Gateway" thought to open the door to a whole world of illicit drug use. When I discuss recreational drug you I prefer the word illicit as opposed to illegal as there are many legal and illegal drugs. My experience among those who later used drugs was that alcohol and especially tobacco are the first drugs used by those who later suffered. The first time I smoked a cigarette I walked down to the store by the hospital we lived by and bought a pack of Marlboro Reds and smoked one by the creek. I was high then sick and vomiting . The smoking continued through middle school and the first time I got drunk I got off from school early because of middle school exams and hit my dad's moonshine he kept in the cabinet. Getting drunk was not something I did often at 13 but that changed at 14. Drug use among young children is almost nonexistent, something happens during puberty that creates an urge to want to explore the realm of intoxication. High School came and I made the decision I wanted to be on drugs, I sought them out, anything I could find. I asked around until I found some marijuana and bought 1/2 a Quarter for my first experience. Which was half a quarter ounce for $20, why we called it 1/2 a quarter instead of an 1/8th, I have no idea. Having pursued a PhD in economics, inflation adjusted drug prices are lower today then the early 90's (1994) and drugs are more potent, higher quality and in more abundant supply. Using DEA data you can see declining drug prices and generally it's argued by bureaucrats that the issue is declining demand which is nonsense. It's increasing supply. 

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My drug use did not start out as the nightmare it would later become in grad school 11 years later. And writing out the timeline I have a personal sense of how slow time seems to pass when you are young. Many of the people I started using drugs with are dead now, deaths among my nondrug using friends are almost nil. Most of those who are alive now stopped and a few are still using with deaths happening several times a year.  Currently I am 46. The debate as to whether drug users are rational or not is strange to me, you think differently when you are on drugs, when it comes to prices drug users are certainly rational, they want the best quality lowest priced dope. Youth also plays a factor, no one at 14 has any idea what rationality looks like or could possibly explain what economists mean by rational or rational addiction. Using drugs consists of getting high with friends, listening to music, playing video games and engaging in sexual activities.

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I was an alternateen. My life was engulfed in listening to alternative music, playing sports and smoking marijuana with friends. Within a year of starting to smoke marijuana we learned whose parents in our peer group smoked marijuana. The marijuana was generally low quality filled with seeds and stems that no modern smoker has to put up with. The marijuana smoking quickly developed into pill popping/snorting and then LSD then cocaine, ecstasy and methamphetamine. High School was not so much an open air drug market but more of a specialized exchange where those of us who knew who had what could check prices and often there were dry spells in the market where drugs became impossible to find and the social rules at the time did not permit those who had them from raising the prices instead people with drugs during dry spells often resorted to hording for themselves or sharing with a select few, the market was and is inefficient. Market structures of illegal black markets vary a lot and there is a lot of significant variation between places and times as well.

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A Theory of "Being Busted"

Just about everybody who is a teenage drug user is caught at some point, by the school, by the law and most commonly by your parents. I define being busted as having someone find out you are using who can put negative consequences on you. Most commonly when you are a teenager its your parents, although law enforcement does get involved especially if you are using/dealing drugs as school but its rare that people were caught (at least at my high school). I was first caught shortly after I started smoking, I got mixed up writing letters in class to a friend about weed that my mom found and I was busted the first time. I got grounded for 30 days and managed to convince my mother that the weed was coming from my 3rd period lunch partners and I need a switch to 5th period lunch. 5th period lunch is where my weed smoking friends actually had lunch so like putting people in prison I was able to get more access to users. I would not get caught smoking pot again until I was 28.

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Drug Violations

Generally you can fit narcotics activities into one of three groups. Use, dealing and manufacturing. I suppose you could also have a separate category for smuggling but I will include that under dealing for now. Most people involved in drugs use drugs, particularly the young. There are no drug kingpins at 14. Shortly after using I was dealing and by 15 I was ready to start manufacturing but I had choose to do was easy and make alcohol. My first experiment was a bust I made some awful apple wine that had a terrible flavor but would in fact get you drunk. By 16 I had my license and we were some of the first to get dialup in 1996 and after a little research I was able to ascertain I needed to drive to Birmingham obtain a Sears Water Distiller and start breaking federal law making moonshine. This project was a full success and after my dad found out my project got scaled up to a 50 gallon trash can with sprouted corn malt that ran off about 5 gallons of 180 proof corn liquor. My father taxed my project heavily with most of the product going to his business partners which were local attorneys and I learned what would later become a solidified fact there are lots of attorneys involved with illegal activities. 

Drug dealing is very different at 14 that it is after 18, mainly its a game theory issue where there is a rule change. Once you hit 18 you face jail instead of juvenile detention and informants get involved as law enforcement ramps up its efforts on adult dealers.

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LSD

This was my drug of choice, I first bought some at school at 15 and went home to take LSD and watch tv all night, not much fun. By 16 in the 11th grade it was common enough with the popularity of widespread panic in the mid-90's and one of our drug using friends had dropped out of school and run off with the rainbow family and made some connections that brought a sheet of LSD to our High School though an associate that befriended her boyfriend from California. I loved this drug. It was fun, I generally limited use to the country far away from the prying eyes of law enforcement, parents and society in general. Our early use consisted of gathering up a lot of beer and taking a trip out to Beat 10 to camp in the forest and explore the woods while we were high on LSD. Like all drugs there are fads and different drugs come into and out of popularity. By the time I reached grad school widespread panic had spun out and we commonly obtained LSD from people that traveled the music festival circuit and had a history attending raves in Atlanta. 

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LSD was fun. In High School we had a small group of friends that enjoyed it, especially my friend Palmer Jack Tiddle, who referred to himself as PJTwalker but we called him Peanut. Peanut was generally not liked by many people but I thought he was hilarious, especially on LSD. Peanut was also an ass, for lack of a better word.

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Chasing the Dragon...

This is drug user specific behavior. Analyzing it though economic lenses, it's attempting to maintain a bliss point through the consumption of one good, a drug. Some drugs do this and some do not. There's no dragon to chase using LSD but stimulants are notorious for this kind of behavior. It's anything but rational and continues until the users dies, passes out or is arrested. Generally, you find people chasing the dragon on cocaine and methamphetamine. I knew a dealer that stayed awake two weeks once, she was a total wreck of a person by the end of it and she would fixate on the window after hitting the apparatus (another name for a meth pipe) and stare as though it would somehow thwart the imaginary cops that were out there although I am sure they were watching from somewhere nearby. The person has one objective for their utility function, attempt to obtain the same high they could when they started using the drug on their binge and its futile. Different people behave differently as some rob and steal, some sell their bodies and all behave irrationally. The only thing you can reach chasing the dragon is psychosis. Stimulant induced psychosis isn't pleasant, ugh bad memories. The thing is there's really no stopping somone who is chasing the dragon unless you are law enforcement, unless they want to stop. Chasing the Dragon, glad those days are over with.  ​​

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Drug Stories

Drug users are full of stories, good and bad. There were plenty of good times and later a lot of bad. 

 

My First Music Festival​

This was an event. It occurred during the summer between my 11th and 12th grad years in 1997. The festival was the Woodstick Festival in South Carolina. My friend Cimbo had gotten free tickets for us to be representatives of the "Home Grown Music Network" at the festival. All this occurred through correspondence started by an advertisement in "High Times" magazine. The Woodstick Festival was apparently a smaller version of Woodstock, I guess and I had no idea what to expect. It was a jam band festival where the bands get up and play one song for the entire set that just bleeds over into other songs. When we got there we met the man who owned the "Home Grown Music Network" and he told us to pitch out tent in the staff area. We quickly dosed LSD and then set out to explore. They had several kegs of beer which kept me occupied as I was a heavy drinker at 17 and they had a keg of New Castle ale, one of my favorites. The thing that was amazing to me was all the weed smoking. It was out in the open and everywhere. Many of the bands had been afraid to travel with weed but the patrons of the concert came well supplied. I was edgy at first I am not sure if it was the acid or the environment I handn't quite gotten use to. Near the end of the Friday night set my friend Cimbo and I wanted some water and Cimbo walked up to the vendor threw down the lawn chairs and said "All I need is some water". The Vendor could tell we were losing it a bit and said "Ok Man". We walked back toward the tent when we happened upon a campfire where there was a black man playing a guitar in front of a rebel flag singing a made up song about how everyone knows what every one is doing and "That's all right". He then tore into the weirdest version of LaBomba I have ever heard and someone in the crowd that had now formed said "Give him a drink". To which his companions shouted "Noo!!!", he doesn't drink, so someone said "Give him a dollar" and the black man took off his hat and said "Everybody do that!" I was laughing to near tears and the mood had lightened up quite a bit. We left and made our way to the drum circle in the woods. I had never seen a drum circle and there's really no much too it other then a bunch of people high sitting in a circle playing congos and drums. Cimbo said "Have you got that joint in the tent?" to which I said "Yes" He said "Go and get it" we sat around smoking marijuana and came up with the theory that the musical festival drum circle was a place of practice for people on the music circuit to hone their skills until they move up to an actual band and start performing and it all tied into the big circle of life that spins. The next day Cimbo's mom joined us at the music festival but after observing all the pot smoking told us she was going back to the hotel and not to bring anything home with us. I took acid again the second day but LSD is a drug that you quickly develop a tolerance too so the effect was mild. The highlight of the music was Day by the River performing their song "Hanging out Naked" which was quite entertaining. Cimbo made arrangements with a band he met to perform at his posh all boys boarding school he attended in North Carolina that one of the band members had also attended. The only other event of any mention was an older hippy with bad teeth camping in his car befriended us and I gave him a pair of firework glasses and he went around acting like he was tripping saying he had done so much acid he didn't even need to be on it to have a psychedelic effect and I thought there was no way I was sharing my acid with him besides at that point it was in my body.  

 

Smith Lake and LSD

I have spent several nights on Smith Lake high on LSD. When I was a teenager we had an unplanned pick up LSD party the day before exams at Walker College. Not the best timing but drug habits come first. The night was filled with laughter and an intense game of ping pong that had myself and Peanut amazed we could hit the ball that well much less keep score. Cimbo the man who was the son of the house owner told us all about the history of the property and how it was the second oldest lake house on Smith Lake and Peanut tried to rally the troops saying "Let's go burn down the first one". We followed the ping pong with an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 one of our favorite shows to watch high on the stuff and ended the night swimming on the dock. I stripped down naked and had the image of Jerry Garcia come to me going "Hunta Hunta Bla Hunta Hunta Hunta Blah" At dawn I was vomiting naked at the end of the dock from drinking too much when the morning fishermen headed by us on their boats to fish, I just waved. At about 7 that morning Chaplain talked Cimbo into taking him to his exam while Peanut and myself wished them well because there was no way in the world we were getting into a motor vehicle and driving anywhere. Then we got some sleep.

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Entry into Grad School​

Getting into grad school was thrilling. I wanted a PhD. I had left my high school drug life behind (so I thought) and I was on my way to becoming a college professor. Right before grad school I had renewed my friendship with Peanut. Peanut was thrilled, he lived vicariously through me as I was doing something with my life and he wasn't. Peanut worked finishing cabinets at a cabinet shop for a cool $7 an hour. Our first course was mathematical economics taught by Dr. Lafayette, PhD. Dr. Lafayette had failed to get tenure and was moving on from University All-Good. There were lots of rumors why one was that he had gotten a dui and after leaving his wallet at the bar no-name, where nobody knows your name. Whether this is true or not I have no idea it was just one of the rumors I heard that circulate the department. Anyway, the class was challenging as it was my first graduate course and it was abbreviated. Dr. Lafayette met us for drinks at the end of the course and I invited Peanut to come along because after his nasty divorce he didn't have any friends. Peanut immediately set out trying to buy weed when we got there. I was mortified. He found his weed through Dr. Billie Wonka, J.D. PhD. Dr. Billie Wonka was a join J.D. PhD student. Stand back on the pot smoking now. I have never seen anybody smoke so much weed in my entire life, maybe the Rastafari, but I doubt it. Billie smoked and sold marijuana. He had been in a drug fraternity at Vandy with his roommate, Edworth Butters Silverspoon the 3rd, MBA JD, who was in law school. I would later learn the biggest party group in grad school was the UA law school, also the biggest drug connection. Dr. Billie Wonka, JD PhD invited us over to his girlfriend's condo Sara Bouchard, M.D. (later Billie's wife) smoke some pot. As I kindly abstained they smoked their high end weed that Dr. Billie Wonka J.D. PhD was fond of traveling to Chattanooga to fetch once a month. I was extremely angry with Peanut. I did not want to be around drugs in grad school and had no idea what I was in for. Peanut latched onto my grad school friends like an angry tick on the scrotum of a dog. He was determined that he could be somebody by surrounding himself with soon to be M.D.'s, PhD's and attorneys. He would come home and tell his e-wife all about our adventures with this posh group of hip peeps of course leaving out the drug stuff so as not to endanger his time with his daughter that I would soon be duped into paying the child support for. Peanut had to go everywhere with me and this group of people. Game days and Sunday's were especially exciting for Peanut. "Have you talked to Billie?", "Can we go to Billie's", "Let's go over to Billie's". Billie had especially large drunken drugged out game day parties with lots of people from the economics department and UA's law school. Peanut was especially fond of getting the left over shakes from Billie's vaporizer that they gave to him free of charge as the vaporizer will not spend all the THC in marijuana and it does not burn it. I soon found my life quickly spiraling out of control.  

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Just Another PhD Graduation Celebration at University All-Good (No Drugs just Alcohol here)

This was my first year in grad school and my first post defense celebration. I found myself at a local pub downtown with BA PhD who had just defended his finance Phd, Dr. Token Dyson PhD, and Peanut (he always had to tag along). Dr. Token Dyson was not someone to be toyed with according to himself, he was the first tenured black professor that the department at UA had ever had and an assistant dean. We found ourselves with a very drunk Dr. Token. I started buying shots and asked BA PhD how the defense had gone. It had gone well and I ordered a round of whiskey for the table, then another, then another. It was at this point Dr. Token started reminiscing about his good friend Dr. Lafayette who had left the department without tenure my friend Missy PhD, that I shared an office with had said it was a big deal he didn't get tenure and was because of his research. Personally, I think the fact he got a DUI and left his wallet at the bar No-Name (so the rumor went) had a lot to do with it, as UA is a very conservative school with appearances that they need to keep up and an all white Old Roe that must be maintained. Anyway, Dr. Token was talking about bar hoping with Dr. Lafayette and suddenly went into a rant about how wet women's well their uhm,... The word he used was a five letter word that is also a common name for a cat, (hang on my pussy wants petted give me a sec I'll be right back). K he ranted "When Dr. Layfayette speaks French their mouse (K we will switch to Norwegian) gets so wet". "I mean wet", "Dr. Layfayette that French. those women", "Their mouse gets wet" this went on for about what seemed like 15 minutes and BA was looking more and more uncomfortable then he turned his attention to me.  "Zeke he nasty," "This man is nasty", "In fact, He is Mr. Nasty," "Zeke he nasty," "He Mr. Nasty," Peanut was dying laughing, I thought his was going to fall under the table. Peanut always liked black men, in fact he always said it was his dream to be a 1970's black man, although he thought racism was "funny". I wasn't quite sure what to do so I just chewed my ice out of my drink which seemed to push Dr. Token, or Toke as he was commonly called even further. It finally ended when Dr. Token who was three sheets in the wind got up and although we all protested he drove the 45 miles home. That was the first dissertation defense celebration I had ever been to and also the first time I had been sexually harassed by a male superior.  

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Sundays at Dr. Billie Wonka's Phd JD House

This was my second least favorite activity for the time I lived with Peanut (the least was coming home to find him masturbating in my bedroom at my work computer), on Sundays when everyone was nursing a hang-over from gameday Peanut would demand to go to Dr. Billie Wonka's house. "Have you called Bill?" "Can we go over to Bill's?" " Let's go see Bill". I didn't care to go see Bill on Sunday because of the activity of smoking pot from sun up to sun down while sitting on the couch watching television for 16 hours. Although I have had a pot charge, pot smoking was not ever my favorite activity and I agree with Dr. Alexander Shulgin that you "get nothing done". However, being the friend I am, we often took the short trek to the suburb in ttown where Bill lived where Peanut could enjoy free weed and smoke to his heart's content with Bill and the law school/medical school crew. My biggest joy was that someone in the crowd would often join me for some left-over cocaine from game day to hit a few bumps with me. Given we all had some serious work to do on Monday the day often ended by ten o'clock.

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Smith Lake II (This story is graphic)

In Grad school my friends Peanut and Sally had hooked up (they would later marry and divorce) she becoming Sally Tiddle as her first marriage to an older Bulgarian man that also married her for money didn't work out. They were living at her mothers lake house. I brought the LSD. Peanut and Sally were both unemployed. Sally had about the only thing that could make her attractive which was a lot of money. Sally was also a J.D. and member of both the Alabama and California bar association at the time. As always we drank heavily while using LSD, the most obnoxious thing about the whole event was Sally's male pug kept trying to hump her foot, constantly, obsessively, over and over, it would not quit. This turned into the highlight of the night when we convinced her to allow him to just do it until he finished so the dog would stop. So,... Sally presented her foot and the dog worked away at it while we just stared watching his pink penis flail against her toes over and over, humping non-stop. The dog treated her foot like he was a runaway bull with a heifer in heat. After what seemed like ages we decided the dog wasn't going to finish so Sally put the dog away in the bedroom while Peanut and I died with laughter, WTF just happened? We spend most of the rest of the night debating on where Patrick Swazye's mansion was, as we knew it was nearby and wanted to challenge him to a dance contest.

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A grad school girlfriend, Misty Dawn

Misty was my girlfriend for most of grad school. I met misty when I went over to local drummer's house and the two were having a cocaine bender. Me, being me, I jumped right in. That night we sat and listed to local drummer talk about his time in Somalia and tell his story of his combat adventure where he shot a bunch of camels to avoid having the skinnies set up a road block, f-them camels! Misty was attractive except for her nose and had enormous boobs and sexy legs. She use to be a bartender, at the only joint in town, where she had a reputation as a girl who'd been around, ok, ok, she was a slut. She was subsequently fired from that job for stealing which Misty had a history of doing. She caught a felony when she was 20 working for a scheme at office max but managed to keep it off her record by pleading youthful offender and had also caught a shop-lifting charge at Walmart, yet another place I could take Misty too. Misty liked using drugs, a lot, and so did I at that time and this was about the only thing we had in common. When I met Misty she was fresh out of a relationship where her ex cheated on her a lot and had the self-esteem of a slug. She was also fresh off of two abortions and couldn't get out of her undergrad course work because of her math skills. I was attracted to Misty because of her body, except the nose, and the fact she had been a slut, I assumed there was going to be a lot of sex, Nope, Nada, Wrong, sluts sleep with lots of people but when in a monogamous relationship they are like a dead turtle in the swap, ain't nobody doing them. Misty took up photography, because, well, she wasn't going anywhere in retail and took Sex in the City to be her bible. Most of the time we annoyed each other and like all drug couples we fought all the time. The sex was awful and I still remember the stupid face she would make trying to be sexy stretching her face lips out looking a bit like duck with a bill shaped like a horn. The main thing between us was the drugs. She enjoyed them all. Often our weekends started on Friday afternoon, continue all night Friday, into Saturday morning, all day Saturday, into Saturday night, all night Saturday, into Sunday morning, all day Sunday and then crash Sunday evening. My biggest problem with Misty is that she was in no way supportive of what I did no matter what is was, she didn't like grad school she thought it was some simple school and I was not in the real world and my biggest chigrin she had no faith in my ability to make controlled substances. I would have thought she was all over that one but everytime I tried a new drug experiment in my lab at ground-zero she would roll her eyes and say "This is stupid you have wasted your money" Until she tried the drugs then we hit orbit. The DMT I extracted caused her eyes to roll back in her head and she fell over on the bed. When we went to shoot a little league game for her newspaper we had to leave early after the mescaline pills I made got us so high she could work her camera and I had laid down on the bleachers. The mushrooms I grew in her cabinet above the refrigerator were a pleasant surprise Sunday afternoon activity after we had been tripping and rolling all day/night Friday and Saturday. The crack cocaine I made and had been smoking in her marijuana pipe on top of the weed was probably a bit too far, as she was going to wake and bake and had a photo shoot that morning and I got a phone call from an extremely irate Misty that was now tweaking and had a photo shoot for the newspaper she had to go to. The only one I failed at was the methamphetamine as I could never figure out how to get the pseudoephedrine purified enough to get a good product. 1 for 7 isn't bad. There were lots of drug adventures with Misty and she also loved my group of friends including pitching a fit during one of our breakups that she was going to lose all her friends. Anyway, more later,... thedrugmaster. 

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Dr. Eggbert Gigglestein Uses Cocaine (for the first and only time)

Eggbert was a challenge to work within University All-Good, UA's economics grad program. I found him to be the most obnoxious person I ever met. He was a know-it-all that knew little to nothing and was commonly the butt of the Grad Professors jokes. Dr. Token Dyson, PhD was particularly relentless with him. Eggbert was a staunch conservative and liked to gather people up in the grad department to start wasting their time with some ridiculous conversation. My favorite tactic when he came into my office was to stare straight forward at the computer and not acknowledge him in anyway until he gave up and left, which sometimes took a while. Eggbert faced his own challenges and was the only grad student to fail his comps twice. We had to put him on suicide watch and the blessed department head let him stay on after retaking the Advanced Micro portion of the 1st year classes. Which fit him well because he could act like he knew everything in a repeat course to all the incoming first year students. Eggbert was also challenged in life with the way he looked, making friends and meeting women, he was a social buffoon. Eggbert had a big 35lb head, big ears and was generally your classic idea of what a dork on anti-social steroids would look like Dr. Billie Wonka, J.D. Ph.D was his best friend and to my surprise eventually got him involved with the weed smoking. This story takes place on Dr. Eggbert Gigglestein Ph.D's 27th birthday. Eggbert was a 26, now 27 year old virgin and we all celebrated by going to a bar downtown. To my surprise a bar fly realized it was his birthday and started giving him some attention although Eggbert was at a loss to know how to handle the situation when she made a math joke and grabbed his cherry from his drink and popped it in her mouth. Alas, a virgin he would remain. Later we rode back to Dr. Billie Wonka's place to smoke some pot and use some coke. It was me, Billie Eggbert, Sara Bouchard, M.D. (later Billie's wife) and Eggbert. I had cocaine as I always had cocaine during that period. I offered some to Eggbert in the car and he took a bump. This was a mistake. He instantly burst into tears and had an existential meltdown. Going on and on about suicide. Dr. Bouchard got concerned and said because she was in med school if he was going to threaten suicide we needed to get some medical attention. I told him to calm down as we pulled up to Billie's house in the culdasac where he lived across the street from Bouchard and with Edworth Butters Silverspoon the 3rd, MBA JD. When I told Eggbert to calm down he lost it we got out of the car and he put his arm up and pushed it against my chest and threatened to kick my ass. Eggbert does not have a strong build he looks like the doughboy that someone ate bites out of the arms and legs. I am a strickly nonviolent person but I thought I might actually stomp this mother out. Dr. Bouchard got it under control and I left to go back to my house and see what the other people up at midnight on a Tuesday were doing. That was enough dork drama. Dr. Eggbert Gigglestein did recover from the cocaine incident and failing his comps and went on to work for the IRS as a tax collector after his graduation.  

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The Great LSD Trafficking Escapade

This story was a really close call. It was while I was in grad school at University All-Good. UA is a terrible grad school unless you like football and alcohol/drugs. It was myself, Billie Wonka, J.D. PhD, and Doobie. It was the summer of 2008 and the drugs had really gotten out of control. The weekend before this happened I told my girlfriend at the time, Misty Dawn that "Something is going to happen". I guess it was the spirit telling me I was in for it. I owned a 6 bedroom 3,000 sq foot house in the historic district next to campus that I rented out the upstairs to make my mortgage payment and lived downstairs. I had let my roommate Deon Phillips move downstairs but our friendship was on the rocks because he had picked up a vial of LSD when my dealer had last come through while on his summer music festival tour. Basically I relented to Deon's peer pressure and made the introduction which was a mistake. Alexander Shulgin and many other psychonaut as well as physicians all attest to the lack of addiction present with LSD. Deon was as close to addicted to LSD as I had ever seen. He was using it constantly. Days at a time he would be high engaged in some ridiculous antics while I was working. Often I would come home to the house rearranged, black lights placed in all the flood light outlets and fresh items from the dumpsters.  The downstairs has a large living room/dining room where we had hung a large 3ft diameter spinning disco ball as the old chandelier was in bad shape. Doobie was on school break from the military and had just moved in and the rule "Out of sight, out of mind" had failed to be enforced. Someone was smoking something just about all the time and generally out in the open. Billie had come over to pick up a bag of weed from Doobie and I had gotten two bags, one for myself and one for Misty. This was one of the few times in my life I was regularly smoking marijuana as I never was generally a big weed smoker. We had smoked and I had my bag laying in the floor and we were watching law and order when there was a knock at the door. I walked to the door opened it stepped out and shut it and it was the narcotics enforcement team with a warrant for Deon. I was explaining Deon wasn't there as after 3 weeks of LSD use he had sobered up and made it to work that night for his delivery job at a local take out place. Suddenly I heard the door open behind me and it was Doobie who for some reason needed to see what was going on, the NET team rushed in. It was led by a large black man, officer Botcher. He came in and I asked what he was doind and he said "We want the drugs you have up in here", I said we don't have any drugs and it was at that point that an officer that was much older, clearly near retirement saw the weed in the floor and said there's marijuana and its out in the open. I had broken my own rule. Officer Botcher read us our rights and asked if anyone had anything illegal. Doobie cracked, all you could see was fear in his face, he said "Yes Sir, I do" and he left with a couple of the officers to go up to his room. Officer Botcher wanted to question me, they put me in cuffs and I said take me to jail Billie come bail me out and tossed my wallet onto the table. It was at this point that I had relaxed a little bit because they weren't tearing the house apart and I had realized they didn't have a search warrant. My main goal was to keep them out of my bedroom where there was my own vial of LSD, scales, muriatic acid, anhydrous acetone, lye, a separatory funnel, tubbing, stir rods, flasks, beakers, test tubes, cap-m-quick pill capper, an Ecstasy testing kit and various other items of paraphernalia. Officer Botcher was pushing had but I had stopped talking all together. I figured they had me on the weed but I knew better than to try to talk my way out of it. Finally, they uncuffed me after the old man had found Doobie's bong in my dry bar and Misty's bag of weed in the drawer of the dry bar. One of the officers left to go to their vehicle and returned with what looked like a receipt book and they wrote up the weed and the bong. I tried explaining it wasn't my bong, but Officer Botcher wanted to know if my finger-prints were on it. I just stood silent. The young officer gathered up Doobies pistols and AR-15 rifle, that much to my dismay had been brought onto the property and Officer Botcher dropped a couple of tattered pieces of paper onto the table and told us to call him tomorrow, they were going to get Deon at work. I told them to have a good night as they were walking out and the young officer told us that they problem we had was that we were watching "this shit" pointing to the law and order episode playing on the tv. Billie was cuffed but didn't live there so they spared writing up a ticket on him. Billie was ranting about what a good guy Deon really was. I was glad they were gone. I relaxed. We called Deon and told him that the NET team was coming to get him with a warrant and he thought it was a bad joke. Sure enough they showed up at his work in the parking lot and arrested him. I had two choices, I could let Deon sit in jail or I could bail him out. In all honesty it was a no brainer, he knew everything that was going on in that house and I needed him out of jail asap. I called several different bail bondsmen, while I was talking to one another beeped in and gave me 500 off the 3,000 bondsman fee for the 30,000 bond. I clicked back over and told the man I had a better deal and he was livid and hung up. Off to the jail we went, we got Deon out and headed back to ground zero. The vials of LSD and remaining drugs went into a locked bank bag that went straight into Billie's vehicle, from there it went to Bham to sit at his residence until I could get a handle on the situation. From bham it went to Misty's trailer in Rural Hill. There it stayed. Doobie and Deon had to go and things went sound in our relationship from there. I never got the 2500 back I posted for bond but I owed him some money for helping me fix up the house including painting the outside and doing some significant siding work so I called it a wash. The rest of the night we stayed up drinking beer and Deon was badly shaken up over the felony charge. He was talking about turning in Spinner, who was our black LSD dealer.  I told him to face the charge. Later, Deon tried to make arrangements to pick up his vial and I told him I had destroyed the vials by tossing them in the river. In reality they sat in Misty's trailer. I wasn't sure about him at that point and didn't want to get set up on a trafficking charge giving someone back their black-market drugs. The fundamental rule about black markets is there are no government enforced property rights. Eventually, Deon and I made amends and I found out his charges came back no-true-bill when his public defender had it kicked to the grand jury. What happened I don't know his story was the cops mishandled evidence my theory was he turned people in. Drug markets are awash in asymmetric information and full of propositions you can't verify. The rest of us excluding Billie got charged with marijuana possession and I got a paraphernalia added. We all got them dropped after 6 months of drug testing, a level 2 dui class and some AA meetings. I nearly botched my case twice, first when the woman at community corrections told me my case was dismissed so I went out and smoked some weed with Misty and then they called me for another drug test as it hadn't been 6 month. I got my attorney to handle it by calling community corrections and when I went in the woman in charge told me "I understand you are not to be tested today" basically I had an honest conversation with them and they gave me a month to clean up and come back for one more test, secondly, I got my first dui. Eventually it got worked out and I was right back at it.

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Wayne, Perm, Rio and Slim

These were my cocaine dealers, those are not their actual names but are the actual names they went by. A mix of white and black, all from the bottom of the socio-economic spectrum. Wayne was the best, Rio was the worst. Slim had the best modus operandi, which was he would pull up to your vehicle toss the dope through the window and settle accounts later. Rio was awful. The only reason I ever dealt with Rio is because somebody that was usually chasing the dragon talked me into it. First, he cut his stuff down to almost nothing, his bags were always underweight and his attitude was terrible. Using Rio carried a lot of risk as he was fond of dragging over old crack whores and calling his customers to come over to your house to pick up their stuff. I can tell you it's unpleasant to be high on a coke binge at 2am and have random people drugged out start showing up at your door to meet their dope man. Perm was a dishwasher with a stylistic toboggan he was fond of wearing even in 105 degree Alabama heat. Wayne was my favorite, he was my boy, Johnny on the spot and never any drama. Although Wayne and I had a business relationship we were friends. His spot was Chunck's Piscis Abode on the weekends but I often got my stuff earlier in the week to avoid peak demand times when a dealer's time is at a premium. Perm stuck to Beagan's Bar on the strip and Rio was generally at Catch 51 or The Spoof I had an understanding with my dealers that I would pay more for uncut stuff, something Rio could never comprehend (I tell you after your third bag of $60 baking soda it gets old). Applying my knowledge of business to drug buying I found getting my stuff on Tuesday or Wednesday was slick because dealers are in low demand so there are no 6-7 hour queue times. I also tended to buy in large quantities for my personal demand and to sell to Bill Wonka's J.D. PhD and Edworth Butters Silverspoon the 3rd, MBA JD's crew at a markup although after they moved to Bham they had their own dealers. UA is a cocaine university offering a popular major in the stuff. I lost control my second semester of grad school and it took years for my sinus cavity to heal. I am still unsure how I managed a B on an econometrics exam. Deriving a maximum likelihood function is a lot of fun, deriving a maximum likelihood function while you are jacked up is a challenge that should only be attempted by a most fervent psychonaut.  

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