OK, not to be nitpicky or anything, no less august an instutition as the New York Times makes this kind of mistake all the time, but "machine gun ..." please make sure you know what you're saying because I'd be pretty surprised if some average meth dealer had one, all Hollywood aside.
anyway, yes, a lot of my misspent youth was spent fucking around with hard drugs and guns and shit, although never machine guns, and once shit got out of hand it was money counters and high end surveillance systems and shit and really scary people, not necessarily, you know, just on account of who they were in a hierarchy or what they did, but this image that they could project, that was simultaneously one with a degree of professionalism, and absolute fucking lunacy at the same time, implied of course if you acted out in the first you'd catch the second. I retired from the game after having to decide not to kill a man, because I guess I wasn't about that life, maybe it makes me a coward, idk, I still think about that shit, I had the train ticket and the clean piece and the balaclava and the map to where he was hiding out and everything, but somehow, I couldn't get on the train, and a bunch of my money went away, that shit sucked big time, but what's worse, my reputation, you know, whatever, not only was I seen by some as a coward but by others I ruined friendships in having to lie to track the kid down. I don't even know. and this isn't even what you'd traditionally consider "hard" drugs or, maybe sometimes, but definitely at least not who you'd stereotype as "hard drug" dealers.
but hard drugs dealers, are all around you. some of them are your stereotypical psychopath. some really are much more like edward norton in that film, what is it, 24 hours.
some are somewhere in between. certainly you eventually find out who you're dealing with and I've tbh usually been privileged to deal mostly with decent people ... you certainly want to keep within the people who could be considered at least a bit "normal" even if their stuff tends to be more expensive (but also higher quality) ... I kept a few rules as to who I would deal with, what kinds of behaviors would be a "dealbreaker" (i.e. reckless driving or unsafe firearms use) and also, and I think it's really important, I kept to my own kind, or trusted certain specific others, as far superficial indicators as socioeconomic background and ethnicity and culture goes, it just makes things things go smoother and trust easier to establish.
when you can't call the better business bureau you have to operate on snap judgments and sometimes violence needs to come into the picture, and that shit sucks, because, like the man said, why can't we just sell the shit and go on?
that part in my life, sheer fucking madness though, bro, I can, like, hardly imagine, really, like literally I have a hard time thinking about shit that happened during that point in my life and realizing that it actually happened ...
