Oftentimes, what one imagines life is like inside organized crime is not at all what really happens. I have a story I would like to share with you all in the hopes that it will keep you from making the same mistakes I have made in life.
I was a teen, not quite an adult when I met my wife on an obscure chat on the internet. She fell in love with my internet persona. I quite liked to play the role of 'gangster' and apparently that was something she was attracted to. She and I chatted often and would spend nights together on the phone being...intimate.
I told her my situation at home, which is personal and I will try not to delve into it much to save time and to move along to the meat of the story; Suffice it to say, my home life was traumatic at best and raped in a dirty basement at worst. She offered me a place to stay and moved me in with her and her family.
Things were normal as could be for the first couple of years, laying under the stars, walks alongside the canyon, getting yelled at for stealing her flowers from a neighbor's yard...the usual. She and I tried to bring life into the world and had to watch our premature baby suffer on life support for three days before I decided to pull the plug on him. It was a decision I had to make alone, because unfortunately she had fallen ill and was near death herself.
She never quite recovered from that and shortly after returning home we had an argument that ended with me locked up for the night and with her seeing other people. I moved in with her parents during the separation and it was during this time that her father introduced me to a product his brother was moving under the name 'Hey-Smoke.' He told me that it was like marijuana, and that smoking it got you high. I was unaware at the time how potent it was and took two rips from a one-hitter while sitting fireside on the phone with my brother.
Let me tell you something. JWH-018 was no joke at all. I found myself glued to the floor, unable to utter a word. I felt intensely euphoric and all of my recent traumas were lost in the haze. The next thing I knew I was lobster red, drenched in sweat and my brother was shouting at me at the top of his lungs. All I could do was laugh and tell him I had sat the phone down to care for some laundry, to which he promptly hung up on me.
It was not long afterwards that my wife and I worked things out and got back together. I had found a girl to hang out with and she a guy, but we were drawn to one another in an indescribable way. I ended up going to work for her uncle's business, an operation in the basement of his smoke shop.
There were probably eight of us on a given day, although a couple of people were more interested in dropping acid or putting methylone up their noses than actually working. We had small digital scales and would zero them out with dixie cups atop them and scoop the product into the cups, trying to weigh it out as close as possible to one gram as we could. We would have some people who would place stickers on the plastic containers and move them along and some people who would fill them.
The actual production of the product took place at a warehouse and its whereabouts were kept a secret from all but a few of us. I was not one who knew about it, and I did not care to get any more involved than I was. There were several times when our bosses would come in and start freaking out about a possible ban their lawyers had alerted them to and we would all scramble to load all of the product into a trailer as fast as we could, only to have it be a false alarm.
This went on for awhile before a real alert went out. We had until midnight. We loaded all of the product up again and our boss transferred it to another state where the first wave had not been banned yet. I packed up an inflatable bed and some clothes and she and I tagged along, but after a few days of no food, a run-down house in the ghetto for our operation and a DICK of a manager we left.
I continued to purchase the product, enjoying its relaxing properties. I ended up finding myself on probation and this is where things got bad...
My wife continued to work for her family, selling the product from a store her father had rented. Apparently a man who worked for the probation department came into the store, and after seeing my wife and I together at the probation department...things got bad.
My probation officer started to impose stricter and stricter penalties on me, despite me doing everything asked of me. I was forced onto a regimen of medication, then drug tested for substances these medications would make me false positive for which forced me on and off of the medications again and again. They paid me a surprise visit at my home and planted a bag of spice in my home of a type I NEVER purchased, then forced me to sign a confession that it was mine under the threat of jail time.
I was endlessly harassed by her, in nearly every way possible. Finally, after enduring damn near everything one could endure (or so I thought at the time) I caved and did as I was asked. I placed a phone call against my better judgment to the DEA and arranged a meeting with an agent.
At the time scheduled I met a man at the park, and he and I chatted for a moment. I am assuming that he was wanting to make sure I was actually who I claimed to be. After a moment of conversation he disappeared and I received a phone call from the special agent I had contacted and he told me where I could meet him. I was unbelievably nervous, sweating profusely. He had a stack of paper on me thick as a book, despite me having stayed out of trouble most of my life. They took a urine sample from a toilet that did not flush, a DNA sample from some chew the sheriff gave me (gross, but I couldn't go smoke) and I am assuming fingerprints from a cup of water I was given.
I was asked all sorts of questions, right down to who I was living with and how old I was when I met my wife. After we had finished speaking with one another I left, crying in shame and soaked in sweat.
Shortly after this meeting, things began to get VERY bad. When my wife and I would leave home, I would find undercover cars on the road coming towards us on the way back. Items in our home would go missing. Things would be rearranged. One day while driving alone, I turned on the AC to be greeted with a hiss and the smell of chlorine. I threw a cloth over my face and doused it with water instinctively. As soon as I could I dove out of the car, horrified.
One night shortly afterwards I could not sleep. I went out for coffee, and figuring I was in balls deep anyways began to jot some things down I had heard recently on a sheet of paper. I left around six and went to pee for my PO, then went to my favorite gas station for a pack of cigarettes. I was in luck. My favorite brand, one pack remaining on sale. I purchased them and returned home. My wife ran from the bedroom screaming at me that I was going to die and swinging on me. At that exact moment an SUV pulled up out front that I did not recognize.
I would later find out that it was a friend of hers, but at that moment and with everything that had been happening I was frightened to death. I fled out the back door and jumped the fence to the neighbor's yard. My shirt snagged and I dropped eight feet. I didn't know it at the time but I fractured my spine, bruised my kidney and my liver. I pulled myself to my feet and on pure adrenaline jumped another fence to be greeted by a black SUV with tinted windows, a person with a shaved head and sunglasses inside. They stared at me, their head following me as I ran.
All alongside the road there were people in various vehicles who looked similar, all following me with their eyes as I ran. I knocked on a door and asked someone for help. They offered to call the police for me, but I had recently heard about the police in town being corrupt. I continued to run. I pulled out my phone and called my wife's uncle.
'I'm sorry! I didn't...I was forced! Anywhere...anything...Mexico...!'
'What the FUCK are you talking about? Are you on drugs?'
My phone died, and I was left absolutely perplexed. I ran to the closest local business. Sitting there at a table were two more of these people, reading the newspaper. As I walked in they laid their newspapers down and stared at me. I crouched down behind the barrier and borrowed a phone. I had a few numbers in my pocket and tried to dial the FBI, but the line went static.
At that moment, three police officers came in and escorted me outside.
'The patrons are complaining about you. You have two options. You can go get yourself some help, or you can come with us.'
I replied that I would have a friend escort me, at which point I was grabbed by a grip that felt stronger than steel and cuffed.
'Made your choice.'
I was thrown into the police car and taken to the hospital. Outside there was a truck backed up to a port, and I was handcuffed to a bed next to what appeared to be a port in a small closet-like room.
The officer and his partners began to talk to one another, looking to me with a wicked smile as they said certain words or phrases and winking. 'Two hour drive.'
'Desert' and my favorite 'I knew a kid like you once, he lives on the edge of town and plays piano'
There is a canyon on the edge of town...I did not immediately make this connection, however and asked 'Am I going to be chemically lobotomized?' to which I was greeted with another
A nurse came in tried to give me a pill I did not recognize. I refused it.
When she left, I put on an accent and and tapped out an SOS. This startled the officers greatly.
The nurse returned and asked my birthdate, to which I gave a bogus birthdate. She moved to inject me anyways and I swung a kick at her with my boot. I was immediately held down by five people and had that steel grip around my neck. I was injected and immediately spit out blood.
