Leon had gone through all his inheritance money. I think he got a loan against the house he inherited and blew that as well. They were essentially squatting in the house and there was no hot water. The guys that had been along for the ride were still there but now they were bored and there was almost never women over.
His main coke dealers name was Mo. He would hang out at the house all the time because of the parties. Mo had been selling coke to an undercover cop. I heard him and his friend brag about how they had a guy who would buy big amounts and they would cut it to hell and he never complained. Eventually the undercover ordered up something big that Mo couldn't deliver so he decided to just rob him. He met him and gave him a fake bag.
I was supposed to go to Leon's but I had to meet someone first. I hung out with a friend for a while and finally headed over late at night. As I approached the house I saw a BMW 3 series and a big American made SUV with a lot of chrome aftermarket parts with police lights in the grills parked on a side street adjacent to the woods next to Leon's house. As I drove by I saw a couple marked squad cars in his driveway. I didn't slow down. It turns out that Mo had gone directly to Leon's every time he had met with the undercover. They'd gotten a warrant to search his house. They were a few months too late and the place was bone dry. They found some drug paraphernalia and Hectors bullet proof vest but none of the drugs they'd hoped to find.
Leon had an uncle named Joe who lived with him. It was his late mothers brother. He had been out of prison for less than a year and was a big crackhead. He had a rottweiler that he kept caged up in his room that was mean as hell. He'd get coke sometimes and he taught me how to cook crack using a test tube and baking soda. He'd use a glass stem to smoke that you could buy at a gas station with a tiny rose inside. He'd use chore boy to put in the end for a metal screen. Before Leon's money ran out Joe had gotten him to start smoking. Leon refused to smoke out of a pipe so they would roll blunts instead. Who knows how much cash they blew smoking blunts of crack.
I had met a guy when I was in high school named Christian. His brother dated Robins sister after she broke up with Tom. He had moved near me and would find a way to get some money together to get drugs and hit me up all the time. Christian was a heroine addict but he'd get other drugs as well if I gave him money. I liked doing PCP but I never wanted to drive into the city myself to get it so I needed people like this to do it for me. It was like going through a drivethrough. You'd pull up and place your order and then get what you needed and be on your way. Christian would always get out of the car and get the drugs on foot. I assumed he had some kind of scam going and I wasn't getting all I was supposed to get but I didn't care.
One day we set off into the city to get his heroine and I was gonna get some PCP. He gets out of the car like usual and comes back. He gives me the PCP and produces some crack. He told me some reason he didn't wanna buy the heroine people had. He pulls out a pipe and I start smoking the PCP. He proposes we share the drugs and he'd let me smoke his crack if I shared my PCP with him and I reluctantly agree. I'd only smoked crack once before but the times I'd mixed coke and PCP before I really liked it. So we're riding down the road for a while smoking out of his pipe and I'm so high I end up in a different state. Once I realize it I pull off the road and find a place to park my car and cut the engine and lights off. We load the pipe up some more and Christian is standing outside hitting the last of the PCP when I see blue lights. I put the bag of crack into the 5th pocket of my jeans and I watch as Christian throws the pipe. The cop walks up to the drivers side with his gun drawn and tells me to take the keys and put them on the dash. He then backs away and waits a while until more cops show up. He gets me and Christian out of the car. I look back and the cops are tossing my car without asking me. He asks me some questions then holds a pen out and shines a flashlight at me. He asks me to follow the pen and then says "well your eyes aren't playing any tricks on me". He gives me directions on how to get back on the highway and let us go. I get in the car and was so high I already forgotten the directions he'd given me. Christian said don't worry about it just go and we'll figure it out. I rolled my window down as I drove by the cop car and asked him to tell me again.
If you'd just met Joe you wouldn't have thought he was a crackhead. He was in his early 40s and in good physical condition. He'd been in prison for a couple years and he looked like he'd spent most of his time there working out. At some point he offered to smoke some with me and I accepted. I'd used the drug only a few times prior but never smoked it out of a glass stem. The first time I did it was a very intense high. I remember it being different from the times I'd smoked it before. Right after I took a hit sound would become distorted. Everything had a metallic echo sound like my head was inside of a bucket and peoples voices sounded like aliens. When I would take a big hit I couldn't stand and it would be a while before I would even think about wanting to take another hit like that.
So once you'd smoked all of it you would want to go get more. Joe's game was to always keep some small amount to give me a "jumpstart" and start another binge. I knew exactly what he was doing and I was enjoying myself. Leon lived right across the street from me so I wasn't worried about driving there with no license. Once there Joe would bust out some little baggies and he'd drive us into the city once that was gone. Once I got a feel for my tendencies I would make sure I only had so much money at my disposal. If I had a chance to let someone owe me money who I thought would pay me back I would take it. A chance someone might pay me back was better than 100% chance I was going to smoke it up. I had my atm withdrawal limit set to $500/day and that would get maxed. Sometimes if a binge started before midnight we could go once before midnight and once after. I can't remember exactly how much we would usually get per trip.
After a couple days of being up smoking and drinking my body would just shut down basically and I would sleep for a very long time. I'd always wake up with feelings of depression and remorse. We'd never spend money on food and when we got hungry enough Joe would go into the grocery store and buy one loaf of bread for $1 and steal some stuff to make sandwiches. I remember one day he stole a can of sloppy joe mix. He cooked it and I was so hungry I burned the roof of my mouth eating it so fast.
Joe had his license suspended and would always drive my truck into the city. On the way back to his house we'd always take hits and we'd be super paranoid. If it was during the day we'd both think people had seen us hitting the stem. If it was at night we'd be worried about people seeing the lighter flicking in the dark. It was always a super stressful ride and we'd always argue with each other that the other one was being too hot. When we got back to the house it was much more enjoyable and we'd sit in his room and get high until it was all gone and drink beer. Once that happened we'd plan another trip as long as I hadn't reached my limits yet. I genuinely liked the guy and we'd spent a ton of time getting ****ed up and talking about all kinds of things. I was fine with giving him drugs for free bc he was driving me back and forth and getting them for me.
The people always hanging out at Leon's were jealous that Joe had such a good thing going with me. They would try to get in his room after we made trips to the city but he wouldn't let them in unless they had drugs of their own. These guys were the worst types. I carried a revolver with me whenever I left the house out of paranoia. Hector would always tell everyone how ****ed up and crazy I was. I got in a scuffle with one of them over something dumb. He was almost twice my size and his friends pulled him off of me once we were on the ground. I ran into another one of them at a house party and we started arguing in the kitchen. He grabbed my arm and punched me in the kidney then we ended up in the living room knocking over furniture. They threw me out and I left my jacket inside with a crack stem in the pocket. The resin in the stem would get you very high so I went back the next day to get it.
It took about 6 months for me to go through all my money. I can remember waking up after a crack binge realizing that I had smoked all my rent money for the next month and not knowing how I was going to pay it. Once it was gone I could only get high when someone needed a ride to get drugs or I schemed up some money somehow. Christian called me one day and wanted a ride into the city. I told Joe we were going and he said he would drive. All three of us packed into my truck and we headed off. We all had open containers and Joe gets pulled over. He parks the truck on the side of the road and takes his crackpipe out of his pocket and throws it on the floor next to Christians feet. He picks it up and hands it back to Joe who throws it on the floor again. The cop walks up to the window and asks for license and registration. We all had set our beers on the floor. When Joe tells him he doesn't have his license they get us all out of the truck. Joe is on parole so they put him in the squad car and cuff us and set us on the curb. Christian tells the cop that Joe threw his crackpipe on the ground on the passenger side and they went and got it and put it in a plastic bag. They ask who's truck it is and I say it's mine. I let them search it and they don't come up with anything else. They tow my truck and won't let us walk home because we are drunk. They drop us off at the gas station across the street to call a cab and said they would lock us up if they saw us walking. We didn't have any money and Christian wanted to get a cab and run. I thought they'd suspect us if we did that so I suggested we walk down the side roads. We got to his place and I went to the tow lot when I woke up.
Christian confided in me one day that he had gotten hepatitis from sharing needles. Once I passed out drunk in my room while he was there and the drugs made me paranoid that he had jabbed me with a needle. I remember thinking a scab on my arm wasn't there before I went to sleep and I was scared to go to the Dr. My paranoia was so strong I remember convincing myself that I had gotten hepatitis from him and was going to die. During my binges I would tell myself over and over that it didn't matter how much drugs I did because I was terminally ill and I wouldn't live long anyway.
One day he offered to buy some drugs if he could drive my truck into the city. We went and he said he was going to buy some crack and heroine. When he got back all he had was heroine. I complained about him lying to me and he offered to let me do some of it. He shot up in the car and was struggling to find a vein for a while and it was horrific to watch. He gave me some to snort and it made me sick and I threw up. Leon had finally been kicked out of the house he had inherited and was living in a hotel. Christian drove my truck there and got picked up from there by someone. I hung out in the hotel room with Leon and some girls and one of his chronies. I was pretty high from the heroine and kept nodding off in my chair.
I woke up the next day flat on my face on the hotel floor. I had fallen out of the chair holding a full beer and it was crushed underneath my stomach. I had been sitting in a pool of beer all night and my clothes were drenched. Leon said it was past checkout time and they had to move to a different hotel the next night or something. I got in my truck and drove home on a suspended license covered in beer praying I wouldn't get pulled over. This was the first time I remember giving serious consideration to getting clean.
