Using threatening messages from a drug dealer as a case study of how to assess when you're legitimately in danger vs. when you're dealing with a tweaked-out poseur.
For today's post, I went deep into the archives - i.e. redownloaded Grindr (LGBT dating / hookup / social app) - and reviewed years' worth of nudies to find these threatening messages from a dealer who I owed 140 bucks to a long time ago.
This guy wasn't someone who I usually bought from.
In fact, he wasn't a heroin / fentanyl dealer at all, but rather a meth dealer. Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely, positively don't f*ck with meth.
Historians cite military leaders giving their troops amphetamines as a driving factor behind many of history's worst war crimes for a reason.
Meth keeps you up for days.
If you're lucky, you're repairing "faulty" wiring or baking hundreds of cookies even though you don't have frosting. (Or having marathon group sex if you're gay).
If you're more typical, after day two or three, you're hallucinating shadow people who are conspiring with the police and ex-girlfriends / boyfriends in some nefarious, cosmic plot against you (see my "Shadow People Caught on Camera" post here).
Tweakers commit the worst kind of crime - the stupid, poorly planned, sometimes even unnecessary kind.
They have too much energy while they're up for days, conniving as they descend into stimulant psychosis, and for that reason, cops follow them like flies on sh*t.
Not to beat a dead horse, but "Thou shalt not abide a tweaker" was one of the reasons why I made it through my twenties.
Junkies are vampires; tweakers are werewolves.
***
Okay, so the backstory on these messages is a little strange.
This guy wasn't even someone who I usually bought from; he was someone who messaged me on Grindr wanting to hook up on a day when I was really dopesick.
After feeling out that he was a little sketchy, I mentioned to him that I was sick from opioid withdrawal, and he offered meth.
When I explained that this would make things worse, arguably, we eventually came to an agreement that involved him lending me 100 bucks and taking me to get dope, after which I would go chill at his place for a while.
We got to his place, which was a nice, suburban setup with a Jeep and another recent-model, midrange car in the driveway.
Things were off from the beginning.
As we pulled up to his house around 2:30 a.m., I noticed a black sedan that was on the shoulder of the road driving slowly forward, which immediately made me worried that he was being watched by the local police or maybe even the feds (even though this seemed sloppy on their part*).
*My second worry was that it might have been some kind of group rape situation where the guys in the car would come in the house after I was high / out of it; any time someone is offering you drugs in connection with sex (even though I hadn't agreed to anything for sure in this situation), you've got to be careful. Turns out, it was a group of tweakers who had been hanging out with this dealer, who kicked them out when I said that I would come over so that I wouldn't be put off by their presence.
As we got out of the car, the dealer grabbed a black bag - the sort that you'd put toiletries in while traveling - from his glove compartment.
We went into the house, where a "friend" who introduced himself as Cash was smoking a glass pipe filled with meth using a blowtorch. (My guess is that the dealer let Cash stay because he knew that I was an addict and was worried I might try to pull something).
While we got set up in his basement chill room, the dealer opened the black bag that I mentioned above.
I couldn't eyeball meth quantities in the same way that I could dope or coke quantities, but he had enough to make me nervous - a Ziplock sandwich baggie stuffed with the drug. Ounces, not grams.
Moreover, as I was getting the dope that he'd bought me ready to inject, he shot himself up with what he said was a gram of his meth, which had the large, translucent crystals that make tweakers salivate.
Long story short, I wasn't exactly feeling amorous.
I shot up a lot of dope, stayed gamely alert, left early.
A few days later, I started getting messages on Grindr of the sort pictured above, which made vague but urgent-sounding threats if I didn't Cash App him the money that I owed him.
I was in a really low point in my addiction at the time, and I didn't have a spare hundred to give to anyone. Plus, I was already borrowed out from anyone who would loan me money.
I left the area and entered treatment a few weeks later, so nothing ever came of this, but until I left, I had that lingering unease that comes from a tweaker psycho knowing where you live.
***
For a few reasons, I was willing to bet that this guy wasn't actually going to do me grievous harm.
Here are a few factors to weigh when deciding whether a drug dealer is really planning to f*ck you up.
Let's start with some of the warning signs.
The thing that I was most concerned with is the amount of meth that this guy had in his possession and the fact that - deep into his addiction as he obviously was - he still had a nice house, new car, an extra hundred bucks.
The further up the distribution chain you are, the easier it is for you to farm out violence to those beneath you.
At one point during our talk, this guy had mentioned that he "didn't want to be any further up the chain, because then [he'd] have to deal with the Cartel directly."
FWIW, I think he was being honest.
If he had been trying to impress me, he would've said he did deal with the Cartel (although organized crime groups are like Fight Club; the first rule among the people who actually deal with them is that you never, ever mention that you deal with them).
This guy fit the picture of someone who was right where he was describing in the food chain - toward the top of the regional distribution scheme, just below whoever brought it in wholesale to our Upstate New York city.
So, far enough up the hierarchy to worry me.
The other thing that troubled me was that this this guy was most definitely in and out of meth psychosis (I'm being generous with the "in and out"; he was meth psychosis personified).
He messaged me literally around the clock for days, and he threw in the oddest non sequitors insinuating my involvement in a surveillance scheme - note the Wikileaks mention apropos of nothing in the messages above.
This kind of confused, counterproductive thought and behavior is common with psychosis. Needless to say, if someone is a government agent sent to entrap you, you write off the 140 bucks that they owe you and go dark.
He repeated himself constantly, another testament to an addled and rambling mindset.
Psychosis cuts both ways; people lose their inhibitions and become more dangerous, but they also become distractable, less able to plan effectively.
In general, though, I think that the paranoia that comes along with stimulant psychosis actually benefits you if you're being threatened by someone who is suffering from it as long as you're not in their immediate vicinity.
Someone worried about government and extraterrestrial plots against them is less likely to venture out of their comfort zone into a scenario where they know that they will attract attention.
If they do lose all inhibitions and come for you, though, they're likely to be especially unhinged.
Given this information, why wasn't I more concerned?
The first rule among those who deal in violence is that you don't threaten; you do.
If a dealer is going to hurt you, the first warning you're going to get of it is usually when it's happening.
They'll lull you into a false sense of security by telling you to forget what you owe them - you've been coming to me a long time, no big deal, et cetera.
Then, you'll show up and something ugly will go down.
No serious criminal is going to leave a trail of messages to become State's Evidence Exhibits A through Whatever at their aggravated assault / attempted murder / murder trial.
The first thing that hit me when I received these messages was the sheer comedy of the wording and grammar. ("You're stupid spending"; "anon,it's" instead of anonymous).
I don't know for sure if this guy had done time, but many excons and assorted denizens of the underbelly use inflated language that they think makes them sound intelligent - "breached the agreement and forfeited," "or I will secure those to me to the furthest extent practicable" - but which actually sounds stilted, pompous, and laughable.
I am far enough out of college now to have friends who are executives in their fields, and many of them write like cavemen / cavewomen.
Real, upper-level dealers are the same. They're too damn busy to write you a novel.
Their messages are short, without embellishment. They get annoyed if you send anything wordy.
Those are the people that you need to fear.
The other side of that coin, though, is that people who are good at drug dealing typically won't pursue minor debts.
They understand that they're part of the deal and that threatening or executing violence, especially against someone who comes from a more privileged background than them, is going to bring down heat like nothing else.
For that reason, they write small debts off. They're making thousands off of each active addict per year in pure profit; they can afford to.
At worst, they'll stop dealing to you, which is punishment enough for an addict. You can't buy this stuff at CVS.
(Massive debts or cases in which you've insulted them in front of others and their reputation is therefore at stake are very different scenarios).
What's more likely, especially when you're dealing with a smalltime or midlevel dealer like the guy in this example, is that they'll try to ruin your life.
Some of this guy's threats sound like that was his intention, and that would've been a much smarter plan on his end.
Best of all, calling someone's workplace and leaving a message describing their drug use isn't even a crime!
The thing is, I never told this guy my last name and only referred to my job in the most general way.
It's possible that he could've found me on Facebook or elsewhere, especially because the gay community in my home city is small and interconnected (we're all friends with whatever three twinks are in this season, haha).
For this reason, dealers will often ask for ID or some other proof of your full name, where you live, where you work.
Don't ever give it to them. Once they have that, they can ruin your life at will.* Even worse, your family is at risk.
*The flip side in this scenario is that I knew where he lived, which was in a middle to upper middle class suburban area. Because of this, he should've been worried about threatening me to the point where I tipped off law enforcement to get him locked up. The best thing about his kind of neighborhood is that I wouldn't even have had to contact LEO myself; a couple of notes and screenshots in nosy neighbors' mailboxes would've worked just as well.
If you're in a situation like this and you're worried because information about where you work is online, I'd calmly approach your manager or the Human Resources department where you're employed.
Explain that you have a psycho ex who is making your life difficult, and that you're currently pursuing a restraining order.
The cops will tell you to scrub your Internet footprint as much as possible in this situation, so you can use that as your justification to request being removed from the company website and other professional listings (present it as temporary, until things blow over).
Anyone who has lived a passably colorful life has at least one crazy ex*, so this isn't going to seem too wild.
*If you don't have a crazy ex, you should get one. Now.
***
So, to summarize today's case study from Brian's School of the Druggie Demimonde, we have a lower mid-level threat.
On the one hand, I was dealing with a decently successful dealer who was psychotic enough to randomly mention Wikileaks, which is a meme-worthy digression.
When you start whispering about Wikileaks into your Wheaties, it's time to get help. For real.
On the other hand, his threats were theatrical, repetitive, blustery.
What's more, he didn't take the next step that someone intent on recovering their money would have, i.e. showing up in person where I lived to tell me that I had X hours left to send him the money.
The one occasion when I was threatened with a gun by a papi dope dealer who was gang-affiliated and who I have no doubt would've killed me - he had been shot twice in previous altercations - came about as the worst kind of coincidence.
At the time, I was working with a nonprofit that does criminal justice system reform, which involved appearing in problem-solving courts from time to time.
This papi, who I had been buying from for years, had seen me coming out of the courtroom and assumed that I was an informant testifying or copping a plea.
He was alone when he met me, which is how serious guys will do it (they know that anyone else present is a potential witness for the prosecution).
He didn't hold the handgun to my head; he kept it on the seat next to him with his hand on the butt.
We had a nice chat about criminal justice system reform, during which he let me slowly withdraw my cell phone and access the nonprofit's website to show him my staff photo.
Convinced that I wasn't ratting him out, he threw in an extra bundle.
From that day forward, he made sure that I was well taken care of and occasionally messaged me to meet in person, during which he asked for legal advice (he was facing an attempted murder case at the time).
I'm not qualified to dispense any kind of legal advice, but my feeling was that papi just wanted to talk; he gave off a kind of Tony-Soprano-in-therapy vibe.
I'm pretty nonthreatening, you know.
***
There's a line from Kodaline that I love: "In my dreams I see the ghosts of all the people who have come and gone."
I don't know what happened to either of these guys*, but I wish them both well.
*The dealer's Grindr account showed him as still in our city, but he hadn't signed in in ages.
Life truly is stranger than fiction. I think back on this time of my life, and it feels like a Tarantino-esque / Pulp Fiction dream.
When it comes to memories that are especially traumatic, humiliating, strange, or tragic, I adopt the attitude of Augusten Burroughs, whose memoir Running with Scissors* is a brilliant work of autobiography: I take the item down from the grocery shelf, examine it briefly; throw it my cart, and walk on.
*The book details his time under the care of a Yale Med-educated psychiatrist who was eventually convicted of insurance fraud, and, if I remember correctly, lost his medical license. This shrink required his live-in patients to divine their futures in their bowel movements. He allowed young, gay Augusten to spend time alone with a convicted pedophile who the doctor was also treating, who, predictably, sexually assaulted Augusten. Nevertheless, Augusten's wry memoir betrays an appreciation for the entire cast of zany characters. Anyone who has had a dysfunctional childhood that they nevertheless remember as surrounded by that swirling, pink-and-black love-haze that only an insane upbringing can engender should read this book.
Crystal meth is a gay plague, which drives chem sex-related acquisition of HIV and other STDs, and not nearly enough people are talking about it.
If you need help, I'd recommend starting with Crystal Meth Anonymous, which has a 24-hour helpline.
Thanks for reading! Drop your own stories in the comments below.
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