The Never Ending Dope Run

 It’s 11AM and I'm dopesick. I pick up homegirl who’s about a 15 minute drive from my place. I arrive call her, let her know I'm outside. It takes her 20 minutes to come outside and get in the car.

I've already got 35 minutes invested into this dope run and it’s barely just started. I strap in and prepare for a long ride.

I ask her where we’re going so I can enter it into my GPS. She tells me to hold on, gets out her phone, and makes a call.

Being naïve about what she’s doing or who she’s calling, I assume she’s calling her connect so see where the meetup spot is. No worries. It’s always good to plan this stuff, right?

But that’s not what she’s doing...

She’s actually calling around to see where we can get something. She doesn’t even know where we’re getting it from. I thought she had this lined up.

Her plugs don’t answer. So we sit there while she makes calls and texts people. Decades of addiction have resulted in the decline of her mental faculties; It takes her 90 minutes to complete what would take anyone else 20...

Meanwhile, I’m sweating it out over here, dopesick out of my mind.

“My homeboy knows where to get it”, she suddenly says. I put the address in my GPS.

….35 minutes away....

2 hours and 15 minutes invested so far….

We drive the 35 minutes to homeboy's house. She calls him and tells him we're outside. He tells her he'll be right out. So we wait.

And wait.

And wait.

And keep on waiting.

After twenty minutes, he comes out and gets in the backseat of my car.

Best way to describe him: The embodiment of how the system routinely fails addicts...He’s tatted up, institutionalized, and hardened. Look at him wrong, and an all out prison-esque brawl is likely to ensue.

Homeboy tells me to drive up the street. I'm thinking “Okay, we’ve already been at it nearly three hours. Clearly we’re driving right to the dopeman and this nightmare is almost over”

Spoiler alert: It's not close to over.

I get where he told me to go. Luckily, this was ten minutes away. It’s a liquor store. He walks in and comes out with a bottle of vodka, gets back in your car, and tells me to drive.

Yup. Unbeknownst to me, I've suddenly become chauffeur to this random ex con. That's funny, I don’t remember putting an ad in the paper….

At this point, I'm over two hours in, so I say “Hey guys? Where are going to get this and how long is it gonna take?”

Homegirl says “Dude, you asking too many questions. That’s some cop stuff man"

Homeboy agrees “Yo dude don't be sketching me out with all these questions--you sound like a cop. You look like one too, so chill."

Because apparently saying “Where are we going and how long is it gonna take to finally get what I came here for?” Is what cops do.

All I came to do was get dope. So far I've picked up Frick and Frack, drove to and from four different places, and took Frack to the liquor store...and now they're here dumbfounded that I have some questions.

Finally, homeboy tells me to drive to a strip mall. It’s in the city. That’s gonna be 45 minutes away.

I knew this wasn't gonna easy...

I finally get there. I began this dope run in the late hours of the morning and I'm starting to think that by the time it's done, the sun will be setting.

Once I park, homeboy says “Aiight, gimme the money.” I give it to him. He gets out of the car, supposedly to go get the dope.

The insanity of handing money to someone I don’t know who also has a criminal record is trumped by my body’s desperate need to ingest opiates. It’s a risk I'll take for the ultimate reward.

Homeboy hasn’t come back for about 40 minutes...It’s starting to sink in that maybe he took my money and walked off.

Finally he shows back up.

I get giddy. I have butterflies in my stomach. I've been dope sick all day, driving aimlessly at the direction of these guys for hours. I deserve this. I earned this.

He gets in the car and I can barely maintain my excitement but I'm able to keep my cool.

“So, how’d it go? Where’s the dope?”

He says “Dude wasn’t home. It’s a bust.”

*sigh*

Time to strap in. This is one of those never ending dope runs...