There was this guy where I worked, about my brothers age so like 19 or so. Anyways, he would always joke about killing himself and all that. I'd joke with him and say yeah me too because so many people say it as a norm these days. Anyways, he actually killed himself recently and I can't help but feel like it's my fault. I couldve done something I could've told someone but instead I just laughed it off and now look where he is. Dead. I can't help but feel so guilty no matter what. It's messing me up so badly too. It's all I can think about. I keep replaying each moment in my head and make it so that I comforted him, and that in reality he'd still be here.. but he isn't. I have to accept that.

Earlier in my life I sold drugs. During this period of time i became a pretty serious person within the drugs business. It all started when i began selling for an older friend who was always on the wrong path in life. I knew this because at 13/14 he was stealing cars and doing burglaries. By the time i was 16 (about 3 years in), I had saved up enough money to branch off in my own direction. I had always been into computers, and technology in general. I had seen random videos online about the dark web (all cringily inaccurate may i add) and was interested. After researching and learning about bitcoin (2015-16) i decided i was going to become a vendor on the silk road (whilst it was about, i later moved to hamza market). I had around £14,000 to my name, and a half kilo of weed. One evening, I travelled 45minutes from my city to the nearest bitcoin atm machine (basically a machine where you can exchange cash for btc) and put £9000 into btc. I went home, and paid my vendor bond to allow me to sell. I made some small cards containing my vendor ID, the date etc to prove the photos were legit, and started to upload listings. Within 2 days of starting my account, i had made 3 sales, all quarter ounces of weed. At first I thought it was stupid and a waste because in the past i couldve done this within a matter of hours, but i was enjoying the time i could spend doing whatever i wanted instead of running round after people. After 2 weeks, i had made over 50 sales, with some orders being multiple ounces of weed, and I had to go and buy more. This is where i ran into some issues, as I wasn’t the cash in hand type of dealer anymore, and no dealer i knew even had heard of btc at that point. I thought about going back to the btc machine however the fees and exchanges wouldve been quite substantial. I decided to do what my 16 year old brain thought was a good idea and go on instagram to try and find someone who could supply me and accepted btc. After a few weeks of reverse image searches, account checking, and more hassle i found a new-ish account with only 16 followers. They had a wickr in their bio so i hit them up. After conversations with the dude (we’ll call him Jimmy) i managed to get him to send some stock photos over. Jimmy wasn’t just your average weed dealer, far from it. He wasn’t really interested in me wanting a kilo of weed (which surprised me because that was a lot at the time) and was showing me photos of large quantities of cocaine, mdma, valium and LSD. I instantly was amazed, but thought these could be images from online so decided to reverse search them before I responded. No matches, on any photo. I was still skeptical, i asked for photos containing a specific word so i knew they were his photos, to which he wasn’t really too pleased about and started to be suspicious of me. He said “you are acting very strange, i dont like what you are asking of me. Dont you trust me? I dont think we can work together if that is the case…” I quickly responded saying I was just paranoid, and had probably had too much to smoke, which he found funny, and told me he could send me a test batch of products. I was in shock. I had never thought i would have managed to get through to someone who dealt in btc, and was quick to comply. I handed over my drop address (a long term customer (we will call him Bob, who received weed as payment). Bob never knew what was coming in the packages, he never asked anyway. Once this became a regular thing I started off by giving him half ounces of weed per shipment, but quickly increased his salary to ounces or more every package. The test batch contained 4 blue batman tablets, some pure mdma (around 3.5grams), half a gram of cocaine, 1gram of 3 different strains of weed and a box of valium. When they turned up I was in awe. I quickly sent Jimmy a message and thanked him for the test batch and told him I would get back to him in the next few days. I ended up giving Bob one of these blue pills, some coke and a spliffs worth of each of the types of weed a few days later. He said him and his friends all had a great time and nothing was wrong with anything. However i still had valium that I hadn’t given to anyone. I went to an older guys house who i knew was into benzos (we will call him Joe) and gave him the box, and told him all i wanted was for him to tell me how they were, and that i may need a favour or two in the future… he was happy to oblige. Hours later he texts me saying they’re good quality and strong, to which i smile to myself and think, fuck, who is this Jimmy guy? Anyway, i sleep for the night and text jimmy in the morning. I only had about £6500 in btc to make an order, and my vendor profile had been receiving messages asking when i would have stock again. I asked for just whatever i could get weed wise for 6500, i was expecting 1.5kilos or something. Jimmy responded within the hour, saying that i shouldnt worry about paying him, and that if I was ready he would send 3kilos, 10 boxes of valium, an ounce of both coke and mdma and 250 pills. When i saw this i started doubting things. Was this a set up of some sort? Is HE police? Surely not right? He sent me a tester batch of illegal substances… I tell him I’ve never sold anything other than weed to which he replies “and thats about to change, everything is packed and ready to go, say the word and its on the way” at this point i just say to myself, fuck it. I tell him to go ahead, and wonder to myself why he is so confident that I wont rob him. It makes me think he already has my name and personal information (which I’ll never know if he did) but i wasn’t planning on ripping him off anyway. After letting him know im game, i start to wonder how the fuck i was going to receive 3 kilos of weed through the post (for those of you who havent dealt with large amounts of weed, or any weed for that matter, its about 3 pillow cases full). I let Bob know there will be some packages arriving at his flat within the next few days, and he is fine with that (probably excited for more free weed). 2 days pass and Bob calls me, asking “why the fuck have you ordered a fridge freezer to my house?” I go silent and think: what the fuck is he talking about? I tel him not to worry and I rush to his flat and see this huge box in the front hallway. I dont say anything and just asked him to grab the keys to his flatmates van and to come with me. We carry this surprisingly light “fridge freezer” down to the van and he drops me at my place. I take the box inside, and understand this is some sort of front to get such larges amounts of drugs through the post. Upon opening the box, i am greeted by a long plastic wrapped item that i suppose is supposed to imitate a fridge (very fucking poorly may i add) i get a stanley knife and hack this mess of plastic open, and holy shit was i impressed. Everything he said, was right there in my bedroom. I start throwing everything around, thinking “i am going to be rich” and get to work updating my vendor account on silk road. After 10 hours of photography, computer work and responding to inquiries I am ready to go live. All products go up, and I receive a message from Jimmy. It said “pay me when you can, and then we can discuss further business”. I start to roll myself a joint, as I receive an order, within 20 minutes of uploading all this new stock. I decrypt it using the pgp key, and see It was for 70 valiums (each box contained 3 strips of 10 5mg valiums) and i had listed them in 10s. Whilst smoking my joint i start packaging up the order, and thinking how easy this is going to be. That whole night was spent smoking spliffs and packaging orders, by thr morning i had around 40 packages ready to be shipped. I started to panic, amid the lack of sleep and weed enduced paranoia. It was only just dawning on me that I had to send these, and they cant just be put in a postbox (well some of them could, but some definitely couldn’t) this is when i messaged Bob and asked if he could post some items for me to which he didn’t agree. So I went straight to Joe and asked him if i he could do me a favour, and he’d also get more valium. He was half asleep but agreed as soon as he heard valium. After a 2 hour nap which felt like days i went over to his house, and gave him some cash and explained what i wanted him to do. He seemed uneasy and wanted to know what was inside the packages. I was a dick and told him it wasn’t anything to worry about (which im certain he knew was bullshit) but i gave him a spliff and his valium, which eased him up and after finishing his joint was ready to work. Off he goes to the post office, comes back out with a receipt and says hes never doing that again. I am pissed at that but glad he got them out. I had to find someone who would do this for me, or sell in smaller quantities online meaning i could just use postboxes. I decided to go for the latter, as all it meant was that i had to decrease the limit on weed, so people could no longer buy 4.5ounces of weed at once, the most was half an ounce. I got some hate messages for this and was told i was being greedy (as you werent able to get bulk discounts) and it would haunt me - bare in mind id had these listings up for less than a whole day and people were already on my case. Anyway, by that evening the coke, mdma and almost all the pills were gone, and i had 62 of my 108 ounces of weed left, and the majority of my valium. I dropped the price on my valium, and changed all of the weed around. At this point i checked my btc wallet and was in shock as i had so much money, i messaged Jimmy to see how much i owed him. He responded after a matter of minutes, saying “wow, all sold already?” And i laughed saying I wish. He said £15,000. I already had more than that, i told him i could pay him right away, to which he said “great, you’re next shipment will be on the way within the next few days”. I wanted to tell him no, and that I needed time to asses my situation and evaluate how i was going to manage this long term, but instead i just replied “sounds good boss” and left it at that. I ended up meeting a friend of Joes who agreed to drive me to different postboxes around the city each day for £80 each day we worked, by this point id started going back to the btc machine as id ran so low on cash. This cycle of buying, posting, and taking drugs lasted from the age of 16 to when i had just turned 19. My older brother had just been in the hospital with psychosis and attempted suicide. That was the day my life changed. It made me take a step back, and I thought more about life and what it would mean to those who loved me if i wasnt there anymore. My mum knew i was selling drugs, but not to the extent i was, i would lock my room at all times, and never leave my computer unlocked. I can never tell her how my teen years went, or that i have a few hundred thousand in crypto currency across multiple ledger wallets saved for “rainy days”. After hearing the news about my brother, i dropped everything i was doing, went to see him and decided there and then i was going to live an honest life from then on out and be there for my family. That day changed my perspective on a lot of thing, including money and status. I stopped caring so much, and just wanted to help other people instead of profit off of them. Over the 3-4 years I worked with Jimmy, i learned very little about him, but he knew if i ever stopped responding or sent him a message saying “the cat needs to be let out” it meant delete any contact you’ve had with me, the police are onto me or something similar. After hours of sitting on wickr, i sent the message, and took the battery out of the cheap shitty android phone id been using. I flushed whatever hard drugs i had left (around 300 valium, 2 ounces of cocaine)and went over to Bob’s house. I walked in unannounced (i had been given a key about a year prior) and just dropped 6 kilos of weed on his coffee table, said have fun, and dont waste it, and then just left. I had just given away £20000 worth of weed, and flushed around £5-6000 worth of drugs down the toilet. That was it, that part of me was finished. After about a month of doing nothing i decided to enrol in college, and im now in full time education working towards an honest life. Thanks for reading, and i had to keep some bits out of the story to ensure my safety and identity. Take care people.

• August 7, 2023