“I want to be a cocaine dealer,” Greg said. It’s not that I asked Greg what he wanted to be when he grew up, but we were both in our twenties, and we were both working as kitchen help at Shoney’s. I had my doubts about Greg’s ideas towards career change, but I didn’t say anything to him.
The next day he didn’t show up for work. I did not attribute his disappearance to his new life as a wealthy drug dealer who was living on the beach with supermodels.
Greg did buy some cocaine, and he sold cocaine, so yeah, somehow he got his toe in the door, but he started doing more cocaine than he sold, and then he started doing crack.
He was behind on rent, bills, and he started stealing from his roommates so they kicked him out. Greg set his bed up in the yard and slept there for a few days. It was surreal to see a man in a bed in a yard but that was how it happened. Then it rained hard one day, and Greg started living under the overpass at Exit 16.
Greg would haunt the people he once knew, but he would steal anything he could. And ex-girlfriend named Susan let him stay in her parents garage, and it wasn’t a bad set up. He had a cot and access to hot and cold water, and a bathroom. Someone called Susan’s mother the next day and asked her if she was having a yard sale, and Greg had taken Susan’s mom’s belongings and was selling them in the front yard. They got there before any of the good jewelry was sold but they lost a toaster over and some smaller stuff.
So Greg was officially not living anywhere after that. None of us had anything to do with him, and he drifted away. He would come back to Valdosta, and I would see him at one of the Exits, but until I saw Susan at the Y one day, and told her I had seen him, I didn’t think twice about it. Susan sent me with her husband, Jim, who hated me and Greg both to look for Greg. We didn’t find him, but a man who will go out looking for his wife’s ex boyfriend to help him get off drugs is a damn hero in my book. That was ten years ago.
So yesterday I thought I saw Greg. No. I am sure it was him. He was at Exit 16, just like he always was.
But a few years ago his bones were found in a wooded area near I-75 and returned to his parents. Id-ed via dental.
I’m not sure what to do with this one.
Take Care,
Mike
A couple of times like twenty years ago I interviewed Jeannette Angell, whose boyfriend broke up with her by suddenly emptying their bank account and fleeing from Boston to Seattle. Jeannette wrote, among other books, Callgirl, and Madame, from her mostly positive experiences as a high class prostitute to pay for grad school. She tells a story of another girl, a lovely Asian doll, who worked with her, for their mother-like savvy boss Peach, but who became addicted to speed drugs and stole from Jeannette and from everyone, and could not stop, and no amount of caring or offered help or professional intervention could grip her up out of addiction, and of course it killed her and no-one was surprised. And the movie /Requiem for a Dream/ comes to mind. I think stories and books and movies like those, and like yours about your friend, should be in school libraries and shown in rainy day gym assemblies in high schools all over, because what else has a chance of working so a few more kids don’t try addictive drugs even once? Here’s J.A.’s website. Here work isn’t only on the subject I mention.
https://jeannetteangell.com
I believe that just telling young people to “just say no.” doesn’t work because of the forbidden fruit attraction. They have to be shown that those fun initial experiments can lead to trouble in a short time as the desire multiplies. But how you do that is beyond me.
My personal belief is that some will become addicted to something whether it is alcohol, drugs, sex, gluttony, greed, thrill seeking, trumpism etc. because of something inside them at the start. In my personal experience at observing people over the years is that many of those who become addicted have a innate self-pitying “Woe is me.” personality.
I also think “just say no” is no good. Visceral images and stories work, though, especially the kind that would get school officials ridden out of town on a rail for using them. So they’re afraid to use them. So they don’t get a chance to work.
I’m not talking about the laughable /Red Asphalt/. I mentioned /Requiem for a Dream/ because I really think it should be shown in schools. Also, when I was in high school in the early 1970s, one assembly in the gym featured a plastic surgeon who brought a before-and-after slide show of high school kids happy and pretty and healthy, and then after they crashed out headfirst through the windshield and he had to frankenstein their faces back together. There were shots of bloody surgery. Some kids in my class ran out to throw up. At the end of the show, he said, “Fasten your fucking seat belt,” folded his screen, picked up his slide projector and walked out and the bell rang. That works.
in the “it’s a small world” department: in November of 1982; when I was first stationed in Valdosta; my very first night in the city was in what is now a shut down/abandoned hotel directly next door to the Shoneys off Exit 16… I was there for 3 days waiting to get settled at moody. was at that Shoneys a few times…
Keith, there’s a homeless camp behind that old Shoney’s now. A dozen or so people live there, kinda.
I don’t recall that hotel being a 5 star resort either. It was however “cheap” which was pretty darn important on an airmans salary.
What a tragic tale, and a sad ending. Does anyone know how he died? was there foul play, or did he just go lie down and stop. What a shame.
I see these people with the vacant stares shuffling around where I work. I feel really bad for them, I often wonder if someone is worrying about them and hoping they are ok and will one day get help.
Chick, I have no idea. All of my info on what happened is second hand. I do know his family held a funeral but no one I knew went. We thought Gregg had died years ago.
I guess Greg did not see the movie where the advice was something like: do not sample the product you are selling.
I guess with you, Mike, and Jim, it was “an enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
It is too bad Greg fell into addiction and could not kick it. I wonder if he ever tried to get help.
I guess you will have to handle it like losing an ex-friend–or at least a former acquaintance. It will take time, and I am sorry to hear he died.
We’ve all known someone who never managed to cope with the rules of life or the noise in their brain. We’ve all tried to help, until it became obvious that our help was unwanted and ineffective.
Eventually we learned that the only help we could give was the door to the streets, an opened bottle of water, an opened bag of cookies, and a freshly made sandwich. Anything more is an invitation for them to mooch or steal from you again.
We quit looking for them, but we never stop thinking about them.
And we turn them over to a supreme being, hoping that they can heal.
BS,
that’s brutal, but at the same time, Greg used everyone who tried to help him. He did damage to families and he betrayed friends. Yes, he was a better person before addiction, and yes, that can be cured. But the first step is the person wants to be cured. Yes, I do understand how little value he placed on himself, and that is a problem. But at the end of the day he was unwilling not to do damage to people around him. This isn’t my circus. These are not my monkeys. I’m too old for this shit.