Settling In to My New Place...

Whew, that was close. That was exactly how I felt as I sat in my new pad in my parents garage. It was actually just a 12 x 24 wooden shed with a garage door and no insulation. It had my dads workbench and tools in one end and I shoved my bed, a sofa and refrigerator in the other. It did have electric so I at least had my stereo to listen too (newsflash, no I pods or fancy phones back then). I think my parents had made room in the house for my dresser so I could store my clothes there to get dressed after showers.
I was back on my home turf and hanging at my home bar. I was off the crack and back to a normal schedule of working to 8pm then hitting the bar to closing time. I would then walk the half mile home from the bar, smoke a bong or two before bed and be up by 9 the next morning so my mom could drive me to work. Yeah, that's right, 23 years old and no drivers license. If I remember correctly after getting my second DUI around the age of 21 they told me I now qualified for the habitual offender law and they took my license for five years.
Anyhow it was back to normal for me. No more smoking crack to 5 in the morning with a house full of people, no more sawed off shot guns under the couch in case things went bad, no more juggling of drug deals through the right channels or pay the piper.
Life was good, my boss had given me my job back at the motorcycle shop and I could just get stoned and have none of the pressures of the major deals and avoiding the man. I know, some of you are thinking normal, yeah right. To me it was normal, it was how I lived my life and my biggest ambition was to see how many different women I could sleep with in a weeks time.
This went on for a few months and I was sticking to my schedule pretty tight, work, party, sleep then repeat.  My biggest challenge at the time was that winter was approaching and I was trying to figure out how I was going to stay warm in that shed. I knew my sister was looking for a new place to live and I approached her about sharing an apartment near my work. The price and location was good for both of us, so we made the move.
We got all moved in and I was beginning to believe that I might get some normalcy in my life. I was hanging at a different bar because of my location change and a couple of girls tended bar there that I had my eye on,  they were however heavy cocaine users. I hadn't been doing that much of late but I really had my eye on the prize. One of the guys at work was doing a little dealing so I hooked up with him and started to buy a little quantity. That way I could sell a little at the bar on the weekends and provide myself with a small stash at no charge for me and the girls.
We'll if you remember from some of my earlier blog writings, there weren't many things that I did small time and this would just be the beginning of another long slide into the devils den. That winter I started selling more and more drugs and I was taking chances I shouldn't have to get it done. I ended up wrecking my sisters car on the way to make a pickup and I somehow managed to slip through the laws fingers that night (again no license but somehow no arrest) I did however cause around $1000.00 damage to my sisters car that my dad ended up paying for.
Anyhow, winter had ended and as I was leaving to go back to work one spring day after lunch and as I  walked past my neighbors apartment someone yelled my name from inside. I knew they were partying pretty hard over there and I tried to stay away. Satan was calling however and as I walked up the steps and into the house a guy I knew handed me a coke pipe. At first I hesitated but after 10 seconds of two years memory flashing through my brain I put it to my lips and he fired it up and the madness began all over again.
It would be about another two year run of all nighters with plenty more jail time ahead...