When choosing a recreational drug, it is important to pick one widely used by people whose personalities most closely resemble your own. This makes it easier to score your shit.

Pot is generally popular with underachievers and college drop outs. Shrooms and X are strictly for the hippy/raver crowds. Aspiring rock stars swear by H, while wannabee ganstas dabble with crack.

I don’t run in any of those circles.

Prescription pills, on the other hand, are generally consumed by spoiled, loud mouthed, hypocrites with too much time on their hands. Dude, sign me up for that because it’s like I’m looking in a mirror here, baby!

The downside of prescription pills is that not a lot of dealers specialize in them. In fact, most of the time you’re counting on some dried up old hag who managed to score a refillable prescription to sell you the goods. This limits the variety in your drug use. You might be craving a vicodin-vodka cocktail, but if the bitch you’re buying from only has a bottle of codeine you’re just plum out of luck.

Every once in a while, you’ll stumble upon the holy grail of prescription pill sellers: AKA The Guy Who Works in a Pharmacy. This guy is the unicorn of drug dealers, but I happened upon him last year. For a while there I was like a kid in a candy store, zealously writing out shopping lists for my guy and doing little happy dances every time the goods were delivered.

Then one day I developed a severe case of insomnia. To rid myself of it, I attempted every trick in the book. I guzzled cold medication and popped over the counter sleeping pills. I sipped glasses of warm milk and listened to classical music before I retired for the evening. I tried vitamins and exercise and deep breathing techniques. Nothing worked.

At this point, a normal person would have gone to a doctor and simply asked for a prescription. But my method of operation is to never accomplish something legally that I can accomplish while simultaneously sticking it to the man. Besides, my dealer at the time had much better bedside manners.

So I scoured the Internet in search of the perfect sleeping pill. I wanted something strong, long lasting and possessing of minimal side effects. Finally, I found a pill that seemed like it would fit the bill nicely and I carefully wrote it down on a slip of paper. Then I gave it to my dealer and asked for the 50mg tablets.

“What the hell is this stuff?” he asked.

“It’s a sleeping pill.”

“Isn’t the pain medication knocking you out at night?”

“Actually, no,” I admitted, “But I’m thinking this might work. Do you think you can get it?”

“Oh, I can get it,” he assured me, “But since it’s not something I’ve got stockpiled, I’m going to need paid in advance for it. Also, it’ll probably be a little more expensive than usual.”

“How much more expensive?”

“How much do you need?”

“A months worth.”

“$450.”

“Done.”

I know what you’re all thinking. You’re thinking, ‘How can she be so stupid to pay that much in advance for a bunch of pills she’s never even tried?’ Looking back, I ask the same the question myself. After all, it’s not like drug dealers are world renowned for their honesty and stellar sense of ethics. However, I had completed many transactions with this guy before without a hitch. Also, lack of sleep was making me loopy and severely negatively impacting my decision making capabilities.

So, I paid in advance.

And the fucker started dodging me.

For three weeks this guy refused to return my phone calls. Then, one day he called me up and apologized for the delay. He said that his pharmacy had recently installed new fiber optic cameras and he was unable to snatch what I needed there. I told him it was cool and asked him if he wanted to just refund my money. At that point, he gave me some spiel about me being a good customer and assured me that he went to extra measures to get my stuff. Apparently, he had enlisted in the help of a friend of his who worked at a hospital. Because of this, he had to split the profits with his friend and whine, whine, whine. And oh yeah, they were only able to get me 25mg tablets.

At first I was annoyed at paying 50mg prices for 25mg tablets. But then I thought, “Oh hell. It’s better than nothing.”

I gave him the go ahead and my guy dropped off my stuff a couple of hours later. But there was something a little….fishy….about the stuff he gave me. I had looked up pictures of both 25mg tablets and 50mg tablets before I had initially placed my order. The pills he gave me looked nothing like the things I had researched on the Internet.

I credited my mental discrepancies to poor memory due to sleep deprivation and called it a done deal. Then, I went home and looked up the pills on the Internet. Needless to say, what he gave me wasn’t what I ordered. Instead of sleeping pills, that limey bastard gave me an antibiotic for strep throat.

Yeah, I was pissed. But not pissed enough to get into a fight with a freaking drug dealer, so I wrote it off as a lesson learned.

In the end, I said goodbye to my pharmacy guy and went back to dealing with old ladies with refillable prescriptions. Where they lack in variety, they make up for in reliability.

Unfortunately, I never got rid of my insomnia. Some would say this fact might go a long way in explaining my general distemper today.