Confessions of a Dope Dealer - A Synopsis

Confessions of a Dope Dealer is a fictionalized account of my life and career as a professional dope dealer, following my introduction to drugs as a youngster through my dealings in high school, at UCLA, in Berkeley, Humboldt County and on tour with the Grateful Dead. It was my intention upon writing it to finally tell the truth about the underground activities that are only seen through the ridiculous distortion filter of the media. With a topic as far reaching as drug use in America, I felt that it was finally time to stop lying. It seems to me that a vast number of Americans have used drugs over the past thirty years, yet it's still somehow secret, as if speaking about it were cause for prosecution. For a career professional, such as myself, it was. That fact was probably more detrimental to my psyche than the effect of all the drugs I took. Probably.

While a cautionary tale, Confessions of a Dope Dealer is not a "just say no" story. Certainly, it deals with the problems drugs are maligned for, but despite the psychological damage that I admit to, I recognize that drugs themselves are not the cause of the drug problem. They're just one of the many ways we're trained to ignore our inner spirituality and base our lives on some numbing agent. The main focus of my book is about waking up to oneself, or, how difficult waking up may be when drugs become the sole mode of inner exploration. Confessions of a Dope Dealer does nothing to promote the media stereotype of the burnt-out stoner, drug using low-achiever, or morally bankrupt pervert. I have always been a fairly respected intellect, as have my friends, and my use from high school through adulthood was mostly with groups of intellectually above average, freedom loving Americans. I happened to have lived through a time that saw the rise of the marijuana industry to an empire, as well as the surge of cocaine, the beginning of freebase, and the onslaught of heroin in young, upper middle class society. Although I had little affiliation with powders, (dumb drugs) I was deep enough inside the psychedelic scene to watch that degrade, in confluence with The Grateful Dead, into a criminal enterprise. Criminal not in the legal sense, but morally shameful.

I held high ideals for drug use throughout my career, and still do, but while I'm clear about their spiritual potentials, I also recognize the dangers that lie beneath the surface. I wanted Confessions of a Dope Dealer to be more than my reminiscence of a stoned era, I wanted it to make a statement, about our times, our challenges, and how we might use drugs intelligently in a more realistic society. The times and challenges explained themselves within the journalistic format I began with, and my concurrent dialogue on Chinese Medicine created a formal structure that subtly foretold the damage I was doing to myself, and pointed toward healing awareness through an established medical model. I like to think my observations on drug use and society are fairly astute as well, and many reviewers agree, Confessions is a story demanded to be told.

Sheldon Norberg