I couldn’t have been any older than 14 when I first heard somebody say, “For every drug dealer that gets killed or goes to prison, there’s three more waiting to take their place!”

I think back on this whenever I reflect on my life in the streets in the dope game. Back then, as a teenager coming up in the early 1990s, I had run away from my grandmother’s house in search of a better life. 

The first place I fled to was my uncle’s house, which had turned into a crack house. I decided to start selling crack cocaine because I wanted more money, less poverty and pain. I thought selling drugs was the best way to attain those goals.

My uncle and his partners were about nine years my senior. Outside his apartment, we sold crack at an intersection in our neighborhood called “the block,” on the corner of Oak Street and Wilson Avenue — shortened to Oak and Will, or “Choke and Kill” as a nickname. 

All the hustlers hung out there, and it was one of the most dangerous areas in Columbus, Ohio. Most of the guys my age were already out there selling crack.

Years later, I have realized that my homies and I suffered from what I call “super optimism.” This is the phenomenon of perceived invincibility. Drug dealers who suffer from it believe that they won’t get caught like others because they are different, somehow special. 

We weren’t like the guys getting shot, or the guys getting killed, or the guys going to prison. We were collectively making so much money that we felt like we were smarter, slicker, tougher and more organized than the other drug crews running the same streets. 

We used to reassure ourselves, “Man, we ain’t built like them dudes. We different!”

Of course, that mentality was eventually shattered by reality. Two of my homies were killed by rival crews in the summer of 1993, while another was caught up in a federal drug case that same year. Two more homies were sent to prison a year later. 

This turmoil hit me harder than the rest of my circle. One of my homies who was killed had been a childhood friend. We were standing outside his crack house when a member of a rival crew emerged from between two apartment buildings, wearing a black ski mask and carrying a pistol. I heard quick shots.

One bullet hit my homie in the chest. Another struck his girlfriend, who was standing on the front porch. The masked gunman disappeared just as quickly as he popped up without ever firing a shot my way. My friend died right next to me.

My circle shrank from over 40 hustlers to roughly a dozen.

The dope game continued to intensify as six more friends went to prison and three more homies were killed from 1995 to 1997. By then, my circle had shrunk to only me. 

And then in April 1998, that final dot was erased. I was sent to prison for three gun charges, a drug trafficking charge, and two more drug possession charges. During that stint in prison, I lost two more friends to gun violence.

Eventually, everyone becomes a statistic of this vicious cycle.

The crack epidemic first made its mark on the United States between 1984 and 1986. In big cities, crack-related murders skyrocketed. A 1988 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in New York City, crack use was tied to 32% of all homicides and 60% of drug-related homicides.  

Just in my city alone, I witnessed dozens of men and women lose their lives from drug-related violence.

Over the years, I’ve learned that many of these deaths could have been avoided. I’ve learned not to confuse sordid thoughts and illicit intentions with knowledge and wisdom. 

Some people, like I did, refuse to bend when someone corrects them, or when real-life circumstances like prison and death are screaming at them, begging them to take another path. Eventually they will break, and there will be no one to repair the damage.

If my homies and I had realized the ramifications of selling drugs when we witnessed other dealers getting killed or being sent to prison, we might have been able to make it out of that world. 

I hope that people in the game now aren’t driven by super optimism like I was. I hope they realize that they aren’t any different than we were. If they don’t, they could very easily become another statistic, just like us.