Flipping a car on the highway isn't as cool as it sounds

It started off just like any other day did at that point in my life.  I was 17. I was young, dumb, and didn’t have a f*****g care in the world.  At the time, I was working as a busser at a local sports bar.  It was a cool spot that everyone would come and hang out at.  They even had nights where they would turn it into a club.  The owner was a cool guy.  He liked to party and would buy weed from me on occasion.  This pretty much gave me the room to do whatever I wanted.  As I was finishing up my shift one night, I popped a couple of Xanax bars, that way by the time I was leaving, my buzz would already be kicking in.  On this particular night, I think I had taken two.  One of the waitresses wanted to trade me some of her Vicodin for a couple of Xanax bars.  She gave me two 7.5 mg Vicodin.  I decided to take them both.  It was Friday night and it seemed like a good idea.  

 

When I was finishing up my shift, I told my boss that I was done and that I was going to leave.  He asked me if I had any weed.  I told him that I’d smoke him out if he gave me a drink.  He agreed.  I didn’t know what to order.  The only drinks I knew about at that point were the well-known ones or the names you hear in the movies.  So, I ordered a sex on the beach.  He put it in a to-go cup for me.  We chopped it up in the back a little bit while we smoked a joint.  I then got my stuff and left.  

 

I was dabbling in selling drugs at this stage in my life.  Not because I was trying to become the next Scarface, but because it was just something you kind of did where I grew up.  It was easy and I liked getting free drugs.  It was around 11:30 p.m. now, and I needed to go sell some Xanax bars to a friend that had hit me up.  She lived down by University Boulevard, which was about 15 minutes away from where I was at.  As I was driving, I was finishing up my sex on the beach and starting to get a little fucked up.  I told the girl to buy me a 6 pack of Mike’s hard lemonade and that I’d take it off the tab.  I didn’t really drink beer at this stage in my life.  I got to her house and we smoked a little, I gave her the s**t, I drank about 2 of the Mike’s hard lemonades, popped another Xanax bar, and left. 

 

Back in the day before everyone had different strains of high grade weed everywhere from legalization, we used to only have brick weed.  We called them “Regs”.  Occasionally, around Christmas time, you would get this pretty decent weed called “Christmas bud”.  It was a little higher class and more potent than the regs.  But, the one everyone wanted and was always hard to find was the “Crip” or “Crippy”, as it was called.  This was high grade indoor grown weed.  Well, it turned out that my next-door neighbor was the f*****g connect for Crippy and I didn’t even know it.  He was a white unassuming guy in his 30’s that always wore golf clothes.  Who would’ve thought he would be the guy?  When I finally found out, I hounded him for months until he finally agreed to sell to me. Every time I saw him I would ask him.  Maybe he didn’t want to sell to me because he perceived me as liability.  Truth is, he didn’t need to.  He sold pounds.  I only had the market for a quarter of a pound.  I couldn’t get the clientele to move serious weight.  My customers were kids who could only afford half eights and the occasional quarter of an ounce.  Crippy was expensive, but finally I had the hook up.  He had agreed to front me a quarter of a pound the day before.  When I went to see him, he asked me if I could get him 200 Xanax bars.  This was a lot, but I said sure.  I had a couple of connections at that time.  I talked to my guy and got the bars.  I got a pretty good deal.  I got them so cheap that I was able to get another 100 bars for free off of what I was making off his 200.  I told him that I would front the money for him since he hooked me up.  

 

Right before I left this girl’s house, I rolled up a joint for the road.  I got in my car and got a call from the guy.  He says he wants the bars.  Cool.  It’s about 2 a.m. now.  I light up the joint and hit the road.  As you can imagine one might be a little intoxicated after weed, alcohol, two Vicodin, and three Xanax bars.  I’m on 595 now which is a major interstate in south Florida.  I’m just about at the Pine Island area of the interstate.  While I’m driving, I drop the joint by accident.  As I reach down to pick it up like a smart person, I completely lose control of the car.  Voosh.  The car flips.  And I flip with it since I didn’t feel it was important to wear a seat belt.  All I remember was flipping in the car from the driver’s side to the passenger’s side and then hitting my head on the passenger’s side window.  I was out after that.  

 

The car was sitting sideways in the middle of the interstate.  The driver’s side was up in the air.  The car must’ve flipped a couple of times because it was completed totaled.  When I came to, all I remembered was getting pulled out by some blonde dude with long hair.  He kept asking me if I was alright.  I said, “Yea yea.”  He told me he called 911.  I went and sat on the railing of 595 while I waited for the ambulance.  I sat there dazed, lit up a Newport, and tried to make sense of what just happened.  It’s around 2:30 a.m. now, and there’s no one on the road.  It’s dark, empty, and quiet.  Occasionally, a car would pass by.  One of them stopped and asked the blonde guy if we were alright.  He told them the cops were on the way and they continued on.  I remember wondering where my other flip flop was, because I only had one on.  I asked the blonde guy.  He didn’t seem to know.  Between all the drugs and the head trauma, I was pretty out of it.  

 

The ambulance came and put me on a backboard.  The cops showed up around the same time.  They started asking me all kinds of questions.  I told them I must’ve hit a pothole and lost control.  We both knew there wasn’t a pothole.  They then asked me if I’d like them to call anyone.  I gave them my Dad’s number.  The ambulance then took me to the emergency room.  When I got there, my Dad showed up not long after that.  He called my Mom as well.  The emergency room was so jammed packed that we sat there for what seemed like hours.  I remember being strapped down to this back board and needing to pee.  I kept screaming that I wanted to be taken off the backboard and that I needed to piss.  I think at that point they took us out of the hallway and put us in a room.  From what I was told after by my parents, was that I was acting like a piece of s**t.  So much so, that someone walked by and told my Dad that they were sorry, not in a good way, but kind of like I’m sorry that’s your son.  Anyways, the cops finally showed up.  They proceeded to ask me if I was drinking or using any substances, specifically because there were no other vehicles involved in the accident but mine.  They wanted to draw my blood and told me that if I refused, I would go to jail.  I remember my dad telling me not to let them.  I was so fucked up I said, “F**k that, I’ll tell you what I’m on” and I proceeded to tell them everything I did that evening and everything that I took.  

 

That night I was wearing these cargo shorts, because cargo shorts were cool back then.  In the pocket to the right I had the 300 Xanax bars and in the pocket to the left I had the quarter pound of Crip.  They never searched me.  They got the blood from me and told me that they’d be in contact with me then left.  My dad would later tell me that they searched my car and gave him all the stuff in the car to throw away.  I had my favorite pipe, a hand scale, baggies, a butterfly knife, brass knuckles, a small katana (which is a small Samurai sword), and a bat in the trunk.  I was a wild kid.  The hospital said my scans were fine and that I was extremely lucky.  They told me that the only thing that kept me from going through the windshield was the fact that I was so intoxicated and didn’t tense up. 

 

Later the next day, I met up with my neighbor to sell him the Xanax bars.  The majority of the 300 bars had been broken in the accident because they were in my pocket.  He didn’t want to buy them.  Because I didn’t want to eat the entire cost, I decided to cut him a deal and gave him the majority of the ones that were still intact with a couple of broken ones for a good price.

 

We ended up hiring a lawyer right after this happened.  We had to use some of my college money to be able to afford him.  Funny enough, we used my mom’s divorce lawyer.  My parents were going through a pretty rough divorce at the time.  The guy said he knew some people over at the department, this and that.  He said he’d look into it and see what they had on me.  We’d check in with him every month or so, and he would say that it’s still under investigation.  About 6 months or so goes by and he calls us.  He tells us that they lost the blood results and that the case was thrown out. 

 

Till this day, I don’t exactly know what happened.  From the cops supposedly given my dad enough paraphernalia to charge me, to not being searched, evidence being lost, and my case being dropped.  I’ve just chalked it up to being extremely lucky, because the truth is, I don’t understand how everything happened.  If one thing would’ve happened differently that night, my life would’ve been gravely impacted.  You would think that at the time I would’ve understood the significance of that night and attempted to change the way I was living my life.  Nope.  I was young and stupid, and that moment wouldn’t come until years later.  

 

It’s weird how things change.  You don’t realize how or when they happen, they just kind of happen.  It’s seems like a lifetime between the kid I was that night and the man that I am today.  Today, I am a well-respected medical professional who has a DEA license.  They say you never really know where you’re going, until you know where you’ve been.  I know that I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t go through the things that I have, but I also know that everything that I have, is only possible because of luck.