I grew up in a drug house in Detroit, where any kind of drug was available. I never had an interest in them and never used. Perhaps the time when a rival gang broke in to my house when I was 12 years old and beat my drug-dealing uncle so badly it took two weeks for my grandmother to clean up all of the blood made me less than enthusiastic about taking a toke of the sticky green. The .375 Magnum one of the dealers pointed at the back of my head as they severely beat my uncle didn’t help either.
While I never had any use for drugs, that doesn’t stop people from assuming that I, a Black man from inner-city Detroit, used every drug imaginable.
During a get-together with a group of friends, in which I was the only Black person in a room of Whites, one of them asked us to describe our first experience with drug use. One by one, each of these middle-class suburbanites named drugs ranging from speed, cocaine, weed laced with cocaine, and other drugs that made me blush in discomfort. When my turn came, all eyes zeroed in on me as if I was going to reveal a magic cocktail for them to take home. They were very disappointed when I said I have nothing to contribute to the conversation.
“Come on, Detroit!” one of my friends said.
“Nope. Never,” I replied.