Baltimore Drug Kingpin Reveals Making Millions Selling Heroin For The Mafia

Everybody who was selling heroin was getting the money, so I started gravitating towards it and started making $45,000 a day or something like that. There was always about heroin. The Baltimore's always been a city that's looked for down the highs. The connect that I got through Lewisburg, that was one of the major five families. They used to fly it down to me. The first week of the month, that's when people get paid, welfare checks, social security checks. That was $100,000 a day. I was handling half a million, millions of dollars at a time. Meet Steve Dixon, one of the premier heroin kingpins to emerge from the city of Baltimore. Steve came of age in the late 70s and early 1980s. At a time when wholesale China-wide heroin was selling for $100,000 a kilo. By 1985, Steve and a handful of other players were supplying virtually the entire city and the surrounding Baltimore counties. Steve was having 10 bricks of raw heroin flown in by helicopter by the Gambino family from New York every week. Plus, he was the first kingpin to make connections with Nigerian importers, who introduced him to a special Pakistani grey heroin, which was even more potent and profitable than the China White. He might come off as a modest guy, but ask anyone from Baltimore who was getting money in that era, Steve was that dude. But unlike most kingpins of his status, Steve never ended up in prison. Instead, he got hooked on his own product, and for 12 years was a stone-cold Baltimore street junkie. After he finally got clean, he became a drug counselor and is now one of the most respected and well-qualified substance abuse specialists in the state of Maryland. Ladies and gentlemen, this man was like prop Joe from the wire. He pulled the puppet strings of the narcotics trade in Baltimore. Except unlike Joe, Steve didn't end up dead, quite the opposite. He's doing so much good now, his way of making up for the years of destruction that he caused the city. All right, you guys, let's get into it. It's Baltimore's finest Stephen Dixon right here on the connect with Johnny Mitchell. Yeah, it's fascinating. Well, I was asking a lot of camera about drug users in Baltimore because the whole game, the whole kingpin drug economy, only exists because so many people are out there getting high. Buying, right? Well, I don't like people to use that term kingpin. I have a friend that when he was in the feds, and they were sitting around talking about how many corners they controlled or how much money they made and a guy from one of the cartels came up and said, "Pull them to the side." I say, "I really like you." I say, "But you guys shouldn't use that kind of language." Say, 'cause we compete to take over whole states or continents. We compete to take over the West Coast, the whole East Coast. And you guys talking about taking over corner, so. Yeah, there's levels to kingpin, right? We talk about kingpin as an urban city kingpin. When we talk about drug trafficking and all these things, I think we forget that all of this millions of dollars is being generated from the misery of drug addicts buying $10 pieces at a time. Absolutely. And why Baltimore, you know, you really got on in the late '70s, early '80s, this huge heroin boom, when the rest of the country was starting to boom with crack cocaine. Why has Baltimore traditionally been the opioid capital of American big cities? I don't know what that's about because other cities were always moving towards cocaine. Baltimore's still, it was a heroin. It was always been in the '60s, my uncles, and everybody else that I knew, it was always about heroin, always about heroin. Cocaine came at a little later time and then crack came a little later after that. But Baltimore's always been, heroin has been the king of this economy. Now, you know, it's not the king anymore. Fent is, but it's always been the city that's looked for downer highs. It's always. Is that because of the slow, and I have no idea, I'm literally just speculating, it's maybe the slowness of the culture. You know, everybody's very nice here. This is a really friendly, kind of slow-moving town. It's a city, but it feels like a town. It feels like a middle-American city. I could be in Kansas City right now, but we're 45 minutes away from the nation's capital. We're a coastal metropolis. Could it be that, whereas New York, everybody's working 80 hours a week. They like, they want to sniff coke and smoke crack. I don't know because New York was a heroin capital, too. So go to New York. That's where all our plugs came from. Where all our connects came from. Baltimore guys just go to New York to make that happen. So that was up until a point. Then in the early '80s, we had this big surge of Nigerians that came. Do you know about that? So we had a surge in Nigerians that came and they came. They were bringing up a pure heroin from Pakistan, or Afghanistan, and they were like swallowing it and pooping it out, or they were bringing this to cases, luggage or whatever, and they made the price, they made the quality of heroin go extremely high. And this was in the early, very early '80s. And so you could take one ounce of what they had, and you could put stuff on it, like you could put 70 ounces of cut on it, or 60 ounces of cut on it. So it was making the profit margin. The margin just blew up. And what could you sell an ounce for after you cut it? Well, then you were back at all up and sell it in 100 dollar bags, 50 dollar bags, 35 dollar bags, 70 dollar bags. So the economy was much different too, because people who were getting out of your job, were they were professional, they were bank robbers, they were professional boosters, they were people who stole and the corners were, I can give you an example, when I went from being on the corner and my whole income combined with the package I had, and the money and everything, I might have had about $5,000. And in a short period of time, I looked up, and I was handling half a million millions of dollars at a time. And I had two different plugs. I had, well, to get back to it, I had a friend that really blew up. He blew up because he had a Nigerian connect. He ended up in the Feds. He ended up in the Feds with 15 years, and he copped out and he got 15 years. Well, why he was in the Feds, he plugged me into two different people who are very well known. One of them was an old Jewish guy that was in, had been locked up forever, related to the French connection. And one of them was a black guy that was locked up. He, I forgot me. Well, when he got caught in New York, he had like $12 million in his wall, right? He's just both of those guys are deceased now. So, he connected me to them. I used to go to Lewisburg to visit him. He connected me to them. But at the same time, I had African connects too. So I had African connect here that was bringing the Nigerian connect to Baltimore. But they were coming, the drugs were coming from Afghanistan or Pakistan or wherever. So, that dope was different than China White though? Yeah, it wasn't. So, the connect that I got through Lewisburg, that was through one of the major five families that wasn't supposed to be selling drugs. They used to fly it down to me, right? From New York. They used to bring kiddos. And that was that white shit? That was kind of white or tan. Right, right. And then the Nigerian Pakistani dope. Was darker brown, dark tan, sandy light. But it hadn't been cut to Nigerians, weren't interested in cutting it. They were interested in getting rid of them. And that quality was even higher than China. And the drugs that have ever hit the streets of Baltimore. But the quality of it made people make money. Made a lot of money. So, you could be essentially a street dealer, but if you had enough money to buy one ounce of pure Pakistani heroin, you could become a millionaire very quickly. Absolutely, absolutely. Wow, absolutely. Now, a lot of working-class Baltimoreians were actually functional drug users, right? Like, I was asking that off camera. Like, you know, the construction guys and bus drivers and all these people, city workers, maybe schoolteachers, I don't know, would go through the strips in the morning to, you know, buy a couple of capsules, get them up. And then after work, go through and buy a couple more. Absolutely. You can't do that with fentanyl. Not really, because fentanyl takes your whole life over. and because of what it does to you physically. offense attacks the lungs, and it attacks how much oxygen is put into the bloodstream. And then that, once they hiss the brain, it makes you just delirious, you're screaming, you're beating yourself, you can't go to work. And then when you have desalazine, which is a small cat, a small cat tranquilizer, animal tranquilizer, that's hooked up in it. That causes all the open wounds. So where are you going to work at? And you got open wounds and you're smelling bad, you're looking bad. So most of those people are living in abandoned those and all that kind of stuff. So do you think that the drug culture, do you think, A, did a lot of those junkies, those drug users, those functional drug users? I mean, what happened to them? From the 80s? Yeah, the 80s, 90s, even the 2000s before fentanyl. Now that they can't get it. Now that there is no more heroin. Well, groups, I'm just wanting treatment and got clean. So Baltimore is not only the heroin capital. Baltimore is also a treatment capital. It's treatment centers everywhere in Baltimore. So it's thousands of thousands of people that are in treatment. So there, so there has been progress. There really has been, yeah, getting people clean. Absolutely. I own a treatment center, absolute healing. And I work at two or three other ones and they're all filled with people. All of them are trying to get this out together. Of course, people do relapse, go back out. But people are trying to get clean. Baltimore has hundreds of methadone cleanses. So it's a little different. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating. So in certain ways, fentanyl either brought you to your knees or ruined your life or forced you to get clean because now you can't get high and have a life anymore. No. So it's kind of a blessing in certain ways because it's so bad. You're like, okay, I'm done with drugs. So fentanyl doesn't allow you to be a functional addict. That doesn't happen. No, that's not going to happen. Today's episode is brought to you by Cash App. Now, I've been using Cash App for as long as it's been around since I've had a smartphone 16 years. And I love how simple they make it to send and receive money. But if you're not already up to speed, Cash App is more than just a safe way to send and receive money. With the Cash App card, you unlock a ton of perks without all the hidden fees. Enjoy benefits like exclusive early access to nationwide concert pre-sales like Kendrick Lamar, Sabrina Carpenter, just to name a few. Plus discounts on everyday purchases and popular brands you've probably already been spending money on. Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money move easier. Cash App also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you. 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My grandfather and I'm very strict man worked every day. But he has seven children. My mother's oldest is seven. So my mother, very bright, graduated from high school at 16. And she went to college and became a school teacher. So she got a bachelor degree and a master's degree with a special team and special education. So we moved from Gilmahomes to Uptown to West Baltimore. It was a very nice neighborhood. It was predominantly Jewish neighborhood. But of course when we moved in, we were one of the first few black families in their neighborhood and we moved in. Of course, white flight happened. And so then then they built this thing called the highway to nowhere and knocked down a lot of houses, which they did in every city, urban, renewal. And those people moved uptown. So when they did that, I actually went to a laboratory school from the kindergarten due to fifth grade. It was on a college campus. So my, the professors and the student teachers there were my instructors. And then after that, I went to Catholic school for two years. But after that, I went to public school. And once I got in public school, it was, it would become a part of it or go home every day without your shoes on your feet or every day without a colon or something like that. At what year is that? Um, I want to say when I got in, I went to public school, started eighth grade. So we're talking like early 70s. Yeah, early 70s. Okay. Yeah, I was born in 57. So early 70s. So that this is when a lot of the Vietnam veterans are coming back, a lot of them black. I'm sure that contributed to the heroin. I have floccals went to Vietnam. Three of them came back to heroin addicts. Yeah. Three out of four. Yeah. So my mother's brothers, yeah, they came back. Right. Highly addicted. So maybe that's what started the next 20 year wave of heroin years. Absolutely. Vietnam more. Absolutely. And so from there, I mean, I got involved in, I kind of live like a bipolar life. Inside the house, my mother was a school teacher and my father worked at Social Security, had good jobs, middle class jobs. But outside the house, I had to be one way. Inside the house, I had to be enough of it. So we started. The guys are grew up with, we started doing things like snatching pocketbooks, burglaries, stealing cars, going in jewelry stores, bust a case open, snatched a jewelry and run and all that. And then, you know, just becoming involved in street life. And so from there, each one of us kind of like tried to figure out what we were really good at. So the shop left in the burglaries, all that didn't appeal to me, what appealed to me was when I saw the guys with the big cars and the front coats on the jewelry. And so I gravitated towards that. And I started selling marijuana first, nickel bags of tea. And then I was all asked it. And as I got to be a little older, my late teens, I started selling a little bit of cocaine. I was going to stay right dead. Cocaine just came to our community. But everybody who was selling heroin was getting the money. So I started gravitating towards that. Started meeting connections and went back to the projects, went back to Gilmahome. Everybody calls one quote, Bruce court, went back to Bruce court and started making some money, started making $45,000 a day or something like that. And then a met a guy came home from prison and he showed me the game. And like how to really like mix it and really become, yeah. And he acquired a, a Nigerian connection. And when he acquired that connection, I learned a lot from him, but he ended up going to prison. And when he went through the fades, I started visiting him. And he showed me how to take it to the next level. Okay. So, but correct me if I'm wrong, connects wouldn't just put any old dealer down with the package, right? Like that's that's why there was such a hierarchy and so much money if you had to have the guy. Yeah, they had the guy. Yeah, they had to connect. So me, he wouldn't mess with, he only messed with four or five guys. The guy I'm telling you about. And those all five of us end up having a certain section of the city. One guy was in Lexington Terrence. One guy was in, he had the vision street pockets. I had killed my homes and I acquired another place called North and Plasky. Now, when you say you acquired, how do you, how do you acquire? Well, drug dealing really. Most of the times you acquire it through force or whatever, but I didn't have to do that because I had the better product. I had the product. So I moved into North and Plasky and North and Plasky is where everybody really knows me from. Okay. And what part of for people that aren't super familiar with Baltimore? What area is West Baltimore? Okay. Gotcha. And so that Avan, Barkstale's territory, if the wires, your only reference. Yeah, they were the West side guys in the show. They were, they were, they were from, you know, they changed the name, but they're from Lexington Terrence. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Which was was a gold mine. Why? Yeah. Because it had, it was a high rise building. And yeah, hundreds of hundreds of people lit it, thousands of people lit it. And they had, they were the guys who originally had the drugs. That's where people want to go cut. Okay. So you have. I had spots in the projects. - I had one spot in the projects, Gilmour Holmes. - And then spots in like, row house communities? - Yes. - Were they abandoned buildings? - abandoned buildings weren't out there. - Okay, right, right. - So when people see Baltimore and they see all these abandoned buildings, somebody lived there. - Right. (laughs) - They just built them like that. - They weren't, we didn't have abandoned buildings. If you saw a empty house, it was somebody had just moved out of that house. There was no such thing as the abandoned building. - Right. - And the '80s, and going into the crack world, made that happen. - Why is that? - Because people be caught on drugs, and people couldn't afford their houses anymore. And the land laws weren't coming back, fixing them up. It's better for the landlord, just to put boards on it, and get a city tax credit or something. - Right. - Then the fight was somebody about some rent that they're not gonna get. Because the person that's on drugs or whatever. So all those abandoned those, that's, I mean, it's not, it's a fairly new phenomenon. Baltimore didn't look like that. So when people see those images on the wire or the corner, that happens in the '90s, in two to two thousand, no, it was communities. And really, let me just say this, I really wanna make sure this gets in. I'm not really proud of my background. It is my background, but I tell people all the time. People come to talk to me about this stuff all the time. I don't really like to talk about it at all, because I was in embarrassment to my family. I did a lot of harm to the community. Those abandoned buildings, I look at them and say I'm responsible for some of that. You follow what I'm saying? And so I don't pride myself on this. It's just my story, it is what it is. - Well, why do you think, do you think it was just environment? Because you come from a two-parent household, which is supposed to be like the bedrock of what keeps kids from straying into crime. You know, they had middle-class jobs. You had all the opportunity to go to college. What happened in the '70s to urban black America for to you? What happened to me was I came outside. And outside was a lot of peer pressure. And I could have went a lot of different ways. I ended up dropping out. I went to high school for about two months, maybe. And I probably didn't go to a class. The 10th grade year was like the worst year ever. It was, you know, every day after school, I was somewhere even doing something. I was breaking in something, stealing a car, selling some weed. And everybody in my neighborhood was doing something. - What was it about you that made you good at drug dealing? Because clearly you had an act for it. You know, if you're getting put down by Italians and, you know, Bob guys and international plugs, like, again, they don't give that out to just anybody. So, was it because of your unassuming nature? Did you weren't flashy or what was it that what do you think? Like, yeah, just what do you think gave you the edge? - I'm going to pay the money. I'm going to count the money, right? You know, I used to take, I used to take a million, two million, three million, sometimes more to New York. Everyone's the authority. I'm going to take the money there. I used to go and, you know, I was trustworthy to, you know, back then, rats weren't out like they are now. If they were, we didn't know it. In my community, we knew the two rats. We know those two guys. (laughing) We knew who they were. And they were dope phase, you know what I mean? And so, I'm not serving them. I'm not going to sell them no dope. You want to sell them some dope. You sell them some dope. So, you know, it wasn't that many rats. And they weren't giving out, they weren't giving, they weren't giving out the time that they were giving out. They started giving that time out in the 80s. - So, you were cash on delivery when you went to see your plugs in New York? - No, they used to give it to me up front. They would give it to me up front. And then I would come back with the money. And then sometime, I would have my own money as well. - Right, yeah. - So, it's kind of, here's a million of mine and you give me an extra million, whatever that is. - Well, they would give it to you and say, this is, you know, this key is 200, 250. Bring me this 250 back by such and such a day. Bring me this 200 back by such and such a day. And they might give you five or six of them. Or if they had cocaine, you'd turn a 15 at all. But I didn't even, I mean, I keep all the cocaine sitting around when they bother. They really try to really sell it that much. 'Cause the money wasn't in that at that time. Crack wasn't out yet. - Right. Yeah, what's 50,000 for a key when this key, I can make 750 after I bag it out. How many kilos would you pick up in New York? - Well, they would bring a hit. - Right. - So, that was another thing too, with the Italians, I didn't even have to worry about going to get it. - Well, you would just take the money up. - Take the money up to them. - That's incredible. They must have loved you. - Well, they had a way to move ahead. It was easy. Me being on a highway would have won that good. - No. - Yeah, we had the thing, the Jersey Turnpike. You're not going to make it out there. - That's when they pulled your black, they're pulling you over, right, without a stake plate. - Absolutely. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - So, they bring you what's an average weak look like? - Sometimes they would bring me three or four or five keys. Yeah, two or three depends on what they had. But I'm going to say this for anybody who doesn't know. They play fair to a degree. And then they turn into who they really are. - The mob guys? - Absolutely. Absolutely. Stop bringing you three that are good, two that are bad. Bring you two that are good, one that's bad. You know, then you still owe them the money. You know what I mean? That's what always happens. - So, when you met the Nigerians, they sounded like they were the better source. - They were in the beginning. In the beginning and the two. Until you got some people that put them down. They said, man, you know what they don't with that, right? - You know how much they're making? - Let me teach you this. So, towards the end, they turned out to be right and two. - Okay, so, if you've got two sections of the city, right? How are you distributing? Do you have? - No, but not just that. I had hundreds of guys that were coming about my weight from me. - Oh, okay. - Hosted. Can you go into that a little bit? - Yeah, you know, the word was out. And if I trusted them, if I knew them, and I had a lot of guys around me that knew other guys. So, I had a partner too. So, he had sections, I had sections. - So, were these Baltimore guys, or were they coming from out of town? - No, Baltimore guys. And then we had guys that came from DC. Guys that came from Virginia. - So, then your retail operation, how many, like after you back out of Kilo? - A Kilo of raw heroin. - Right. - How, the 1,000 grams of raw heroin? - You can make that into. - How many? - So, the way to look at it is this, is that you can take, in Baltimore, during that time, you just have a baby lax tip from Italy, carbonita. And then you had a pharmaceutical tool called quinine. And you would mix those two together. And then you would take those two and mix the heroin. But, well, if you had an ounce, there was a sort of raw heroin. At some points, you could put 40 ounces of that mixture on it. And then you bag it up, depending on what you were selling the bags for. You might give 50 bags. I mean, give 50 dollars a bag, 60 dollars a bag. So, let me give you an example. North and Pulaski had his height, at his height, on good weeks. And those weeks, they printed on certain things too, we're getting to that. But North and Pulaski had used to get 100,000 a day, just off their one corn. That's not counting what was coming out of Gilmore Homes, or what was coming out of the other areas. I had two guys over East Baltimore. I just saw them at a party about a month ago. They were making 50, 60,000 a day. They had Perkins, they had Perkins projects. And they were making 50, 60 a day. And then my partner had some guys and other parts of East Baltimore. They were getting 20 a day stuff like that. - So, 100,000 and that's out of-- - One corn. - Right now, this is the 80s. So, are they actually on a corner? Do you have people coming up into a house? Open air. - Open air. - Open air in the corner. So, the houses, you have staff houses. Then you have guys who run us. Then you have a-- it's a business. Then you have toutes. They're the guys who stand on the corner. They tell everybody-- - Got that bomb. - Got that W.M.D. - Right. - Who stands so. - So, really, the wire filmed in the 2000s is literally stories from-- from taking from the 80s right because by the 2000s it's already too hot. You can't be operating. Well, the open air drug market, they say this one of the last cities that still has that for sure. So if you go to North and Pennsylvania right now, it's an open air drug market. The police are going to be parked right there, guys are going to be selling drugs, you know, because now they can't jump out and jump on you because of the Freddie Gray stuff and all that. I see. Yeah, because we signed that low, but then with the fares that, you know, the police officers don't want to lose their pensions and all that. So they know. Right. Today's episode is brought to you by super power. I hate going to the doctor. I hate the process of it. 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And every now and then they might read a house that you had a station. Did they ever get like significant quantity? No, no. Like how could that be? You'd have to be the dumbest fool to have the whole house. You've got all kinds of houses everywhere, right? So they would pay somebody, you pay somebody to use the house. You pay, you pay somebody. Most of the time it's an ad sometimes it's an older person just needs money and you pay somebody to sit in the house and they come to the back door, back window and do you call it hitting out of the house? And the runner gets it, goes back to the corner, collects everybody's money, goes back, puts the money through the window, put the money through the door, whatever that's how it worked out. So you really had it set up like a business? Like you guys, but I mean you had people on salary. Yeah, people on salary, but also you had people who got like if you if you on the corner, like North Plastie had 70s for a while. So out of the 70s, they were at the runner would take 50 dollars to the house, they'd get to keep 20 or they would take you know 62 hours, they'd get to keep 10. But just imagine you get 10 dollars and you sold it 50 bags, you sold 100 bags, you know what I mean in the day. So you're doing these kind of numbers, you know, millions of dollars a week. Yes, absolutely. That's a massive operation to have to oversee. Absolutely. Like how did you do, I know you had a business partner, but did you have like managers? Absolutely. People that keep a track of the riffraff. Yeah, absolutely. And then you would always have some you have guys who were, you know, that their whole thing was to hold the gun. What their whole thing was to protect the stash house. Or you had, you know, you just paid people, you had to pay for everything. It's a business. It's a real business. And we treated it that way. Now in terms of the violence, was there anything like what we saw on the wire? Absolutely. Absolutely. He had a stick up man. The guy Omar and wise, he's modeled after three or four guys that all of us personally knew. So you know, his name wasn't Omar, but he, but when he came around, that kind of stuff happened. And when he came through with the shotgun? Yeah, or guns or three or four different guys with him call those a stick up boys. They are, they, they were stick up guys. But the thing about most of them is that when you gain the rapport with them, man, you just can't ride my guys. What you need? Let me, let me look out for you. What you need? You know, the man, man, you are right. Oh, so you would like basically pay them like a tax? You don't look at it because, because back then they would say, oh, he's leaning on you. Well, that's a soft lane. So you don't look at it like that. You're going to make sure if he comes with respect, then you're going to give him respect. But if it comes with attitude that I'm really leaning on you, you're going to give me this. Then at some point, he's going to disappear too. So that's going to happen. Yeah. Now what, what became of them? Those stick up boys. Most of them, I mean, it's very few retired stick up boys. Most of them have retired another way, either even prison or they did because the guys just getting all this money, not going for that. You know, they've, they've been on man-assisted with Omar. But we, you know, we had the real Omar, the real guy, he just passed away a couple of years ago. Hey, you know, he wasn't playing. You know, his name was known in this town that if he came around, he wasn't coming around to say, hi, he was coming around, to pull that gun out. And what do you smoke people? What do you kill people that give them a problem? They had bodies on them. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that's, there's so much money in the streets. It's not really a surprise. You had guys like that. Well, I think the money is, I don't know, I look at it now. And I say, I don't think, well, first of all, it's not my belief system. First of all, let me say this too, is after my run, you know, I became addicted to drugs. I forgot maybe 12 years of something heavily addicted to heroin. And, and sometimes I had a crack, but, you know, I was addicted to crack as well, but heroin was what I was addicted to. And what ended up happening is that I had to come to some kind of spiritual awakening about this whole thing, this whole thing, this whole thing was I just look back at it now and it was horrible. It was horrible. People were, people lost their houses, people's children, oh, dear, people, people were killed, Baltimore was known to be a small city of the size. We were at three, four hundred murders a year, regularly. Well, think about if a city, this small, by back in the 80s, could produce a hundred thousand dollars worth of drug money from one corner. Oh, think about how many people have to be buying. Buying drugs, but this is what you have to understand too. You had major strips all over Baltimore like that. I wasn't like a unique character. It was, during that time, it was 10 of me. And then, during that time, it was 10 people above me that was tonnered up. So, did you guys all have the same connects? No, everybody had different connects. Who, generally though, were those the same, the sources either? Nigerians. Right. It was coming from out of New York somewhere. Right. And did you know these other dealers? Yeah, we all know each other. Local kingpins. We all know each other. Okay. And you respected each other's turf more or less. Somewhat sometimes, you know, some of us didn't like each other. Some of us like each other. Some of us love each other, you know what I mean? And something depends on where you were from. Who you grew up with, that kind of thing. If somebody's connect fell off, and they couldn't get good dope, would a method of taking over somebody's corner be sending your workers with the good stuff to like. Most of the time, those guys, if you had somebody who were all right with, you could go and buy something from them. Right. Yeah. I see. Yeah. Corners and Baltimore were very territorial. You could lose your life, literally, for even Trying that kind of stuff right here. So the retail for you was more profitable than the wholesale Yeah, but I still made money on the whole system. Right. Okay, and You're paying a lot of money, but you're also you're making a lot of money. Mm-hmm. Did were you buying buildings? Absolutely, absolutely So I'm the one that's known and I built on the corner that I had rocking I brought a band and store and I tricked it out and had a 24-hour store. It's very similar to a 7-Eleven with with hot meals and stuff as well and then I had two Bruce loans. I had a bar and club out in the county Yeah, I didn't jump off too well and I had about a hundred a hundred of these houses to partner bills Do some of those building those hundred or plus properties you own to some of them now look like these fixed Yeah, once I ended up on drugs is started trickling away. Right. Yeah, right. It started trickling work That's unique your stories unique because a lot of the old-school heroin traffickers Started out as junkies themselves like Nikki Barnes was even out of a trash can of Harlem. Yeah a lot of these guys And that's how they learned about heroin was being so Addicted to it and that's how and they made a lot of connects that way and then they cleaned themselves up and they themselves became These big kingpins you went the opposite way. Yeah, I was I was always addicted to I wanted lost sums of money and I wanted nice cars. I wanted a Bentley I wanted a rose rose. I wanted to live in nice places. Did you have all those cars? I had real nice cars I never never achieved the Rose or the Bentley because in Baltimore doing that time if you the brother rose or Bentley that would have been it That's it. Yeah, everybody who went real crazy. We're caught of course all of BMW's Mercedes You know that kind of stuff but anything above that you were asking for a lot of tension Like I clearly could have done it, but it didn't make sense This video is sponsored by Nord VPN you guys have heard we talk about VPNs before you know how much I value my privacy and when I go online I do not log on for any reason without using Nord VPN It's what little privacy and freedom that we have left we have to cherish it online threats have changed most attacks today Aren't just malware files sitting on your device their scams fake shops Fishing links and social engineering that hit before anything even downloads That's why Nord VPN is now an all-in-one digital security app It still gives you the world's most advanced VPN and now it includes a built-in next-generation Antivirus that stops threats at the source it uses AI to block scam websites and phishing attempts scans downloads for malware and removes the dangerous ones Blocks trackers and ads for cleaner browsing and even flags potential scam calls plus their dark web monitor alerts you if your data shows up in a leak Privacy first one app one subscription protection on up to ten devices and the VPN is still right there as a core feature Upgrade your online protection with Nord VPNs all-in-one security Grab the exclusive deal plus four extra months at nordvpn.com/theconnect One more time that's nordvpn.com/theconnect it's risk-free with their 30-day money back guarantee You've got nothing to lose and all of your online privacy to gain that's nordvpn.com/theconnect Thanks Nord So yeah, you're addicted to the lifestyle. Mm-hmm you're addicted to the Took a lot to break that of course. What was more addictive drugs or drug money? Well, I woke up every day When I was a hero when I had it with the you know the stomach hurting and loose bowels nose running Eyes running and just the compulsive thought But they're physically But mentally psychologically my addiction to money was really really bad. I couldn't stop myself Yeah, tell us about a day in the life at the height of your Getting money. I couldn't stop myself. It was I'll tell you this North and Pulaski during the first of the month right the first week of the month That's when people get paid welfare checks so security check that was the hundred thousand dollar days The next week might be 80,000 dollar days the week after that might be 60,000 So the week the last week of the month when when money is Drying up might be 40 a day 50 a day. I used to complain about I thought that was like I look back. I said how insane was that Somebody's getting 40,000 a day and out of that 40,000 maybe 20 of it is yours and you're in your partner getting 10 a day a piece Yeah, how much did your parents make in a year back in 1983 right about What you got on a bad day a bad day, right? Yeah, you follow me so Of the power because what it really equates to is power. Yeah Yeah, cuz I tell I tell people it It leaves you to a lot of things, you know you you could take 50,000 buy some jewelry 100,000 buy jewelry You don't buy any car you want you can live way you want you never have to get up early if you don't want to To go to work, but I got up early because I knew that was the time to be the undercover police So I would get up early because of that. Can you explain that yeah? Well, they had schedules They would come out, you know, they would be out every now and then they would be out like six in the morning But they're going to maximize door down and going to house most of the time they got to send their kids to school and stuff like that So they they're not gonna come out there on a schedule eight o'clock in the morning So we would get up five or six in the morning go make all our deliveries go make all our sales And then go back in and duck out for a couple hours Till it's time to come around and see about collecting money because heroin's an early morning thing Yeah, yeah, you got to have a shop open in the morning Yeah, okay, and were you your shops running 24 hours? No No, that that that was That was something that started when crack came out Most people shops used to close like almost by the time it was dark shops closed Because now you're inviting the vampires the Dracula's The werewolves can rank come on You don't want to be out there. You want to keep your people in that position And did you have Respect for the the neighborhoods you were dealing in like when the kids were walking to school Yeah, you have respect for the kids you have respect for the older people But but places like Norfolk Plasky Uh Lexington turrets little projects the respect started to dissipate everything was going away Because now it's just about the money. Did you have people that would come to you Good people that would say hey, I'm I need a job Yeah, yeah people who were working people Older people they might say you can use my house for the day You might pay him like three four hundred dollars a day So you can set up an house Two hundred dollars a day whatever how old were the people Like did you have an age requirement for somebody that wanted to like work is working a shop? Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean you wouldn't you wouldn't have Having real young kids So let me just say this let's back up a little while before The period that I came in I was a young guy. I was in my twenties right before that period you couldn't be that young Solid drugs. That was it like a new phenomenon. Right. It was old together. Yeah, everybody couldn't sell drugs Everybody had to have a hustle But to be a drug dealer was like a special thing now anybody Right, I'm just thinking about the wire, you know, it's like a bunch of 12-year-olds and oversized white teeth and you know They mixed that together, so but that's not what your shops look like no No, our shops were grown man. They were professional. Yeah, they were in the 20s. Okay, in the 30s Okay, did anybody that worked for you go on to become a big-time dealer a bunch of the guys when I became a drug addict a bunch of the guys that would Close to me. They rose up Because I mean your workers if you were getting You know, I don't know what your profit was a week, but maybe close to a million bucks Your workers probably became millionaires or your people buying from you. Yeah, I had a A little kid in neighborhood that was a real trustworthy. He was one of my biggest dealers for a while And so it got to the point where We couldn't bag it all up. We couldn't deliver it all me and my partner We couldn't deliver it all we couldn't bag it all up. We couldn't count the money So we had a we had our apartment that had a room about this size Where ones and fives on the floor like this because what can you do with them? It looks like magic city Yeah, the people all start weekends the people the people the the Nigerians don't want ones and fives The Italians don't want 10s and 20s You understand what I'm saying? So what are you doing with all this money is just sitting around. We got bags and bags or money just sitting around that you can't do anything with. And I looked up most of the properties when we had to put them in somebody else's name. Most of the cars were in somebody else's name. So I looked up and I said this is not even really making sense because you making all this money. You got half a million dollars. You got a million dollars. You can't even. What can you do with it? What do you do with half a million dollars and what? Nothing. What do you do with it? You give it away to people. You spend it on full of stuff. Do you remember the craziest purchases you would make with just ones and fives? Yeah. I remember what I used to do with it. I used to put big, big oaks of it in my pocket and I would have bags of it in whatever car. I literally drive different cars around old cars and stuff. So I sneak around and I would go out on a corner and people would say they need them. They would see me coming. I would give it away because of what could I do with it? So right after me, right after the time period of me, the next level of guys started saying, "We'll take ones and fives." And that worked? Yeah, that worked. You want some dope. You will make sure you come with tens and two of us. We don't take ones and fives. Now, how would you convert five kilos that you made into 100 kilos, right? How would you get the connects back 50s and 100s? Yeah, well, I would get all of 50s and 100s that I had and then I would have places that I could go and trade money into, but they couldn't take it all. They couldn't take it all, yeah. So that must have been like the time consuming process. That's why when I look back over it and I look back over all the guys and even when I watch your podcast, I watch all the podcasts. To me, I come up with everybody's a failed criminal. Most of them end up in prison, end up in drugs, killed, and very few, I know very few guys who ended up with a whole lot of anything. We're the properties. Well, my properties come on. I ride past them and look at them. You knock on the door. Are you on his house? Yes, very, very few make out. So to me, so let me tell you some over the jail for close to a year and I clean up. I'm over the jail. I'm clean. Make my mind up. I'm gonna be clean. And so when I get out, I went back to the same thing for a little while. And 30 days later, I'm locked back up. But I'm locked back up this time because a girl wants to come in my I'm living in the house that I brought. She wants to come in the house. She lived across the street with a mother. She wanted to come in the house and smoke some coke. But it's early in the morning. And I can't take the smell of the coke because I'm gonna be dope sick. So we get to arguing. She tells me she throws a brick through the window. So I put them, I put on my boots and I grabbed the brick and I beat in the head with it, right? So I get locked up right down the spot. So when I get locked up, some other stuff happened. The police handcuffs me, put me on the curb and let her, her mother and her sister had muscles and a muscle has jumped on. They beat me so bad when I got over the jail. The guards over the jail says, he looks at me. He says, damn, this is crazy. You look like that. And he calls the other guards. He said, look, it looked like somebody put two cats on the back, spend it around and then tied it over his head. Because I was all, a man was in bad shape when I got there. So I stayed that time for 45 days. And when I came out, I got a GD along the way. And when I came out, I started going to college. And what year was that? 90. I got out. I got locked. That was 99. 1999. So let's back up a little bit. What year, what year do you think you were at your pinnacle in the streets? Probably like 85. It never lasts long. It might have been, you know, I had the pinnacle never last long. So the pinnacle might have been two years, might have been 85 to 87 or something. Okay. And then did you consider leaving the game? Always thought about it. But I always said, when I get that extra, when I get that one more, when I get, so I tell people all the time, before I was addicted to drugs, I was addicted to one thing more. I was addicted to more. I couldn't stop. And then it would always be something to happen. Of course. Always be something happen. Some house gets rated. Somebody messes up some money. Something the kilo will come. But it wasn't as good as the kilo that came last week. It would always be something to happen. Then I think it's meant to be that way. Because it's not supposed, you're not supposed to sell drugs to thousands and thousands of people destroyed at times. Well, how did you dodge a huge case? Because I became a drug addict. Right. Reppel before that. The whole city knows you. This is a small town. Everybody, especially back then, knew the cases on everybody else. By the time it got to, listen, when I was really on drugs, really on drugs. And so I went to go buy some raw herbs. I think it was like 20 dollars or something. And so I go in the house and then during this time, these people selling out the house, I go in the house. It's like 20 people in there buying drugs. Boom, boom, boom. The door comes down. It's a task force. It's a Baltimore city task force with the DEA task force. So they come around. They ask everybody name. So they come around to me. But I look emaciated. I messed up. So they come around to me and they say, what's your name? So I said it real slow. Steven Dixon. And so the guy writes it down and walks away. So a few minutes later, he comes back. He said, what's your name again? So I said real slow again. Steven Dixon. He said, I knew it was you, mother fucker. I knew it. They had raided my mother's house. But they had broken my mother's living in real nice condo. They broke her lock. They snuck in. And they were taking pictures. And they wide tapped the phone and all this stuff. And so he calls the other agent over to DEA. He said, this is, you know who this is? He's like, I don't know that guy. Yeah, he's a junkie. He's a dope thing. He said, no, man, that's Dean Dixon. They used to be the guy. Yeah, that's that guy we were following around. That's that guy we were going to kid. Said, but we didn't get him because he fell off the face of the earth. Okay. So that's like, it's almost like the drug saved you because the drugs, how much time in prison did all those other guys that were involved in your circle? Life sentences were getting 40, 50 years. Right. They were doing 20 years, 30 years. So what year did you start using? Probably like towards the end of 87 or something. Do you remember why? Yeah, the pressure running. I was driving. I was driving home. It would take me to get home. Would take me 20 minutes. It would take me two or three hours. Spinning, going through alleys, speeding up. I don't even know I got home. I was watching a rearview mirror so much. Sticker boys looking for me. So you got all this hair on line around and you just said, you know, let me just yeah, I started sniffing some of it just to just just drop a match here. And before that, so for five years, doing doing that run for five years, I never got out, never drank, never did anything. But before that, I used to smoke weed, drink, sniff cocaine. Before I started really making money. Right. I stopped and start to make money. And how long did it take you to go from a match head to, you know, too long junkier? Well, I had the store. The store was still operating 24 hours store, like a 71. And I used to go in there. I might stand a house on a bench for like two or three weeks. I went to store one night, man. And they had some warm employees didn't know me. So I come in the store. And they were like, I'm like, I'll start to walk behind the counter because I'm going to take the money out the cash register so I can have money to get out with. And the lady says, I'm going to make call the police on you. Who are you? I say, call the police. Oh, that's my fucking store. This is like, this is not your store. The guy I see that comes in here. Don't look nothing like you and don't act like you. She's talking about my partner. Right. So I get mad. I pick up the cash register smashing. She won't give me the code. They'll open the cash register. So I pick it up and smash it in the middle of the floor. And I take all the money out of it. And during that time, he had physical food stamps. So I took the food stamps. And when I was sad, boom all up in the air on the corner, right now, put the money in my pocket. So she calls my partner and says, some mad man just came in here. And pajamas, talking about this is his store. And my partner came to look for me and said, man, cut that shit out, man. But I was gone. I was all the way gone. - How long did that take you from first starting to when you-- - Well, all the way gone? - Yeah, or like that, yeah. - Like a year's time. I was all the way gone, but I still have money. And in the beginning of it, I still had, I might have four or five ounces of heroin and stuff like that. I might still have 20 or 30,000, sitting around 40,000, 50,000 cash, sitting around. - Well, what did you do with the business? - The business he was, he was right there. By then, I'm gone. I'm not in there. We had a dry spout. My partner's gone to get a new connect. I'm not involved in it. I don't know what's going on anymore. I'm not getting any money out of it. It just cut me out. He did what he's supposed to do. - Yeah, for sure. - Absolutely. - Okay, so you just stopped caring about everything? - Yeah, 'cause I was on drugs. - Right. See, you just stopped caring about everything. - Absolutely. - Well, 'cause I had such a big heroin habit. My habit was so big because I had, you know, ounces and ounces of the raw heroin, a real good heroin. And so it just took me some way. And I never had a heroin habit before. So I never knew what the effects of it were gonna be. And so it took me a long time to get out of that. - Did you wish somebody in their early days had just kidnapped you and forced you to just go through that week of just hell? It would have been more than a week, but I used to think about it. But I used to get clean pretty early. I went to treatment 17 times. I got on a methadone program twice. And I was on Suboxone when it was Bupinorphine. It was experimental. And you used to have to skin pop it. And once a day, twice a day, right? And none of that really worked for me. None of it really worked for me. - How soon after you started using, did you just lose everything? Like how long it explained how that process. - It was a process. So I say I was using for about a year and people started noticing it. And I used to always say, well, I've been up all night. I was tired. I've been bagging up. I've been counting money. I was with a girl, all that kind of stuff. So I used to play that one for about a year. But after that, that ran out. And then my behavior started to change. I wasn't early anymore. I wasn't, you know, I got in a fight with another guy that was a kingpin at that time. He later turned out to be a vet. I got into a big fight with him because I went to buy some drugs from him. I was supposed to give him about $5,000. And I had used some of the money without even realizing it. Ended up giving him $4,000 and then some change. And month later, he was looking for me. We got into a real bad fight. So I've been in fights with two other kingpin. I know you've fought. Yeah, well, we usually don't. But I guess I'll respect for each other, you know. And so, yeah. And this story is that everybody in Baltimore knows about two. About those two fights that I have. One of them, both of them caught me when I was on drugs. So had I not been on drugs, things would have been a little different. So, they took advantage of that. And then how, and then so by a year in, you would just stop dealing? I was still dealing a little bit. And people who used to work for me or other guys who knew me, knew that I had ways to make things happen. And so they was still, but I didn't have, but no means that I have ways to get kilos anymore. I might be able to get an ounce here, an ounce dead, two or three ounces, stuff like that. Did your connects cut you off? Absolutely. Did exactly what they were supposed to do. They must have sniffed you out. Yeah, one of them was the, the, the, the, the Italians were trying to figure out how to do something to me. Really? Oh, yeah. Did you ever fuck their money up? Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. How much? They say I owed them like a half a million or something. And you could get knocked off back then, probably. You're way less than that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Like you just owed them on a package? Well, they, they gave me, they gave me what we called taps and bottoms. They gave me two kilos of something that was real good, and they gave me a kilo or something that wasn't nothing. And, and they gave me the taps and they gave me the bottom, but they still charged me for that. I couldn't pay for it. It wasn't. I couldn't move it. Mm-hmm. Right. So by the 90s, you're just in and out. Yeah, by the 90s, I'm using drugs all the time. I'm homeless. I'm a 10th grade drive-by. Well, I went to 11 for two months, don't have no job skills. I never worked anywhere really in my life. I went on me for a very short period of time. I signed up for two years. I didn't even state it two years. I got a general discharge under honorable conditions. I was, I was in 101st Airborne, but by then it turned the air salt. So, I was, you know, I used to repel on helicopters. I was, I was a medic in the Army. I worked at the Social Security Administration two years, Temporary, but I was in the net. I never had a job. I didn't have any education, no skills. So I had to come back and reinvent myself. How, described that life of a Baltimore heroin addict? How much were you spending a day just to be well? Well, just to get well doing that time, I made a need like, you know, once I came down to being just a regular heroin addict, before that I was doing hundreds and hundreds, you know, a dollar, thousands of dollars a day or so. But then when it was derogged, but then when I came down to street level with things, you know, if I could get my hands on 20,000 a morning, 20,000 a night, I was like a blessing at that point. Most days was really hard to do that. Right. Like how, how would, how do most normal addicts that need 40 bucks, are they, and they're not working? Yeah. They want to even go and work for a dealer and the dealer gives them some drugs in the morning. You stand out there all day. You sell the drugs for them. Then at the end of the day, he gives you somehow when they take with you some blow and then he gives you a few dollars. That's one way, another way they became, after the cracker, people started going in right days, wall grains, stealing soap and toothpaste, I never went down to that. But what I did go down to was everybody that I knew, I would go from corner to corner to corner, worrying the shit out of them for money. All the dealers, they used to be work for me at one point, I thought they owed me something. Lean it on people. Softly, not hardly, and nobody knows me to be like, I'm a gangster in a different way. I'm not the gangster that's going to make you do something or something like that. Yeah. But that must have been humiliating. Absolutely. I did it to welcome this giant of a kingpin in the 80s, and now you're just a stuff down, just a stuff down, jumping. Wow. Yeah. And so it took you 12 years about to get clean for the final time. Yeah. I've been clean, September the 9th of this year, I'll have 28 years clean. So when I came home, I was over the jet, like I said for almost a year, and because I never did anything my whole life, I don't know how to play cards, I don't know how to play chess, checkers. All I knew how to do was try to get money. So when I would go to jail, I wouldn't do none of that, I would just read, so I was reading self-help books. When you get out, what you do, and I joined when I came home, I went into a 12-step setting, and I went into, I came home the second time, the girl incoming the court who I hit me here with the brick. I knew she wouldn't want to come to court because she's somewhere smoking crack, sniffing dope. And so when it ended up happening, the judge, after 30 days, and it was supposed to cut me loose, when I went to my first quarter parents, and the state didn't want him to, and they made me stay 15 more days hoping they could find her. So I stayed 45 days, I went into recovery house, and I was like an October 98, that was 98. I told them 98, I went into recovery house, and I went and signed up for college in February at 99. I started college in August of 99, I got a bachelor's degree in history. I got into a program that gave you tools to PST, end up studying at like 25 universities all over the country, went to Michigan State for five months, went to a house date, a couple of weeks at a time, NYU, Columbia, University of Texas, a whole lot of places, then I finally got accepted in grad school at the University of Miami, the U, and moved to Miami for four years, went to graduate school there, got a master's, and African history, African American minor, and a cognitive area Caribbean literature, and then I was in the PST program, my wife got very ill. So I didn't complete the PhD or maybe D. That was an African history, African-American minor with a cognitive area, a documentary film making. Then I came back in '06 and got a master's degree in psychology, substance abuse drugs and alcohol as a threat. So now I have the highest license you've had in the state of Maryland as a substance abuse counselor. So I don't do the counselor too much. My license calls for me to be administrative. So I own Absolute Healing and I work at a couple of other places, time, organization, growing souls, wellness, I'm always the director. I'm the director at all these places. But I've been the director at 20 places in the city and so on. And yours, the one that you own is called Absolute Healing, yeah. How many people do you think you've helped get clean in the, you know, decade, two decades you've been working in? Thousands and thousands. And not only that, I've also helped. They had a rule in in Maryland called hunger versus the state of Maryland where 300 guys with life sentences had to be released because of the technicality. But they have been in since 1979. So most of them have been in late 30s, early 40s, amount of years, 40 years. So out of those 300, about 100 of them, I helped with housing, getting in school, employing that stuff like that. I didn't help them get out, but I helped them once they were released. Right. But since then, I started a program where I've helped over 200 guys with life sentences that have done over 20 years to 40 years get out. So I get letters every day. I get four, five letters from people in the state and kind of centuries every day. I'm on the phone with them all the time. So I've helped them get out. So you're kind of like a kingpin of this field, like you were the man when you had the work and now you're the man helping people get off. Well, I'm not going to say I was the man when I was getting the money, but I'm going to say because there was a lot of guys in my position. Right. But what I am going to say is in this side of the field, right, and the things that I've done has been a little different. I taught, I taught at the college level for 10 years as an adjunct professor up until probably like 2017, 2018. I taught for 10 years. I taught in the history department. So what do you think it is? Why to this day, there's still a drug problem in Baltimore, you know, it's fentanyl now. Obviously, even if you can find heroin, it's probably got fentanyl on it, as they say. That's the new craze. I tell people all the time that nobody really has a drug problem. They use drugs as a medication for all the other issues that they have, all the other problems. The drugs, you know, if they attack the other problems, you attack how you feel about yourself, you attack how you interact with relationships, with your mother and girlfriend, your wife, you interact with all that stuff. And then if you get some kind of spirituality, you don't have to be religion, but along the way, I took my heart and became Muslim. So, you know, I'm very involved in a spiritual belief system. And if you don't have all that, you don't feel good about yourself, then you always have to find some medication in this gambling, if it's sex, if it's shopping, America just has major addictions. But it's just that drugs are the obvious outside one that you can really look at, you know what I mean, but we have alcoholism, we have everything. And it's all about how you feel about yourself. This is not a question to be antagonistic to you or to it's not some kind of gotcha question, but it's a question that's been on my mind since I met Carl and because I respect the work of rehab clinics and, you know, really helping people get clean, especially from you guys, because you're like authorities on it. But because the rehab clinic industry is just that, an industry, it's a business, do you think it overall encourages drug use because you need drug addicts to stay in business? Yeah, that's a good question, but I tell all of the people who come through the door, put me out of business. I have other streams of income. I don't, I feel like I've been sentenced to this. Since I didn't get the life sentence, I didn't get the 40 years, it's like the universe said this is because I didn't, I didn't go to college initially to do this. My whole thing was, I'm a go be a college professor. I might have a PhD in history. I'm going to teach two classes in the fall. I'm not going to work in the winter. I'm going to teach one class in the spring. I'm not going to work in the summer, and I'm going to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year. I'm going to write books, magazines, articles, whatever. And that was it. But then when I came back to Baltimore, it just didn't work out that way. And I ended up in this field. But I didn't, I didn't want to be in this field. I really would choose, I would love, I swear, I would love to be out of it. I would love to be out of it, but I do it really well. Yeah, you, I think it's about who's running the rehab. Absolutely. Because I'm sure there's, I know that there's a ton of shady. Absolutely. That don't do it well right now. Yeah. That don't do it well at all. I won't work for them. So, so in the state of Maryland, you have to, the license I have at one time is only 300 people in the state of Maryland have that license. And only 200 other 300 have the supervisory letter that goes with it. And every clinic has to have one of those people. Well, a lot of people don't want to work a lot of places. They don't have private practice and all that stuff. So it's a shortage of me. But I won't work for people who don't treat people well, who don't feed people well, who don't encourage them to get themselves together. I'm not going to do it for somebody that's a part time drug dealer. I'm not, does that exist, you know, so my thing is I don't, I look back and say to myself, I wasted my whole life. I wasted from it. Let me your kid to 40, almost 41 year old man with all these visions. This, it was illusion the whole time. And I look at the guys, and I say most of them could have been some of those guys that were drug dealers were pro athletes waiting to happen. Some of them were TV anchors waiting to happen. Some of them were school teachers, professors, but we all made a bad choice and went into something. So I really don't, I look back over it. And when people say we don't have any regrets, I really regret that. I regret that I sold that much drugs. I regret. People got murdered about that stuff. People all did about that stuff. Children didn't get fed about that stuff. You understand what I'm saying? People's mothers, when I do group, I ask people, I say how many people here have ever have stolen something and you'd be surprised the whole group, nobody raises them. I say, you're damn loud. You stole your mother's piece. You stole your family's bragging rights. My mother was a school teacher. And all her friends were school teachers, principals, God's counselors, they had a club. And when they would go to cook out some stuff, all that children were doctors and lawyers. What it's, what is, they said, what is Steve doing? What's he saying? He's driving a Mercedes. He's a real estate developer. I know. Your name will outlive you. That's right. Absolutely. So now, my whole thing is like, people, I was, I was infamous in the street, right? The funny part is, there's plenty of people in Baltimore that's going to say, who is this guy? Because of the way I carried myself. But all the people who were involved in it know exactly who I was. Our audience is pretty astute and real recognize real. They might think I'm just talking. They might not, they might not think I was really hooked up with one of the five fans. The guy that I met them through, they say, we're going to give you Baltimore. We're not going to sell nothing to nobody else. You're going to move it all to Baltimore. That's what they said. And for about two years, that was true. What connect was that? That was the attack you connect. Can you tell us what family it was? Well, you know, if you notice, I haven't said any names. No, you haven't said any names. I just want to know the, the mob, one of the five families. It could be, it was the family that's known for selling drugs. There's only really one family that did that. It's got to be the Gambinos or the locales. There's only, well, there's only really one family. Because you know the Gambinos were selling drugs and that was the excuse that Gotti gave to Wack Polly Castellano because they said Castellano was going to find out that they were selling drugs and have them killed. Absolutely. So I'm going to go ahead and say it was somebody that was working for Sammy and the Gambino family. Well, Sammy Swayas, he didn't have a soul drug. No, but somebody that was. involved with them. He says. Yeah, so no, you're the real deal, man. You sure? You sure? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's the Gambino's, but I'll ask you off camera. And then what AI loop it in. You didn't get it from me. So, so do you now, now, 2026 has Baltimore has the situation improved, meaning, you know, the situation that we knew as urban black Baltimore improved. And I'll tell you one of those reasons. Well, not just me, a whole lot of the guys, the guys who were really good at this are all out of it now. And not only that, this is the other way that you can really tell. North Avenue is the street in Baltimore that runs from one end of Baltimore to the other. It runs from East Baltimore to West Baltimore, right? And one time you were right up and down the street and every other corner will be a wide open drug market. Pennsylvania Avenue, every other corner straight up Pennsylvania Avenue, every project. So we had a mayor here who knocked down most of the projects. So the projects are gone. And you saw that in the why when it blew up projects. So that just, you know, in the why it made it look like it dispersed it to the corners, but the corners were, that was just part of the story on the why all those corners were already doing all that. Those corners don't exist anymore. Now, let's just a certain amount of corners, a certain areas to have those drugs. So are there less users overall? Yes. It's just the ones who are using are using this drug that turns you into it. The Baltimore Health Department has this computerized scheme. They say that in Baltimore they use the shootings, the stabbings, the oldies, emergency room visits for that stuff, the arrest, the drug arrest, they put it in a computer and they come out and they say it's 50,000 practice and addicts and Baltimore a day. But the majority that 50,000 come from somewhere else too. Hagistown, Merrill, and they come from rural areas. Right. The you call them the counties. Yes. Yeah. Because Baltimore is only two cities in the United States that are not in counties. Baltimore is one in St. Louis as the other. So Baltimore City is a very unique place. Yeah. Very unique place. It sure is. Yeah. And that's why they made a show here and that's why the whole world knows you for good and bad. But at least you're known for something. Yeah. It's funny. I was at the you, right? I was at the you and I was pulled up. I'm going to buy tickets to the basketball game. The University of Miami was playing. And so when I go to the window, tall white guy like yourself, young guy, he's a student at the you. And he says to me, he says, let me ask your question. He said, are you from Baltimore? I'm like, yeah, how the hell you know? He said, man, you sound just like the wire. I saw all that guys in the wide old satellite Baltimore to me. It's like they're trying to sell like Baltimore, right? But but but that's the accent. The whole a little bit. Yeah. But you said that's not authentic though. Yeah. Like you still have aspects of it. And that's and you should lose that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's good. So so it's not cool anymore or normal for a young black person to get addicted to drugs and Baltimore. The way it used to. I'm not saying it used to be cool, but it was a lot more accepted back then. No, it's not acceptable anymore. Because that's where it has to come from. You know what? What really took me out? People cleaned. Yeah. The young women. When in the 80s, if you were a drug dealer and you had nice cars, jewelry, you could have four clothes and stuff. The majority of young women in our community wouldn't mind going out with you and all this stuff. Now when I taught the young women, they're like, it's a drug dealer. That's right. Yeah. They're not looking for that anymore. They're looking for something that's more stable, more, you know, they're not going to get their brains blown out when you get yours blown out. That kind of thing. So it's not when I was doing it, even though I tried to act like I was doing something different. Everybody knew who I was and what I was doing. I was still accepting in the community. I still pay for prongs. I still help people with weddings or their gas electric bill or their mortgage or car note or whatever. I help people buy cars. I did a whole lot of stuff like that. Which must have felt good. And even in hindsight, you're like, that's it's pretty awesome. You were able to do that. But you did it with money. Like what you, the money that you helped the community with didn't outweigh the damage to the community from all drugs. That's the problem. You know, uh, two-packed lived here for a lot of years. Right. And uh, he has a son that says, I made a jeet a day, but I made it in this way anyway. Yeah. And so when I look back over my life, I look at it. I'm trying to leave a different footprint than I started out. The things that I did. It was, it was me and five other guys that grew up together. I'm the only one in this lab. Yeah. Where's everybody else? One died. He was, he was on drugs since we were kids. He died age-related. I have one was murdered by his girlfriend. I have one that was much strong on. He was just vicious. He got murdered. And I had one that just lost his mind. So I'm the last of the five. The reason was five. And your partner, your original partner died from cancer a couple of years ago. But before he died, he, you know, he was still buying properties. He was still doing different things. He wasn't, he still probably was dipping in the dead. But he kind of made it. No, I don't think so. Did he dodge a long bid? Yeah, he dodged a long bid, but people got done. Nobody has anything good to say about the way it he dodged. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I see what you're saying. Oh, he went that way. Well, nobody knows for sure, but that's how they feel. If a guy is out on the street that long, that's how he feel. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the positive news is you, I'm thrilled with meeting you. I'm thrilled with meeting you as well. Really honored. I hope you had a good time. I did, man. And you know, it was a struggle for me to get here, right? I know. Did he tell you that? He told me that you, well, you told, he told me you don't like talking about this stuff. I don't really. So don't really. But the funny part is if it's certain guys, and we sitting around, I tell stories with them, but outside of that, I don't really, I don't like to talk about myself with that. I'm not proud of it. No, I know you're not proud of it, but I think people appreciate the arc and the comeback. America loves the comeback. So the fact that you're making such a positive impact on Baltimore, I actually think it's something that Baltimoreians will be proud of. Okay. So let's plug. I want to plug your rehab, your recovery center one more time. So please. Absolutely healing behavioral center. Absolute healing behavioral health center. We'll have a link to that in the description of the episode in the comments. Yeah. And yeah, I reach out because a lot of people are going to see this. All right. And someone's here. Hopefully it's not Omar. He don't ring best. Steve Dixon. Thank you, Mayor.