Cocaine

Cocaine turned a regular man into a blood thirsty monster. I was introduced to cocaine not by my family but by my fellow gang members. My family, even though they sold mass amounts of the stuff, were largely against the use of it amongst our blood relatives in fact before I turned 18 I took a severe beating from my uncles when they found out I had been using that garbage but even that didn't stop me. When I was on the stuff I felt invincible and ruthless and felt like a true gangster. I remember walking into a fist fight high as hell and damn near tearing the guys head off when the sober version of me would probably have gotten my ass kicked. I'd sniff a couple lines before a robbery and I would become a superhuman, bullet proof monster and any nervousness or fear disappeared the second that stuff went up my nose.
I stopped using it completely at age 21 when my family gave me the choice of either the drug or the gang. Quit the drug or quit the gang. I didn't even think twice about it but I still crave it every once and a while still to this day. Cocaine is the devil. I have seen it turn great men into low life cowards and ruin many many lives, break up families and even kill people. But when your a gangster you don't see that or maybe you do but you don't care what it does to others all that matters is the money you are making not the lives you are ruining.

My best friend

On my 16th birthday my uncle gave me my first gun. A .25 cal, colt automatic 7 shot. He told me it would be my best friend and he was right. When I first held that gun in my hand something about me changed, I mean I'd held guns before but this one was all mine and I felt powerful and invincible, unstoppable.

My uncle told me I would have to earn it first before it truly belonged to me and with that came my first armed robbery. He drove me and my oldest cousin down to the liquor store about ten minutes away from were we were living at the time and parked a few blocks away. I remember asking him for the bullets but he said I was going in cold, I wasn't a killer yet and I could buy the bullets from him with the money I robbed from the store. He told me my cousin had a full clip in case things got out of control but he would keep his gun tucked away to let me do all the work. We put our masks on and ran into the store yelling and I waved my gun around in the clerks face demanding the cash. Fortunately for me the clerk valued his life more than the 50 bucks in the till and everything went very smoothly. Out of all the crazy things I've done in my life I remember my first robbery the best, that event changed my life and from that moment on I felt like I was a force to be reckoned with, one bad ass kid.

blood in blood out

First I must say that I think gang life is a dead end street, but unfortunately I didn't realize this until my late 40's.
I was born into gang life as both my parents and almost all my relatives were a part of the same gang. At age 13 I was 'jumped' into the gang by my older cousins who literally beat me unconscious, blood in and blood out. During my teenage years I was pretty much brainwashed into believing this was the only way to survive as a young Hispanic growing up in the mean streets of LA and was intrigued by the money I saw pouring in from the drug deals and robberies that were constantly going on around me. At age 14 both my parents were killed by rival gang members over a turf war that at the time was in full bloom making the streets were we lived a war zone and all gang members were soldiers willing to kill for and die for their gangs, for their familia, and my parents payed the price. I was taken in by my uncle who was a major player in the dope game and before I turned 15 he had me selling drugs and recruiting new members in my school and around my neighborhood. At age 15 I learned that my family made up the top members of our gang and that my grandfather was the original gangster, the one who started the gang almost a century ago as a means of protecting his close friends and family. Now our gang had grown to nearly 300 members all extremely loyal and very trust worthy, unlike the bloods and crips who found strength in numbers and would recruit anyone just to have more soldiers. Our gang was our family and that is what made us strong and kept order throughout.