Most people who become an infamous part of history are haunted by a dark past. Whether it was an uneasy childhood or a traumatic event as a teenager, something led them to a life that is so far off the beaten path that it morphed into something evil. Some people use this as an excuse, while others merely point their fingers and say the person was destined to fail. Even worse, some say the person should never have been born. Humanity calls these lapsed people monsters, psychopaths, or even vermin. The law usually calls them felons.

I am a felon, and this is my story. Nothing herein is trumped up, cushioned for effect, or otherwise overstated for shock value. I don’t justify what I’ve done, but neither do I refute it. I’m a man who had it all and watched it get stripped away in one horrifying, numbing incident. I might be convicted in the courts, but many would believe that I was behind a victimless crime. I never hurt anyone, yet so many people hurt me because of my actions.

For years, I was a drug dealer. People hear the term and picture me slinging poison out of baggies stuffed away in the trunk of a beaten-down car. That wasn’t me; I never sold poison. My product could even be regarded as medicinal. For many, it is. I sold hormones. Anabolic steroids were my drug of choice.

In the 1990s, if people were indulging in synthetic forms of what makes up the chemistry of men, they probably got it from me. Maybe not hand to hand, but somewhere along the line I was involved. The operation was big, the profits were large, and the risks were high. Like all things, it eventually came crashing down. And when it did, there was no pretty picture to be painted. Tears had been cried, blood had been shed, lives had been ruined, and the ride came to a screeching halt when I found myself behind bars.

When I was arrested, it was all over the national news. Some newspapers put the name Gregg Valentino in the same sentence as drug kingpins like Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega. These guys were traffickers of cocaine and heroin, poisons they knew were taking the life right out of people. I’ve never wavered in my belief that I was selling a safe product. Every night of my life after I started dealing drugs, I slept well, whether on the 1,200-thread count Egyptian cotton sheets of my New York home or on the paper-thin and stained rag they give you in jail. The one thing that never bothered me was the thought that I had hurt someone.