Confessions of a Dope Dealer By Sheldon Norberg North Mountain; 349
pages; $19.95

SMALL-TIME POT DEALER ROLLS HIS OWN BIOGRAPHY

At a time when the Internet has become the mind-expanding drug of
choice, connecting millions, reaping billions, how could the dope
trade sound anything but penny-ante and quaint?

We're not talking about world-class traffickers such as the Mexican
Lords of the Skies, the Hashish Masters of the Bekaa Valley or the
Opium Kings of the Burmese Triangle. We're not even talking about the
Crack Tyrants of East Harlem or the Crystal Meth Biker Dudes of San
Bernardino.

The dope dealer in question is Sheldon Norberg, a member of that
hapless generation between Vietnam and dot-com who, in his self-
published ``Confessions of a Dope Dealer,'' makes a very big deal out
of being a small-time dealer of homegrown marijuana and LSD. Having
plied his nickel-and-dime-bag trade along a picaresque trail from one
Grateful Dead concert to the next for the better part of the 1980s and
'90s, Norberg emerges with a definitive account of life ``on tour,''
as Deadheads used to say.

What the author of this autobiography really deals out, though, is
irony that, had it been rolled together by Pynchon or even Updike,
could not be any more stocious (to borrow some of Norberg's
extraordinary lingo).

To begin with, there's the name. Norberg traces his dope addiction and
outlaw lifestyle to growing up in middle-class suburban California
with a name that betrayed his ethnic origins, ``as if I were from a
foreign land,'' suggesting that growing up to be an alienated Jewish
dope dealer named Sheldon is somehow unique.

Actually, every hippie dope dealer's name was Sheldon. They were just
known as Panama Red, Frodo, Purple Kathy or Spaceman (Sheldon's
handle). What else did they have in common, besides taking money?
Expensive scales, industrial supplies of small plastic bags and
promises about giving you a righteous count. And they were all either
Jewish or Buddhist or High Church Unitarian Vegetarian Quaker Nudists
- -- except for Southern California's Brotherhood of Light in the late
1960s, who were surfers.

If Sheldon can't blame a weakness for weed on the faith of his father
or on his name, he can blame it on his older brother, who turned him
on to pot in 1976. Little Sheldon sells his first reefer to classmates
in junior high. His parents uncover his precocious criminality and
force him to make amends. Then, as the thrill of getting high
possesses their child, Mom and Dad fall by the wayside.

Sheldon is no dope, however. He wins a full scholarship to the
University of California at Los Angeles, where he joins a fraternity.
Many bong loads and dropped courses later, he becomes homeless after
the frat house burns to the ground.

Abandoning higher education for getting high, Spaceman joins the
multitudes of weird kids traipsing after the Grateful Dead. Stuck in
the middle of the crowd trying to deal his wares, though, Spaceman is
in private pain.

He confesses to being a poster boy for paruresis, a phobia that
prevents him from urinating within sight or earshot of anyone else.
Not only can't he get it on with any of the tie-dyed honeys whirling
around him, this wild man of the psychedelic frontier can't even go.
Could fiction deliver such impeccable irony?

Spaceman heads to the pot hills of Northern California, where he can
go in peace. Here the tale bogs down, as he tends to muddy, back-
breaking tasks that only a fanatic horticulturalist or a Colombian
campesino would tolerate. He goes on to describe $10,000 multi-kilo
Humboldt-to-Berkeley deals in the heavy tones that are reserved today
for multimillion-dollar Silicon Valley stock option agreements.

But Norberg wasn't in it for the money then, nor is that his goal now.
Like the 19th century essayist and dope fiend Thomas De Quincey, whose
``Confessions of an English Opium Eater'' was also positioned in the
marketplace as a cautionary tale, Norberg wants his recollections to
provide a wiser approach to the war on drugs.

Alas, Spaceman presents the Bore on Drugs, remembering practically
every joint and bong load he has ever toked, every dose of LSD down to
the microgram, the quality of the high, the origins of the product and
exactly who sat there with him as ``I pounded my brain into slop.''

Definitely not recommended for minors (nor for adults with zero
tolerance for overlong accounts of foolish behavior), ``Confessions''
is very much the product of a sloppy brain. At least Norberg survived
to tell his story, which is more than one can say of many poor souls
who are truckin' no more.