Max Marshall’s non-fiction debut, Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story, sets out to uncover the truth about Xanax dealers at the College of Charleston, but what he finds instead is so wild I thought this story was the basis of a movie I watched within the last year called, The Line. Yes, there are probably many truths within that movie, but it is a work of fiction at its core, whereas the mess that Marshall discovers is all real.
Though this true story does tackle several fraternites at one college, it seems the star of the show is former SAE member, Mikey Schmidt. He is the one that ties almost all of the plotlines in this investigation together. He also seems to be one of the only ones serving any prison time for his actions, and seemingly more than willing to talk to Marshall about it all.
At the College of Charleston in 2018, Xanax was all over the place and used in a multitude of ways. If you needed to stay up to study: Xanax. If you wanted to take some hard drugs but not pass out like a weenie at a party: Xanax. And if you wanted to keep going in this weird cycle of partying and studying, then your Xanax dosage likely increased exponentially over time. In fact, the demand for the drug was so high that certain groups learned how to make their own pills with powder they got off the dark web and sold at a fraction of the cost, but it earned them millions and millions of dollars.
The things that Mikey could afford in his early twenties kind of blew my mind. And if I ignore the illegalness of it all, I was lowkey kind of jealous of his cash flow. However, once the dealing got this far, it inevitably led to harder drugs, and dealers in cartels, and moving dangerous amounts of product and money. While I never got a crystal clear picture of how authorities came to know of the extent of the drug rign originating at the College of Charleston, I have to admire Mikey’s best friend for completely throwing him under the bus. I definitely would have done the same thing. Especially because being friends with someone like Mikey is as fake as a friendship can get, regardless of how sincere he thought it was.
While I can appreciate the story that Marshall unfolded here, I wasn’t wild about how he told it. There was a lot of jumping around to different players within the chapters that seemingly had nothing to do with one another, and even when he did connect the dots eventually, I still think he could have presented some portions differently. I also say that knowing that I have hardly read any non-fiction work in my life, so perhaps I’m just not used to the style. If you are interested in a story like this but aren’t one for reading, The 2023 film The Line will get you most of the way there.