Another Heroin Diary
- ** update, 1/16/21…Nathan died January 6, age 30. He relapsed and then took his own life. If you are reading this and feel disheartened — that no one ever makes it out of this hell — please ask for help. There is always one more day for things to feel better. There is always one more loving word from those who will stand by you fiercely and fearlessly as you go into combat yet again. Please, please hang on. We love you all so much, and we won’t ever stop, no matter how many times you need help. We will always have another go left in us, so please have another go left in you.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb-XFcdfIDc
Blogs from my son’s experiences with addiction, jail, prison, recovery, relapse, recovery, relapse, recovery -
MY STORY
For the past few years I have been constantly shuffled in and out of hospitals, the separate occasions in the ER a blur, its entrance turned into a revolving door. Each one of these brief stints in various hospitals across the U.S. feels like an eternity, but acts as a much needed rest from the chaos of my everyday life, a chance to charge the batteries. The interesting (or uninteresting) thing about spending an extended period of time in the hospital is the different shapes and forms that boredom can take. It’s like the feeling you get from different weather fronts moving through the county you live in, or the temperature difference you feel as you move from inside to outside. You can actually watch the boredom collect on different objects in the room, akin to the morning dew collecting on a leaf above your head, the water repeatedly condensing and forming a bead on the tip, and than slowly, dropping onto the surface of your forehead wile you try to sleep in the early hours of the morning…drip…Drip…DRIP…DRIP…DRIP! Driving you fucking crazy!!!
I hate being bored. I don’t “do bored” well. Don’t get me wrong, my life has been a complete shit show, and can be labeled many names, but one thing it has not been, for the most part, is boring. The revolving front door spins faster and faster sending me on a helicopter ride back in time through memory after memory.
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Nathan, I am both the good guy and the bad guy, I am a lover and a fighter, an athlete and a bum, A musician and a junkie,
I am a heroin addict submerged in addiction, yet I am working hard at a program to attain sobriety. I am a good and honest person capable of gaining those who surround me’s trust and friendship. But I am also an extremely dark and manipulative person, capable/guilty of destroying relationships with lies and deceit. This is my story. A story that everyone seems to think is worth telling.
MY DEPRESSION
It seems as though my depression takes a form similar to black ice in my life. I’m aware that it’s there…..somewhere….. but by the time I realize it’s upon me it’s too late….. I have already slipped and started to fall — there is no stopping the crash.
I think that’s where the root of my addiction lies. I was diagnosed with clinical depression when I was 11 or 12 and prescribed Zoloft, but I was too embarrassed/prideful to continue taking it once my life started to go well. I guess I was too young and naïve to realize that once things start to go well, it’s not guaranteed to continue going well — life’s road tends to be filled with bumps and hills, go figure. Instead of willingly riding out the dips in the road, I tried to bypass them completely (or ignore them, I guess) by sneaking through a tunnel — heroin. Needless to say…. that never worked.
PAINKILLERS
You have heard the story a million times, and mine is no different. First I tried a couple of vicodins — this lead to Percocet — followed by oxycontin. Then I got a girlfriend and started hiding my opiate use and doing it a little less. I was doing about 40–50 mg of oxycontin twice a week, sometimes once. I was selling copious amounts of LSD, MDMA, and Marijuana. I actually managed to make a lot of money and began partying more and more and my days were filled with day-long trips followed by heavy drinking to come down from the acid.
Unfortunately, I had developed a tastes for whiskey during the year and a half I spent at college. With my combined alcohol and opiate use came violent outbursts and increased depression. I had a pretty girlfriend whom I originally treated like a queen. But I became depressed, dissatisfied, and angry. I started treating her like shit and pushing her away.
CONVERSION TO HEROIN…. NECTAR OF THE GODS ?
People always ask me the same question: “ You seem so smart, you’re educated ! You’re such a nice young man…. What on earth would possess you to stick a needle in your arm and try heroin ??!?”
Well, aside from my history above, I’ll tell you what would possess me to do such a thing, but it’s no simple explanation. It involves a perfectly brewed storm, ultimately several different fronts converging with one another, forming a tornado of depression, drugs, lies, and deceit.
COLORADO — 2010 ?
I had been living in Colorado for about a year — working for the ski resort and living life as a ski bum when I moved my girlfriend out with me. Our relationship was already on the rocks, and I was not a thrill to be around. As my depression sky-rocketed, so did my drinking and drug use. It was sometime in October that my girlfriend dumped me — 2 months into a 6 month lease. I had to live with a girl that I was crazy about, but who was no longer crazy about me, and interact with her on a daily basis.
One day a good friend came over and asked if I wanted to smoke some opium and, of course, I happily indulged. The little piece of tarry substance ( what looked to be about the size of a pearl) was placed on a piece of tin foil and lit from underneath, thus creating smoke. As the black tar dripped down the tinfoil, I chased the smoky trail with a straw (can you say, “Puff, the magic dragon ?”) I was instantly filled with an almost god-like euphoria — sheer ecstasy. I had finally discovered the nectar of the gods… and thus my 5 year chase after the dragon had begun.
What I didn’t know was that I had just smoked black tar heroin. Not opium. I began spending all of my extra money on “opium” which was sold to me by my “friend” who was taking the heroin out of the balloons the way it’s regularly sold, and transferring it to wax paper — the way opium is usually sold — so that I would not connect the dots until it was too late. And then the picture became clear. I had been turned into a full-blown heroin addict.
Once it became painfully obvious what I was smoking, instead of seeking help, I thought, “Well, how can I get more bang for my buck?” At this time I got online on my Mac, and looked up how to cook and shoot up black tar heroin. Needless to say, through trial and error I slowly figured out the art of hitting a vein. I had found my sanctuary.
So for me, the perfect storm in the forms of 1) depression, 2) my first bad break -up and 3) bad luck — all converged during one of the most vulnerable times of my life. And THAT is what possessed me to stick a needle in my arm.
OREGON = PTSD
I know where I am…. It’s a familiar place, where I am doomed to revisit over and over again. A situation I am destined to be terrorized by at least a couple of times a week. I know where I am and what is happening, but everything is foggy — like when walking through a field that I’ve lived next too all of my life, but it’s in the early morning and still blanketed with milky and steamy mist. The scene is the same as always. I am kneeling on the floor with a pistol to my forehead and the man holding the gun is screaming at me… But I can’t quite make out the words. His words are muffled as thought I’m listening to them from underwater. But then I break through the surface and the words become clear as day. “I’ll blow your fucking brains out!!! I swear to God I’m going to kill you! Say goodbye, Mother fuc-”
I bolt up in my bd. Where am I ? Why is it so fucking bright here? Why is there a cop in my face with a hand on my shoulder? What the hell is going on???
“ Nathan??? Nathan??? Jesus Christ, I thought you were having a fucking seizure! You ok???”
Then everything becomes clear… a sigh of relief washes over me, and the fear subsides. The tide of chaos and confusion recedes, leaving me in its wake. Back in reality. I am sitting in jail, looking at the corrections officer who is unfortunate enough to come across me shaking like a leaf and moaning in my sleep, suffering through one of my weekly PTSD related flashbacks. The CO is new and apparently was not warned that this frequent unconscious behavior of mine is not at all unusual. So I gather my bearings and calmly respond.
“I’m good, man…. Just having a flashback, sorry. Last shift should have warned you”
“ Ok, good…I thought you were going to fall out of your bunk!”
The experience I just described really happened and it was the final act in a string of traumatic events that occurred after I moved from Colorado back to Portland, Oregon. Drugs, Violence, Death. Love, and overdose. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest section of MY heroin diary…..
The Oregon Trail
So, if you’re reading this next section of the story I’ll let you know the environment in which I’m writing this — I am sitting in a sweating hot cell in Elmira Prison (which I will describe in greater detail later on….) But I am writing with the flimsy inner ink tube of a pen so my writing is a little crude and lacking. It’s very hard to write for an extended period of time, and editing/erasing is nearly impossible.
Anyway, back to Portland, starting with my arrival.
First of all, I will admit that I intended on finding heroin as soon as I arrived in Portland. In fact, I landed in Oregon with a wallet full of suboxone and six 80mg of Oxycontins in my sock. So, the first thing I needed to do after being greeted by my fraternity brothers and establishing a temporary place to stay, (which involved heavy drinking and consumption of tons of cocaine, MDMA, and all of my opiates), was to find DOPE, and quick. This is where the natural instincts of an addict kick in. First of all, I told my best friend that I wanted to go for a walk downtown, but that I needed to avoid the “Bad Areas of Town.” So I simply asked where the “Bad Areas” were so I could “Avoid Them.” He told me to make sure to stay away from the bus and train stations located near the waterfront of the West side of the river. If memory serves correctly, this area is known as the Pearl District. So to the Greyhound station I went. Within an hour I found an abundant supply of black tar heroin in one of the darkest places I have ever come across in my life, in the form of a 6 story drug-infested building directly across the street from the Greyhound.
* THE SPOT *
This building is where I got all of my drugs for the first couple of months I was in Portland. Almost every “tenant” was on the methadone program — yet still using everything they could get their hands on. It housed 14 drug dealers who had taken up residency within the 6 stories of what I would say most closely compares with a building straight out of the TV series “The Walking Dead.” They all sold heroin and meth. I would say that roughly a quarter of the residents had HIV….. and probably three/fourths of them had Hep C. Every room was filled with dirty dishes, little to no furniture, and slews of living skeletons.
The cupboards were used for syringes, cookers, cottons, and rose petals ( meth pipes) — NOT dishes and silverware. In those first 2 months 3
people died of overdoses right in front of me. I also administered Narcan to 2 people there in order to bring them back from OD — one of whom punched me in the mouth upon returning to consciousness ( waking up in a full-on withdrawal is no fun at all, but Jesus Christ…. how about “Thank you ?”)- both of which immediately shot up again and were dead by the end of the summer.
I received “surgery” to remove abscesses on my arms from shooting up speedballs of meth and heroin 3 times in that building. The surgeons were my drug dealers; they would perform their task by cutting into the infected area with a scalpel (stolen from an arts and crafts store for this purpose), and squeezing out the toxins from the infected area. We would all shoot up at least 1 or 2 times during the procedure. I know how fucked-up this sounds but I actually overdosed during one of these procedures. Talk about INSANITY….
But believe it or not the most vivid memory I have out of all of the time I spent in that building isn’t the overdoses OR the “surgeries, it’s of a night that I spent with one of my dealers. His name was Larry.
Larry
Larry’s drug of choice was meth. Larry had at least ten pet rats that roamed freely throughout his 20'x20' apartment, and Larry LOVED his rats. He loved them so much that I once witness him perform an operation on some sort of weird growth that one of his oldest pets had on his face ( by the way, I find it important to mention that Larry only slept at MOST a total of 4 hours in every 7- day period). Anyway, the memory that sticks out the most to me is one night my soon to be girlfriend Ashley and I got stuck downtown and had to stay the night in Larry’s room. We tried to sleep on the floor but ended up staying up all night using a toy squirt gun to fend off the rats that repeatedly scampered over our limbs. I could write endless stories about that building but I find it very upsetting/disturbing to do so and I figure that this gives you the general idea. I will, however, end the segment on “The Building” by putting some words of pure emotion down on paper — I don’t know if this would be considered “poetry,” but here goes….
Malnourished souls wander the halls of this place -
with no regard for the joys of life-
no thoughts go through these zombies’ minds-
just the need -
to feed-
to feed -
to feed
They have -
WE have -
given away all coherent thoughts-
flushed away good health and bright futures-
sold away our values and morals -
many have sold their bodies, belongings, and ALL material possessions -
all of our FAMILIES’ possessions-
just to continue to wander the endless dark, dark halls within
THE BUILDING-
THE BUILDING, which lies under this seemingly endless eclipse.
Before I continue I think it’s very important to explain how I was funding my habit throughout my time in Portland. I was supposed to be looking for a job from the time I got there to the time I left, but as my addiction progressed like a cancer and my health deteriorated, the possibility of actually obtaining employment became virtually non-existent. So the two ways I attained money involved lying to my parents, and later (when my drug use peaked and right before my girlfriend Ashley died) a complicated system involving re-produced (to perfection) paychecks.
My parents were fully supporting me. They paid for my rent, my utilities, and- unknowingly- my drugs. Every couple of weeks I would blatantly lie to my parents about grocery bills, appliances for the apartment, and clothes I needed. I would convince them that I had lost a bunch of money, or that it had been stolen from me in various ways. (Later on I would really be robbed and stolen from… Karma’s a bitch.) As addiction progresses, so do the lies.
My whole life became a
lie. I lied to everyone but more importantly I lied to the people who meant the most to me, my parents and friends. I realize that this paints an ugly picture of my life and of me as a person. But I think that it’s more important to give an honest picture, rather than glorified bullshit to make me look like a good/cool person, because the fact of the matter is that I was a bold-faced liar who was strung out and cared more about maintaining my addictive habit than important relationships and bonds…
I’m out of paper — next time I’ll explain the method we used to reproduce paychecks. How Ashley and I got together and how our relationship came to an end. Also, my living situation, and a $20 heroin deal gone bad, which resulted in guns drawn and shots fired…..
PS) If anyone feels inclined to write to me, feel free…. I have plenty of time for pen pals. Or if you have questions….. You can write in the comment section of the blog, and my mom will copy and send them to me in while I’m in prison. I’ll be here 15 months, so….
A cell with a view
Well, I’m back in Elmira again….What a fucking circus. I’m going to describe the environment…
So, first of all, it is so hot it’s practically unbearable, I’m sweating my balls off and the worst part is that I got here on a Friday so no showers until Wednesday since Monday is Labor Day. This means that I am forced to take multiple birdbaths everyday, especially after rec and working out. I’m in my cell on the 2nd tier of 8 in total, 22 hours a day. So obviously I have lots of idle time.
There are birds flying all over the place, back and forth, between feeding on the commissary (ha ha) and resting in their nests.
AND…. I have a new friend who I have named Odysseus ( yes, from The Odyssey). He is a mouse that I sneak bread back from the mess hall to feed, and he is free to come and go as he pleases, although he seems pretty content in my cell most of the time where he gets food and water. Sometimes he does venture out of my cell for a couple of hours at a time to do mouse things, but so far he always returns promptly. Right now Odysseus is looking at me curiously while casually munching on a pancake I brought back for him from breakfast.
I have gotten pretty good at fishing. I ripped the side of my blanket off and made about a 50 foot line, then tied a bar of soap to it so that it has weight and I can swing it to other cells to move supplies back and forth. I can even get it to the galleries on the tiers across, above, and below me !
I’m reading a very interesting book that I got from a porter entitled FROM THE DIARY OF A SNAIL. The background for the book is the 1969 election campaign in West Germany, which for the first time since WW II brought the SPD to power (Willy Brandt) to the chancellorship. Although, a good part of the book explains what happened to the Jews during the period of 1932 through the war — and explains in great detail the persecution of the Jews. It is a very dense book but great reading. The Author talks a lot about growing up as part of Hitler Youth.
Let’s see, what else. My neighbor is here on a parole violation. He was out for 2 years after serving 13 years for manslaughter from back in October 2001. There was a crack deal gone bad in which a guy was threatening to shoot him and he pulled the guy out of the driver seat of a truck, jumped behind the wheel of the guy’s car, and drove off. He was pulled over by a cop 2 miles down the road where he discovered the guy’s foot had been stuck in the seat belt — the guy had been dragged beside the truck to his death. It was the first time my neighbor had ever been in any legal trouble or had any police contact ever !
There was a story from my last time in Elmira about a pedophile who was targeted by inmates and beaten to a bloody pulp with his own cane. Well, this time I have seen a rape-o ( rape charge) get his face busted by a C.O. and two other rape-os get beaten up by inmates in the yard. One man who raped a 6 -year -old gets spit on and jabbed at any time he leaves his cell. Although I don’t take part in the habitual harassment, I can’t say that I feel sorry for any of them. ( Since I wrote this letter one of the rape-os had the shit beaten out of him in the shower….blood everywhere….)
More later……
FROM THE DIARY OF A SNAIL:
“the greater the intelligence, the more devastatingly its stupidity can run wild….”
Let’s talk about Solitary Confinement
I apologize for taking close to a two-year hiatus in writing my story, but I was caught up in prison life and then when I DID finish writing the next section of my story, (which was emotionally exhausting to do) it was promptly thrown out by the corrections officers when I was finally released from solitary confinement and prison as a whole. SO, unfortunately, before I re-write the section that was supposed to be next, I found it necessary to write this little excerpt on the time I spent in solitary confinement. You see, I have been reading various articles in the newspapers and on the computer about the recent surge of awareness in concerns about how inhumane AND ineffective solitary confinement is, and I just had to share my personal run-in with “The Box.”
First, let me explain to you how I ended up there, as it all stemmed from just one incident that resulted in my being placed in solitary confinement until I was released from prison on New Year’s Eve, two and a half months later. It happened during the middle of the night, mid-October, a little less than two months before I was supposed to be released from prison. I had been in jail, followed by prison, for nearly two years, and thus far I had avoided causing any trouble. That means I hadn’t gotten ANY tickets. I was never caught smoking where I wasn’t supposed to, or for fighting, or really causing any problems at all for anyone. Generally speaking, the corrections officers either liked me or weren’t aware that I existed. I did my job (I was a clerk for my dorm), I completed my programs, I worked out, played in the prison band, and tried to stay positive.
It was a Friday night, so I watched a movie, read a book, and went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night to all of the inmates around me yelling and jeering at the COs that had come into the dorm. In prison, if you hear anything abnormal during the night, when you wake up, for your own safety you try to figure out what the fuck is going on. So that’s what I did. I walked over to my friend’s cube, sat on his bed, and began to inquire as to what the hell was happening. At this moment, a lieutenant walked into the dorm (I’m assuming to investigate the ACTUAL problem, which was breaking up a card game), and noticed me sitting on my friend’s bed. He immediately spotlighted me with his mag-light, making sure to shine the light into my eyes, and began to yell at me, “Hey! Give me your ID! What’s your name?!?” Now, I was disoriented, grumpy, and still half asleep, so I said something stupid. I responded with, “It’s on my ID, Sir.” At this point he grabbed me, dragged me into a different room where there were no cameras, and called in 3 more CO’s. I knew I was fucked.
Once inside the room, he told me to put my hands on the wall. Once I was defenseless he began punching me in the ribs and twisting my wrists. Then he started screaming at me, calling me a worthless junkie piece of shit, among other things. At this point I told him that at least I wasn’t just piece of shit who was clearly mentally unstable on top of that. Following this remark he slapped me, and then nodded to his three CO cronies, who immediately stepped in, threw me to the ground, beat the shit out of me, cuffed me, and then tossed me in a van and drove me to the SHU (Solitary Housing Unit).
The following morning I woke up, battered and bruised, to a CO banging on my cell and telling me to piss in a cup. I was floored! “I get the shit beaten out of me and you want to give ME a piss test? Fuck OFF!” Well, that cost me another ticket and they came back later and made me take a piss test anyways. By the way, I was clean as a whistle.
At this point I was given a slew of tickets for “being out of place,” “disorderly conduct,” “creating a disturbance,” and — the big one — “attempted assault on staff.” A day later I was given another ticket for “failure to comply with a urine test.” As I stated before, this was the FIRST TIME I HAD BEEN IN ANY TROUBLE !! I had a “hearing,” which consisted of a captain telling me that he had decided that I would be receiving six months in the box, four months if I showed good behavior. On top of that, they were revoking my release date pending a further hearing with the parole board. I technically could have just added another year onto my prison sentence. I was emotionally and mentally destroyed AND IN THE BOX.
At this point in time I was moved from the small SHU facility at the prison where I was to a SHU facility in Buffalo. This is an entire prison area designated for people in Solitary Confinement. There were three long hallways, each three stories high, with roughly forty cells on each side. My cell was set up as follows: It was roughly 10'x12' , with bunkbeds, a toilet, a shower, and a table with two stools all crammed in. There was a small door in the back of my cell that opened up into my “rec” area, which was essentially a cage that was 5'x10'. The door opened once a day for one hour, but if you weren’t up and standing at the door waiting for them to pop the lock then you were shit out of luck for that day. At least I got SOME fresh air. This is where I spent the next two months of my life, 24 hours a day. *(I was given two sets of clothes, a shitty pen and some writing paper)
Luckily I had family to send me books, but if I hadn’t, I would have gotten to choose three books a week off of a “book cart” that they wheeled around once a week and which contained around 75–100 novels — all Danielle Steele romance, Dean Koontz, Dave Patterson crap. All trash. I also had a pair of shitty head phones that I could plug into one of three jacks in the wall. One was sports radio, one was a rap radio station, and one was a local alternative radio station. So THAT is what I had to occupy my time while I was in the box.
I technically could have had a roommate, but I was alone for almost the entire time I was there. Just like in prison, there are drugs and tobacco smuggled in and available for purchase using postage stamps. People moved these back and forth, up and down, and even hallway to hallway through “fishing lines” which I explained in an earlier post, but essentially worked like this: you could unravel nylon thread from your mattress and using something for a weight on one end of the line, fling it to other cells where it was passed along until it got to where it needed to go, establishing a connected line to move supplies. This was usually done during rec when everyone was “outside” in their cages, where you could see peoples’ hands sticking out further down your hallway or even perpendicular hallways when people were in their cells as well. I saw this done as follows: There was a small crack under the cell door and along the side and there was a constant draft of air moving down the hallway so people would stick a piece of toilet paper, still connected to the roll, out of the crack and let it get caught in the draft and carried down the hallway to other cells down the line. Once it was there, they would carefully attach their line and pull the toilet paper streamer all of the way down until they established a connection. For cells close by you could just weight your line down with a bar of soap and fling it down the hallway under the door until it got close to the desired cell. Pretty cool if you think about it!
So now I was in the “Big Box” with books, headphones, and hundreds of hours with nothing to do. The first week I just read all night and slept all day. I basically became nocturnal. That was an interesting time… middle of the night in the box. There’s constantly people yelling down the hall to one another, conversations for everybody to hear…mostly gang related, or talking about how much money they had dealing drugs or girls that they had slept with — really interesting stuff… NOT. There’s also people that get into verbal arguments from 14–20 cells apart from each other or from hallway to hallway. They literally start screaming at one another and threatening to kill each other. Most of the time they have never even met each other, which is actually quite skillful when you consider the obstacles involved with fighting and threatening someone who you haven’t ever and won’t ever lay eyes on.
There’s constantly somebody standing on their door, banging away at the gate, just for the sake of making noise (a really peaceful sleeping environment), and there’s also people who talk to themselves. (Fun Fact: Did you know that many people who get placed into solitary confinement have some form of mental illness???) One night I heard three different voices coming from the cell next to me. The three people wouldn’t shut up all night, and at one point it sounded like they got into an argument followed by a fight. Sounded like they were slaughtering one another. I was so confused as to why three people were in a single cell that holds two people at most, and even more confused when the CO just breezed by the cell during his rounds. He didn’t even break up the fight?!? The next time he came around I asked him why there were three people in the same cell and why he just let them fight? He laughed at me, “There aren’t three people in that cell, just Billy! He’s a schizo!” I was amazed. I’m sure solitary confinement was just what HE needed.
This is around the time I decided to establish a routine. I would wake up every day around 7:30 for breakfast, then listen to a talkshow until it ended, then go back to sleep until lunch. Following lunch I would read and digest for an hour or so, then work out. I would do mostly calisthenics, but I would also invent exercises by folding my mattress in half, tying it together and creating a makeshift handle on top, then doing arm curls and shoulder presses. I would also do pullups off of the top bunk. I did this by tying sheets through the holes in the metal on the underside of the top bunk, thus forming something to hold on to. I did dips off of the stools connected to the table, and also hundreds and hundreds of pushups. Following this I would read and write down the most difficult part of my story (the one that was thrown out when I was released. You will get to read it when I finish rewriting it. Bear with me, because it involves the description of my girlfriend dying from an OD, followed by a firsthand account of what it was like to be held up at gunpoint — the most traumatic experience of my life — so it might take me a while to finish writing it). Then I would take a shower, eat dinner, and read until I fell asleep. On Saturdays my parents would come and I would get to go down to the visitor room (I had to be shackled and behind glass the first few weeks, but then I “earned” the privilege of sitting at the table and drinking coffee with them.) Being out of my cell and getting to hug my mom and dad meant more to me than they will EVER know, and I owe them a lot just for that.
This routine SAVED ME. I started feeling optimistic about life again…like I had something to live for. The BOX is TERRIBLE punishment. It doesn’t help anyone and it isn’t meant to. It is meant to mentally, spiritually, and physically BREAK YOU. That’s exactly what it did to me until I stopped letting it. It’s never dark, there is always a light on, the cops are mean and will beat you up for any reason. It’s loud ALL of the time, you are CAGED 24 hours a day, 23 on a good day, with no stimulation whatsoever. Some people are stuck there for years at a time!!! Think about that. Please, re-read that last paragraph and think about that. ( One article said that as of 2015 only 3 percent of federal inmates were being treated regularly for mental illness. An internal Bureau of Prison study said that about 19 percent of federal inmates had a history of mental illness. In 2006 the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 45% of federal inmates had symptoms or a recent history of mental illness. (See articles at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/federal-prisons-keeping-mentally-ill-in-solitary-confinement-for-long-stretches-of-time-new-report-says/2017/07/12/0668a3f4-6717-11e7-9928-22d00a47778f_story.html?utm_term=.63917aa9fb7a) and (http://jaapl.org/content/38/1/104) Also, a high percentage of people who go to the box WILL be reintegrated into the outside world again at some point, and they will go out into the world MORE fucked up than when they left it the first time around. Solitary confinement doesn’t help either the people placed there or the greater society outside. Bottom line: It is cruel and inhumane.
Eventually 19 other inmates and I went before the Parole Board and explained why we shouldn’t be held in prison past our original release dates (I had already been held an extra 2 1/2 weeks past mine.) I must have said something right because I was the only one allowed to go home. I found out via letter, two days later. I was finally released on New Year’s Eve, 2016, after two years of incarceration. Going from the box to the outside world, being in a car, then a store for the first time after all of that, was the most liberating experience I have ever had. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.
(below, with my mom and dad the day after I was released)
Ashley, come and gone
She was about 5ft 6in with long auburn hair and large, piercing green eyes. A former college athlete, she weighed approximately 125 pounds and had an extremely well -portioned body, curves in all of the right places…But what I remember most about her were those clear green eyes — like deep wells with pristine emerald pools at the bottom — and like many wells, you had to be careful not to fall in. Well…I fell in, and before I knew it I was swimming, WE were swimming. However, there is a fine line between swimming and drowning. You know, it’s amazing how quickly a beautiful time in your life can be eclipsed by death.
Her name was Ashley, and this is the story of the last 4–5 months of her life and, ultimately, her demise.
