32 months in Hell, because I figured I could walk out the door with $3.50 worth of unpaid for merchandise. With almost $100 in my pocket that night, I'd spent almost $20 in the store. So, why try to walk out without paying for a Rawhide Chew Bone treat for my dog? I ask myself that same question every day.

Blame it on the Devil! 666 P/TH/W/PR. That's how it appears on all my paper work here. He came to me in the form of a monkey riding my shoulder. He came in the form of a needle and spoon. He came in the disguise of Heroin, Crank, cocaine, and alcohol. He came, and finding a willing follower, he stayed.

The trouble with that story is that I'm not one to believe in the Devil. If I'm to place any blame I must do so as I look in the mirror. Nobody forced me to use, I made the choice alone. I chose to use, and once again here I sit, paying the price. Freedom is a high price to pay.

I started using around the age of 11. Started with alcohol. Some friends and I would go to the local 7-11, and one of us would buy a candybar while the others would steal a bottle of Ripple Wine. We'd go the nearby orchards and guzzle the stuff, and most of us would then puke it back up. Loads of fun. After a couple trips like that we decided alcohol wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Growing up in San Jose during the 60's, drugs were plentiful, and using was "cool."(so we thought) I was a fat kid, not very popular, and I longed to be "cool." My chance came when a girl I knew stole a hit of window pane acid(LSD) from her older brother, and brought it to school. No one in my small group of friends would touch it, afraid because of the "scare" movies they'd shown us at school, but I reasoned that there were no tall buildings to jump off of, and I was too young to be driving a car off a cliff, so I took it. I somehow "tripped " thru the day at school without getting caught, and from that day on I would take anything and everything I could get my hands on. I was 12 years old.

A lot of people who start using drugs find their lives fall apart immeadiatly. Not so with me. I somehow managed to graduate high school, get a job and learn a trade, get married and have two kids, and was doing quite well for myself, concidering the fact that at this point in my life I was consuming close to a case of beer every night. Life was tough then, but evidently not unbearable, starting each new day with a hangover.

I don't remember exactally when it happened, but somewhere along the line I discovered crank. It started with a $20 bag over the weekend, shared with my wife. Before long, it was another $20 bag to get thru Monday at work. Soon, a bag a day, and my finances began to run thin. But, the crank removed my appitite for alcohol, and I rejoiced in the fact that I was no longer an alcoholic, and no longer had that expense.

I started selling crank in order to support my growing habit. Soon I was making more money than I was by working. I'd go for days with no sleep, and my work performance began to suffer, so I quit working. It would be eight years before I had another job on the streets.

By this time I'd been snortin' (sniffing) crank for a couple years. I began to have terrible nose bleeds and pain from it. A non-addict might have quit then and there. I started using a needle. The only sensible way to go on using, right?

Things got bad before they got worse. My world was comin' down around my ears, but I was blind to it all. The only thing that mattered was that next fix.

I ran off and left my wife and kids, two beautiful Daughters aged seven and two, and left them to fend for themselves. I selfishly wanted all my time to myself so that I could devote it to getting and selling and doing crank. I'll carry that guilt with me to the grave. Innocent kids should not be made to suffer as mine did.

I met a woman and moved into her apartment. Dope sales were brisk and traffic was high. Soon the cops were snooping around. My supplier found out and cut me off. I scrambled to find a new connection and immeadiatly bought myself $2000 worth of Bunk Dope. My money and the business was gone. I sold everything I owned trying to build it back up, but only managed to keep my habit supplied. I was sick and tired and fed up with crank. Enter Heroin. In a short time I was hooked.

During this period of my life a lot of terrible things happened. My two year old daughter was ran over by a car, due to my negligence. Thankfully, she suffered no more than a slight scar on her cheek and hardly a memory of the incident. My older daughter may have suffered more because she remembers. C.P.S. took both my kids and put them in a foster home for three months, until my wife could get on welfare and get a place for them to live.

As I write this so many bad memories come back, nasty things that happened, too numerous to go into. Let it suffice to say I'd made enemys and therefore always carried a pistol. It wasn't long until I'd been arrested three times for carrying a concealed weapon. Eventually, during sentencing, a judge would tell me, "Mr I., you seem to have a gun fetish."

I went to jail several times for petty theft and other less serious misdemeanors. Up until this point the longest period of time I'd spent in jail was 21 days. I was stealing cars, shoplifting, writing stolen checks, using stolen credit cards, and did some burglaries. I was out of control and would do just about anything to support my habit.

I'd had Hepatitus, OD'd a couple of times, watched a couple of friends die, and I was sick of the life I was living. My girlfriend went to jail and I was without a crime partner. I was to the point of not caring any longer, weather I lived or died. One last time I picked up a pistol. I went looking for drugs.

Things didn't go according to plan. I stuck the gun in his face and he tried to grab it. It exploded in my hand and a minut later he died. I never had a chance to say "Give me the dope." I threw the gun in a dumpster and ran.

Witnesses gave a description of the 'getaway' car. The car was unique and the cops knew who owned it. Within an hour they had my name. I ran for two days but they were closing in. Nobody wanted me around, and there was no place left to run. I went to the sherriff's department, walked thru the front door and said "I believe you're looking for me." I was 30 years old and figured my life was over.

Facing murder charges scared the Hell out of me. Too bad it couldn't scare my addiction away. Circumstances provided the opportunity for me to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and I jumped at the chance. I was sentenced to eight years in prison, of which I had to serve four. The laws have changed, drastically, and had I been convicted of the same crime today, I'd do much more than double the time.

Insanity is going thru such an ordeal and not learning from it. I didn't. I managed to stay clean during the first six months of my sentence, (A record for me then) and then it was back to using. It was ok though, because I told myself I'd never let drugs control my life again. I even believed it. what a fool!

I used while in prison, and I used while out on parole. I fooled the cops and I managed to fool my parole agent. For a while I even fooled my family until they got wise and more or less disowned me. I'm not someone you can love when I use. And, I continued to fool myself.

I got off parole and got back on heroin. I lost the job I'd worked at for four years when the boss caught me shootin' dope in the bathroom. My wife and kids, who I had been reunited with while in prison, left me. I overdosed at home one night, and my girl friend found me laying on the bedroom floor. She called 911 and I got a ride to the hospital in an ambulance. I was already awake and walking around when they arrived, but I got the ride anyway. They drew blood from me and released me to the cops, who took me to jail, charged with "under the influence." I was out the next morning and had a needle in my arm before noon. When I went to court the judge read the toxicology report for all to hear. "Mr. I." she says, "you were under the influence of heroin, methamphetimine, coke, marijuana, and alcohol," and I knew the report was accurate. She sentenced me to a drug rehab, but I managed to get on the 'home monitor' instead. For some reason they never tested me for drugs, and I easily completed my sentence at home. Once more, I had fooled them.

When I lost my job I knew I was going to lose the house I was buying. I turned myself in to a drug rehab then, in hopes of saving my house. It should have been in hopes of saving myself, but it wasn't. I was loaded a couple times while in the rehab, fooled the counselors, and was back out within two months. I lost the house, and my last chance.

I got a job, fooled my boss, and managed to use for two more years. Then, late one nite in an open all nite grocery store, it came to an end. I stole my poor dog a chew bone. I call her my "Poor Dog" because when I came to prison she went to the pound. Her time in prison was over quickly, I'm sure. Best dog I ever had. I'm sorry, Girl.

In the county Jail, or any place else for that matter, is not a good place to withdraw from heroin. They call it "kickin'," because that's what your legs do, weather you want them to, or not. Arms, too. I flopped on my bunk like a fish out of water. I puked all I ate, and I had diarreah. I was hot and I froze, I sweated and had chills. There were terrible hallucinations, things too grotesque to describe. As I reread this I realize I don't write well enough to describe the misery of kickin'. I can only list some of the symptoms.

And, I doubt I can adequatly describe the misery of being in prison. To lose one's freedom is a terrible thing. I live with lonliness, humiliation, and degradation, every day. I'm subjected to a strip search four days a week. I'm told when to go to bed and when to get up, when I can eat, and when I can go outside, when I can shower, and when I can use the bathroom. These are a few of my favorite "whens." I could go on and on.

Privacy is something you take for granted. Here, you do without. You use the toilet and you shower with an audiance. you get used to it. Showering with a female gaurd blatantly enjoying the show is a little strange. With 6000 men crammed in a space made to hold 3000, privacy doesn't exist.

The danger here is very real. You can always find someone who doesn't like you for one reason or other. Skin color, northerner or southerner, weakness or strength, or just the way you look. A guy was stabbed on the yard last week, and although I didn't see it happen , I seen the trail of blood he left. A person can bleed a lot in 100 feet. It was a minor incident.

You stand in line for everything you get, your food, your clothes, to use the phone, sometimes even to use the shower and toilet. You learn patience.

I sometimes feel I can't take another day of this, and yet I've got a year to go. It would be so easy to get a hit of stuff or a joint to smoke, and leave this place for a while. I look at my arms and see the scars of thousands of puncture wounds, and the brown and black spots where pus filled abcesses festered. I remember the sickness of withdrawal, and the terrible condition my body was in before this prison sentence saved my life. Remembering these things, participation in the narcotics anonymous program, and even writing this, help me to stay clean another day. It's been a year now, and I'm beginning to believe I can live my life sober, one day at a time. I pray this is so because if I go out there and use again, one of two things will happen: I will die, or I will catch my 3rd strike, come back to prison, and wish I was dead.

Use your head, choose not to use. It's the only sane choice you have!