OCTOBER

FINAL ELECTION DEBATE 2024

“America has reached a turning point,” began presidential candidate Ben Landers. “Our nation has been decimated by an endless War on Drugs, divided by systematic racism in our judicial system, and the economy has fallen apart after the pandemic that changed our world forever.”

Special Agent Robert Randolph couldn’t believe his well-pronounced, freshly-faded-around ears. 

“Communist motherfuckers,” Randolph muttered to himself as he grabbed the second burger from his two-for-five special. “All this damn idealism,” he continued while his German shepherd, Rico, hinged on every word, hoping it meant he got a bite. “Don’t they realize none of this shit ever works?” Rico curled back up on the floor—there was no chance he was getting any human food tonight. 

 Fifteen years at the DEA, he was busting heads and taking down this country’s biggest drug dealers. Randolph had personally arrested enough people to fill an entire prison. It never worked out like that. The lower-level guys would cooperate and help them bust the bigger guys. Sure, some of the peons’ would then disappear under suspicious circumstances and be found murdered at some later date, but that wasn’t his problem. These mothers and wives would get in front of the camera and talk about how sweet and amazing the low life was and how well he provided for his family. Randolph couldn’t believe these people tried to make the public feel sorry for guys destroying their communities with drugs. Play dangerous games, and win dangerous prizes, right? Then there were the “stand-up guys,“ or whatever those ghetto people called them. The guys who would stay quiet and take whatever time they were given without giving anyone else up. Randolph couldn’t help but secretly admire their resolve. Still, he hated that it meant he had to start a new investigation. 

Now this socialist, commie cocksucker named Landers wanted to make drugs legal. Randolph couldn’t believe the polls showed a three-way dead heat between the Democratic, Republican, and this Independent wacko who would destroy the country. Surely the American people couldn’t be this dumb.

***

“What this nation needs,“ continued the kind of cute presidential candidate on television, “is a fresh approach to drugs.”

Cynthia looked away from the T.V. and noticed her oldest son was not on his phone for once. She was worried about him. Since her ex-husband, Carlos, left when Raul was only seven, she has done her best to keep him and his younger brother, José, off the streets and away from drugs. Raul had always been popular, good-looking, and a star on the baseball field. José was his complete opposite.

José only cared about school and wanted to attend an Ivy League university. Cynthia had no idea how she would pay for her boys to go to college. Ever since the economy fell apart, she hadn’t made as much money at the cleaning service she owned. Once people started losing their jobs, they apparently decided they could clean their houses after all. 

Cynthia hated politics and didn’t want to think about the elections. It seemed to her like all that had ever been promised by both parties turned out to be lies. They only seemed interested in helping the wealthy stay that way. No laws ever seemed to help her small business or make her life any easier. She saw the lives of the people whose houses she cleaned and listened to them complain about taxes and how they couldn’t afford a second lake house this year because of it. It’s not like she didn’t hope that one day she would be in a similar position, but she did hope that when she got there, she would be a little more understanding of people who struggled like she was now. This Landers guy was refreshing, but could these ideas really work? She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of legalizing drugs. While she had seen lots of cartel and gang violence during her childhood along the Texas-Mexico border, and her cousin was serving life for a drug-related murder, she didn’t want her sons to think that doing drugs was okay. She was worried that legal drugs would only lead to more addiction.

***

“We need to view addiction as a disease,” said the blurry guy on the T.V., “and diseases need treatment.”

Sandra was nodding out. The T.V. was on one of those presidential argument shows, and Sandra hated the noise. It was only on because John—no, wait, Jim?—fuck it, who cares what his name was. The guy she had just let fuck her for a bag of heroin was in the bathroom taking a shower. As her thirty-one-year-old body that looked at least forty-five went limp, the last words she heard were “addiction” and “treatment.” She knew she needed to stay awake. They had only rented the room for an hour, but this H was so damn good. Addiction. Treatment. Addic—

***

“We need to take your hard earned tax dollars,” declared Landers, “and spend them on things that help you rather than spending them on incredibly expensive drug investigations, police departments, and prisons.”

Officer Hawk was petrified. He had joined the police force to make a difference in his downtrodden inner-city neighborhood. What would happen to his job? He was relatively new to the force, just two years out of the academy. How could you cut funding to the police who kept everyone safe? He had looked into Landers’ platform and knew his plan was to keep all officers employed, but everyone he worked with didn’t buy it. 

Politicians always lie. Since the word “politics” was put in the dictionary, the people who practice it have been lying as much as it takes to win. Hawk would never admit this to his colleagues, but some of Landers’ points did ring true. He had witnessed narcotics officers paying addicts with money the officers knew would be used for drugs. They would find out information from the addicts to make “random” traffic stops of primarily black drivers. Somehow they would always find some drugs. Many of the guys they arrested were his friends growing up. He felt torn about the detectives’ methods and hated that they used the addicts. A guy from the grade above him recently died from an overdose. The narcotics officer even showed up at the funeral. At the same time, Hawk knew the officer had given the guy the money to buy his final dose. It just seemed too hypocritical, but the gang life was even worse. 

***

“Rather than spending trillions of dollars on the War on Drugs,“ this nut job candidate Landers kept going, “we’ll defeat cartels, gangs, and organized crime by taking their market and taxing the drugs.”

 Ronnie ’Big’ Carmichael was livid. “What the fuck is wrong with this country!” he exclaimed to his empty living room. A Democrat was supposed to win. Soften the punishments for drug crime to keep all the snitches from telling. Get some of his old buddies who had been stand-up guys out of prison. This country is all about second chances, right? Now this Landers psychopath wanted to take away his business! 

Who will buy his heroin and shoot up in a vacant row house if they can buy it at the store? This guy can’t really get elected. Big had spent his whole life buying cops, infiltrating prison life with drugs, and putting hits on rival gangs. Not too long ago, his gang had won a vicious battle for his city that had ended with the execution of his biggest competition. Now he owned the plugs and the power of the city’s underworld. 

Big hadn’t done all of these things to let some white guy who had spent his whole life crusading for junkies and whores, the lowest of the low, take it all away. He was okay with being the bad guy. He welcomed the challenge of the DEA knowing who he was and what he did. He loved outsmarting the “good guys” who were a bunch of idiots anyway. He was an expert at what he did, and this Landers bitch was trying to fuck it all up.

***

“We’ll reinvest those tax dollars into treating the disease of addiction and release non-violent drug offenders back into the community with the stipulation that they help those with addiction for the rest of their allotted sentences,” finished Landers, eliciting loud applause from the crowd.

Jerry David was ecstatic. He couldn’t believe there were guys he was in prison with who still didn’t want Landers to win. 

“So, you guys don’t want to go home?” Jerry asked the white T.V. room where the debate was playing on Fox News. 

“I knew what I was doing was illegal, and I did it anyway,” responded Peeples, another white guy in prison for meth. 

Jerry had long since realized that being a white guy in prison for cannabis was a true minority. Nearly every other white guy in federal prison for drugs was there for meth. While he felt there was a big difference between the two drugs, he also saw that meth was still taking over rural America with or without sending these men to prison. 

“But bro, ten years in prison while not a single person you served went a day without meth? It just doesn’t seem like the punishments are working,” Jerry replied. 

The T.V. room went silent while everyone pondered the two conflicting thought processes. Jerry hoped that the implications of Landers’ win would help him and the men he had become friends with get out of prison and start new lives.

The way I see things. The way others see things. The way the world sees things. 

I am at a crossroads in life. The prison journey is almost over. I’m realizing how different everything will be. How different everything is. 

From my point of view, I’ve learned a lot. I came. I saw. I not only conquered but became better than I could’ve ever imagined. I molded myself into an introspective person, someone who thinks, feels, and expresses genuinely. 

I believe in myself and believe that I’m on a path to performing my true purpose in life. That I’m capable of creating change in this world, leaving a legacy of loving the people I come in contact with and using my natural strengths of leadership and charisma to create a new narrative around prison and addiction. Living a life full of meaning is the only way I’ve made it through this all.

Today I experienced a moment where a simple phrase allowed me a glimpse into my future. Everything about me—who I was, who I am, who I will become—was discredited by someone who once loved me, someone who forever changed my life. Their words?

“From jail.”

The context was clear. I am dangerous, suspicious, and I make others feel uncomfortable. Where I am, who I am on paper, changes everything for some people.

I’m not going to lie, it hurt me. It made me feel inadequate and completely misunderstood. It made me feel like I needed to explain myself, that I meant no harm. In fact, quite the opposite. This event made me sit and think and reflect. It made me see how the world is really going to be towards me, a felon trying to have a voice. While I’m hopeful that many will take me at face value and allow me to show the growth I’ve attained, I understand that reality is much different. I won’t have it that easy. I will have to fight and claw to make myself heard, but I’ll also have to step back.

I have to be willing to accept that others have the right to perceive me and my actions however they choose. I have to be willing to walk away when that is what is best.

Resentment. Spite. Vengeance.

As I sit here thinking about what to write, I recognize the signs. A “Feelings Wheel” on the wall. The song “Resentment” playing on shuffle moments after I wrote the word. A day spent helping others with their writing. This is exactly where I need to be, exactly what I need to be doing.

I have been miserable. Every day I wake up hating everyone and everything around me. No, that’s not true. The reality is that a lot of people have put a lot of time and energy into helping me. Into trying to put things in a different perspective for me to see. To help me accept the things I cannot change, mainly the past. I’ve chosen to stay miserable. To allow myself down the rabbit hole of self-depreciation and self-doubt. To focus on the bad instead of the good. To be the kind of person I despise.

This is where resentment has led me, to replaying every instance of perceived injustice I felt so deeply. Mentally changing what I said, putting in a different tape where the outcome goes my way. Where everyone else feels the “fuck you” I want to scream.

I haven’t felt love in months. I’m too busy wrapped in a blanket of negative self-talk. The positive energy I believed in so strongly seemingly vanished from every piece of my existence. Who am I really? What do I really believe? Is this fair to those around me? What the fuck have I done to who I was?

I think the reason I write is that it forces me to have a point, to have a message. A meaning to the madness that runs through my mind. It reminds me that I have goals. That I have things I believe in. That I have a purpose outside of these walls.

I know I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I want to be happy. To be confident. To be the change I wish to see in the world. We all know things are easier said than done, but that doesn’t seem to do the doing justice. Feeling love, being grateful, creating positive connections, and being a light in a dark world seem like they should be way easier than this.

Perseverance. Inspiration. Love.

A song, a conversation I wasn’t a part of, feelings swept under the rug, realizations of others, words spoken outward when inward is where the meaning lies. A night spent listening, reflecting, and searching. While the rest of the world spins at a thousand miles an hour, I sit dead still in a prison cell putting the pieces of my broken life together, realizing where I have failed, the people I have lost, and how I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.

Have faith in me

‘Cause there are things that I’ve seen I don’t believe

So cling to what you know and never let go

Things aren’t always what they seem. 

These are the beginning lyrics of “Have Faith in Me” by A Day to Remember, a song that immediately brings to mind the person I gave up on: someone I called my best friend for years of my life. A best friend I hadn’t talked to because I didn’t think he listened. Someone I told I loved a million times, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t there for him. I didn’t think he listened. He kept going back, kept overdosing. Kept waking up in hospitals and ambulances. Then I heard he was clean. He’d finally moved away and gotten his life together, not that I would actually know. I didn’t reach out to him. I just told whoever the messenger was that I was happy for him. Way to go, Zach. You finally got what I was telling you while we were sitting in your driveway when I was emotionally pleading for you to come to meetings with me. “Put the pills down.” Stop using before you turned into your sister, the person you were afraid of becoming.

Then I left. I ran away from Zach. I went from organizing interventions, trying to save the friends I had led into addiction, to a new life. A fresh start for me while cutting off all contact with the guys I spent years leading onto the baseball field and basketball court. I barely looked back. 

Today I walked into my room and a conversation was taking place. The youngest guy in the room was passionately telling a group of his friends that he was going to do whatever he could to help their friend who is struggling in the program. The others were telling him how pointless it is. “This guy will never get it. He doesn’t listen.” I found myself nodding in agreement. I wouldn’t waste my breath on this guy. He doesn’t seem to care at all. No, that’s not it; he’s the type who’ll seemingly listen to every word, thank you for the advice, then do the same exact shit tomorrow. Just like Zach did.

“Well, I’m not going to just give up on him or anyone else,” the young guy responded repeatedly. I hope he never loses that energy. I did. 

Now Zach is dead and I play “Have Faith in Me” on repeat, thinking about singing these same words with him when the album came out. Trying to feel his energy inside of me, trying to recall the way he and I understood each other. We both grew up homeschooled and did everything we could to be seen as normal, to get in with the cool crowd. He’s dead and I’m in prison. How fucking cool are we now?

Tonight I brought up my belief that we should never give up on anyone. There isn’t a set number of times we should show our genuine love and care for another person before we abandon or give up on them. One of the men who had been firmly on the pointless side of the original conversation spoke up and informed us that he had actually reached out and apologized to someone struggling with guilt for giving up on him, he admitted to how much that apology meant to that person. He knew what it felt like to be given up on. What a terrible feeling.

This all made me realize how much happens behind the scenes, how much contemplation and honest reflection goes on in each of our minds after we share our deepest thoughts and beliefs with one another. A lot of times when it seems like no one is listening, they are. Or maybe someone else is. Opening up and sharing messages from the love that stores itself inside of us always bears fruit. I truly appreciate the conversation I overheard because it brought Zach back into my life for a day. Even though I failed to live up to the message being offered, I know that my future success will be defined by my ability to love through adversity even when it seems like the message isn’t being received. It all starts with me taking my own advice and never giving up on anyone.

I’m white, middle class, and have two parents who are still together. I didn’t try drugs in high school; instead I recited the Bible. I have blue eyes, dark brown hair, and I’m an inch over six feet. I went to college, played baseball, and traveled to Australia on a missions trip.

Statistically I shouldn’t be here, in federal prison, nothing more than inmate 32201-171. I should be successful, married, and a pillar of the privileged community. I should be worried about my children being corrupted by people who see life differently than I do. Instead I’m here, not with fellow statistics, but with men who think and feel and see. Men with talents, hopes, and dreams. Human beings stuck in a cycle where only statistics are seen.

When I look at the system from the inside, it lights a flame within me, a flicker that sparks a desire to change the way people see my friends, the way people see me. I am so much more than the perpetrator of a “West Coast to East Coast Marijuana Distribution Scheme.” We are so much more than recidivism rates, conviction rates, and statistics on crime.

To me, the most infuriating part is what these statistics are used for: convincing people—the kind of people I should’ve grown up to become—to pay for more prisons, more police, and more hate. Giving promotions to people who don’t see others as human. People who view taking men out of their families’ lives as a stepping stone to personal goals. This system is broken, but the statistics that are me and the people around me keep moving it along.

I understand that people need us to be statistics. If we are real men with real children who miss us every day of their lives, then we become human. If we are human, we are worthy of having a voice. If we have a voice, people might see what I see every day. What I see is so much more #human.

Three years of my life spent in federal prison. Thirty-six months spent learning about life in a completely new way. One thousand ninety-six days waking up knowing I am under the control of my oppressors. Twenty-six thousand three hundred and four hours missing my daughter’s life.

I was asked the other day what I was feeling at that particular instant. My answer was that I felt peaceful and confident. I feel both of those at all times. When I look back to that moment three years ago when I was on FaceTime with my mother, tears running down my face, promising her I would be okay, it makes me realize how far I have come and how much about life, coincidence, and energy I have really learned. I found myself in prison, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

When I look back at these three years, the first thing that comes to mind is all the people–all the men I’ve met in prison, and the people on the outside who have supported me at different times and throughout this whole ordeal. I think about how each and every person has come into my life at the perfect time for what I’m going through. Whether it was a cellmate for months at a time in the SHU, or people from the Internet I’ve never met in person, some people have shown me that there is a deeper meaning to life, a more spiritual basis for our very existence. Even some of the books I’ve read here contain ideas that I know I was meant to read. This is what puts me at peace: knowing that I’m on the right path to fulfill my life purpose.

It hasn’t all been roses. Having someone close to me, someone who showed me so much about life on a deeper level, get stabbed through the eye was probably the most shocking moment of my prison experience. Combined, I’ve spent over 13 months of these three years locked in a cell for 24 hours a day. I’ve lost friends and missed birthdays. I’ve been locked up while my father was in the hospital on four separate occasions. My daughter barely remembers spending any actual time with me before prison. People have moved on while I simply sat behind a wall. All of these things were hard to deal with, but in the end, they only made me see life in a more positive light.

I’m going to shock the people who knew me before prison by how much I’ve changed. They’re going to see a side of me that didn’t exist before prison. This post will hopefully be the last time I have to reflect on prison while still incarcerated since I should be out this fall. My daughter told me that she doesn’t want me to let her know when I’m getting out; she wants me to surprise her. Her mother told me that she watches videos of men getting reunited with their families and wants that for herself. I can’t wait for that moment, either. 

The next chapter starts when I have the chance to process and reflect on the last three years. That’s when I’ll move on to the next stage of becoming the person I’ve always been destined to be. Prison didn’t end my story, it just gave it a beginning. 

I need RDAP because the life I was living in prison was far from the life I want to live on the outside. I was out of shape, eating myself through depression, and involved in too many negative activities. I had written a novel in the SHU based around a character that was supposed to be me but no longer was. I need RDAP to once again find the man I know I’m supposed to be.

I have been addicted to so many things in my life that it’s hard to know where to start. Opiates were my most depressing addiction because they were the only thing I wanted to stop but couldn’t. What I’ve learned in this program–through talking to and listening to my peers–is that wanting to stop a drug but not being able to is only one part of addiction. I’ve been addicted to cannabis, alcohol, cocaine, and sleeping with women for most of my adult life. One of my most shared social media memes was a tweet where I stated, “The goal in life is to fuck hotter bitches.” For much of my life, I really believed that. I pursued that goal with such focus and determination that I ruined every meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. I cheated on my daughter’s mother while she was pregnant. I cheated on the girl I claimed to love. I have literally never said the words “I can’t, I have a girlfriend” to any prospect in my life. There is no doubt in my mind that my root addiction is women, and every drug I use is to further my ability to acquire my real drug of choice.

On Tuesday night, my daughter asked me whether I broke up with her mommy or she broke up with me. I sat there speechless for what seemed like an eternity. The truth of the situation, hidden behind all the lies, was running through my mind. The reason we broke up is because I couldn’t control my addictions. I would go to work as the weed-dealing bartender, get high, get drunk, do a little blow, and end up doing exactly what I knew would happen from the beginning, once again accomplishing my life’s goal while a girl who truly loved me sat at home and grew my child inside of her. Whether she found out or not–trust me, she normally did–I felt like shit about myself the next day. That still didn’t stop me from bragging to my boys about whatever girl I had bagged the night before. After all, I had my persona to keep. I had to be the guy everyone else wished they could be.

Now here I am. I sit in prison around men who’ve made similar mistakes. Having to tell my daughter it was a mutual decision because I don’t want to admit that I’m such a piece of shit. What RDAP provides me is the ability to open up, to share my real struggles, where addiction has led me, what I really used drugs for. I think the staff would be surprised at the level and depth to which a lot of the concepts and subjects we discuss are taken after hours. On Wednesday, so many men came up to me and gave me real and honest advice that enabled me to see the real usefulness of this program. Conversations that would never happen on the compound in any other prison setting. They helped me see myself through other people’s eyes.

I’m in RDAP because I need to become a better person who can take what I’ve learned in prison and change the narrative of my life. I can become a redemption story instead of a story of wasted talent. I can be the change I want to see in the world.

Before I came to prison, I believed in nothing. I thought everything was random and life had no real purpose. Then I met Gabriel Arias-Maduro.

I know it sounds like hyperbole to say that one individual impacted my life to that extent, but in this case, it’s simply the truth. I know he was put in my life for a reason, and I know that reason is to change this world for the better.

I met Gabriel my very first day in federal prison, and over the next nine months, I spent more time with him as an individual than I have ever spent with any one person outside of my family. We worked out together, ate together, watched T.V. together, and I witnessed him create the best music I have ever heard. Never once did I see him have a bad day or fail to positively inspire every person he came in contact with. He is the most talented and inspiring individual I have ever known.

Gabriel taught himself how to play guitar in prison and became the best in the institution in less than a year. He started writing his own music and lyrics, perfecting twenty-five songs in less than two months. I witnessed his very first creation, “Family,” leave an entire room of grown, hardened men in tears, missing their families. As I write this, the melody and lyrics still flow through my head and make me emotional. His music really is that good. Gabriel worked out every day and shared his knowledge with me, which led me to lose fifty pounds in three months. He’s an expert at yoga and teaches others as well. He was the best athlete on the compound and played every sport at the highest level. He journals every single day of his prison experience by using his left hand to write because his goal is to be completely ambidextrous before he gets out. He is the only inmate I have ever met who views prison in an entirely positive light. He sees this as an opportunity to better himself in every possible way, and he lives that vision every single day.

Despite moving away from his life of crime and going to school to create a new life in Orlando long before his arrest, he was sentenced to eleven years behind bars. I know laws are in place for a reason, but sometimes there are circumstances and people that should be looked at over numbers on a guideline sheet. It’s a shame that the outside world is denied Gabriel’s infectious personality. I’m sure that, if given the opportunity to go home early, he would not only keep himself from recidivating, but he would also prevent countless others from entering lives of crime.

I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the influence of Gabriel Arias-Maduro. I know without a doubt that he will make the best of any opportunity he is given to get out early. He is the opposite of a risk to society. He is a guaranteed success story. People like myself needed Gabriel in prison, but now it is time for the world to have him back.

_{Dedicated to the most precious gift of my life, my princess, Adelina}

Once upon a time, there were two little girls named Adelina and Rosalie. They were the best of friends. 

One day Adelina’s Dadda asked if she remembered where she buried her secret treasure when she was three. Adelina couldn’t remember, and it made her very sad. Rosalie made her best friend feel better by reminding her that all her memories were saved in her teeth. 

Together they decided to go on an adventure to find the Tooth Fairy’s castle where Adelina’s baby teeth were kept. The two best friends grabbed their backpacks and filled them up with everything they thought they would ever need. Rope, in case they needed to climb up mountains. Beef jerky, carrots, and cookies for when they became hungry. Gymnastics clothes to be able to do all of their incredible flips for anyone they met along the way. 

Their journey started by skipping through the woods behind Adelina’s house, hand in hand like any adventure with best friends should begin. The journey north to the Tooth Fairy’s castle was longer than the girls expected. Before long, Adelina decided it was time to sit down and eat. 

As the girls split up the beef jerky and carrots, Rosalie thought she heard a voice calling for help. Most children would have been scared to be alone without grownups in the woods, but not these two. They decided to search for who was in trouble. 

Adelina’s mouth dropped open when she saw Sparkles—the elf on a shelf who spent Christmas at her house—caught in a giant spider web. Holly—the elf on a shelf from Rosalie’s house—was sitting on the ground in tears because she couldn’t help her friend get down. 

Adelina thought of the perfect plan. She distracted the giant spider by doing back handsprings while Rosalie threw the rope to Sparkles and pulled the elf to safety. Sparkles and Holly were so thankful that they agreed to help the girls on their journey and promised to make sure Santa brought them the best presents next Christmas. 

With two hungry elves as companions, the girls quickly ran out of food. Their problem was solved, however, when they came across the Easter Bunny’s children in the forest. 

It was winter, so the Easter bunny wasn’t living in the mall, and his son and daughter were playing school just like Adelina and Rosalie liked to do. Adelina became the teacher, and she was so good at teaching that the Easter Bunny gave the crew all the candy they could carry. 

With enough chocolate and Kinder eggs to feed the girls and the elves for weeks, they said goodbye to the Easter Bunny family and continued on their journey. 

It wasn’t long before it started snowing and the temperature dropped to 10 degrees. They knew they must be getting close to the Tooth Fairy’s castle, but they should’ve brought warmer clothes! They found a sign sticking out of the snow with one arrow that pointed toward the castle and another arrow that pointed toward the North Pole. The elves thanked the girls for everything and went on their merry way. It was only another hour and a half walk for the girls to make it to the castle. 

The two girls were shivering when they spotted the giant castle made of children’s teeth. They could see the Tooth Fairy’s helpers flying in and out of the castle, delivering all the teeth they had collected the night before. 

As the girls crossed the bridge over the frozen moat, a voice called down to them, asking what their business at the castle was. When Adelina yelled that she needed the memories from her teeth, the giant doors swung open. The brave, adventurous girls were brought to the Tooth Fairy immediately and were each given hot chocolate to warm up. 

Adelina found the treasure chest with her teeth right between her mommy’s and daddy’s teeth from when they, too, were kids.

Adelina and Rosalie were transported back to Adelina’s house before their parents even knew they were gone. 

Adelina found the oak tree where her teeth memories told her she had buried her secret treasure.

She once again had her best friend bracelet she shared with Rosalie. 

The End.

My belief in cannabis started the very first time I used it. I had been struggling with anxiety and depression during my first year of college, and it was destroying my self-confidence. Despite my incarceration for it, I believe that cannabis is the most medicinally beneficial plant on the planet based on my own life experience, what I see in others, and from information I’ve gathered through outside sources. I believe it’s time for the United States government to recognize cannabis for the medicine it truly is.

Picture this: sitting on a bucket full of baseballs with tears streaming down my face. Thirty-something college-aged guys looking at me with a mixture of pity, sympathy, and cruel humor. I was the odd duck on the baseball team. The homeschooled kid with no car, no license, and no cell phone. I’d never tried alcohol nor seen a drug in person, let alone taken one. I’d finally broken. I couldn’t throw the ball back to the pitcher. I was having some kind of mental block like the guy from the movie “Major League.” While I eventually stopped crying and my anxiety attack ended, the tightness in my chest and the depression that followed didn’t. Then I used cannabis for the first time.

The summer after freshman year, my best friend started using cannabis, and his cousin was coming into town with a quarter ounce. I decided I wanted to try it. We stayed up all night using a hookah to smoke. I was high as a kite when my mother’s voice on my friend’s answering machine got me off the couch. I had a baseball game at 8 a.m. I hadn’t planned on showing up. I asked everyone at the house what I could do to hide how high I was. There was no hope for me. I hopped in the back of my mom’s conversion van and tried to fall asleep.

I don’t know if it was the grin on my face or the redness of my eyes that could be seen from a football field length away, but the guys on my team knew I was high long before I reached the dugout. I was the kid on the team who didn’t do that type of thing. They were all in disbelief. I wound up hitting a home run that game and never struggled to throw the ball back to the pitcher again. Using cannabis made me relax in a way I didn’t know was possible. It helped me see that life is supposed to be something we enjoy. Now, even when I can’t use cannabis because of drug tests, I still tap into that same place of inner calm and know that everything will be ok.

I’ve worked in the service industry since I was nineteen, bartended since twenty-three. The service industry is the cash business that supports the ultimate cash business: drugs. There is no doubt in my mind that alcohol is the most dangerous drug on earth. Just a handful of stories of what I’ve personally witnessed behind the bar is a testament to the veracity of that statement. I’m no fool—I know other drugs are dangerous—but cannabis simply isn’t one of them. Comparing cannabis to alcohol as a harmful drug is an insult to basic human intelligence. Alcohol is the cause. Cannabis is the cure.

I used to be like everyone else and thought medicinal cannabis was a joke, just an excuse for potheads to get high. Then I attended a rally for medicinal cannabis in Columbia, SC in 2015. I thought it would be like other weed festivals I’d attended earlier that year where everyone was smoking pot openly and a bunch of awesome bands played. I was completely wrong. I watched two parents give a passionate, tear-filled speech while their child sat in a high-tech wheelchair. Hundreds of seizures a day had destroyed his body and mind until his parents were desperate enough to try cannabis. The results were astounding, but to get the medicine their child desperately needed, they had to move to another state, to risk arrest and losing the very child they were trying to save. That was the moment I realized this fight is about so much more than getting high.

I started to view cannabis in a different light. What are we all really using it for? When I’m hungover from the night before, I smoke a blunt and drink a Gatorade the same way that someone else might pop an Aspirin. I thought of my friends who use it for anxiety, depression, headaches, pain, and everything else life throws our way. The truth is we can all go to a doctor and they will prescribe us some pharmaceutical drug for every single thing we use cannabis for. We don’t need medical degrees to know our own bodies and minds. If a natural plant works for me, why do I need to take an Aspirin, Xanax, or prescription opiate? We all use cannabis for medicinal reasons, whether we realize it or not.

When my bartending wife found out her father had cancer, she was devastated. He was an amazing man who led his family from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina where he’d been a pastor and started a new church in South Carolina. He’d never used cannabis, but his daughter talked him into trying it to deal with the side effects of chemotherapy. I provided whatever he needed free of charge because I knew he really needed it. Hearing that the cannabis vape pen he hit with his wife while they ate and watched T.V. together were the only moments of pain-free happiness he had left made me feel incredibly useful, like I was doing the right thing no matter the cost. Even if that cost included my freedom.

I started researching the true “why” of cannabis prohibition. How could a country that claims to be free not allow us to use a plant that can help with so many things? The real answer to that question is so infuriating that it makes me want to tear the war on drugs completely apart.

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music—jazz and swing—result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.

from the book war on us by colleen cowles, 2019

These words are from Harry J. Anslinger, the father of the DEA. Imagine that statement as a tweet by the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2022. The cancel culture would demand the entire agency be shut down immediately. People would be outraged. There would be protesters lined up for miles outside their doors. Unfortunately, in 1937 when Harry made this and many other blatantly racist statements, telling white America that their wives and daughters might sleep with black men caused the same kind of outrage, but in a different direction. He effectively made cannabis illegal by placing a tax on it that couldn’t be paid, and white America was on completely on board.

In 1971, when Nixon declared the “War on Drugs,” there was a sinister reason to place cannabis on the schedule 1 drugs despite the unanimous recommendation of the commission appointed by Nixon to decriminalize cannabis for personal use. This is a quote from John Ehrlichman, who was Nixon’s personal counsel and assistant:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: The anti-war left, and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about drugs? Of course we did.

from the book war on us by colleen cowles, 2019

So here we are as a society, stuck in a slow uphill battle to legalize cannabis, while the leaders of this country claim we need more time to make sure it’s safe. Children are suffering from epilepsy, cancer, and other diseases that cannabis is known to alleviate and even cure while politicians use cannabis as a political chess piece. Real human beings are becoming addicted to much more dangerous pharmaceutical drugs because of a racist and an agenda behind a war we never should’ve been in. Here I am, in federal prison, for providing the most medicinally beneficial plant on the planet to adults who believe cannabis helps them. Stuck in a drug class that still treats cannabis as if it is really a schedule 1 drug. For me this fight is personal. This means everything to me. I’m told daily that nothing I say matters, that no one cares. I refuse to believe there’s any truth in that statement. I refuse to quit fighting for my freedom and for what I believe. 

(Author’s Note: All quotes are taken from War on Us by Colleen Cowles. Chapter 4 “Why an epidemic now? How did we get here?” pages 33 and 35 respectively. A must-read book for anyone interested in the truth behind “the war on drugs.”)