About ten of us were watching “Love After Lockup” on a Friday night when Tyrone (not his real name) stumbled into the dayroom high on K2. His bulky black boots threatened to trip him with every step. The Styrofoam cup he held sloshed coffee over the rim onto the floor when he walked past me to lean against a wall for support. His eyelids closed. His lips parted in mock ecstasy, as if he was lost in a sensual reverie.
Then…he passed out while still on his feet. He toppled over stiff, like a felled tree, and hit the concrete floor with a meaty smack.
Sneakers screeched as men fled the dayroom. No one wanted to witness an overdose or be asked to write a statement if he died. They climbed into their bunks and cranked the volume on their radios while staring at the ceiling, feinting blissful ignorance. In prison, preserving one’s comfort often supersedes compassion, not because prisoners are selfish, but for self-preservation.
If it had been anyone but Tyrone, I would have fled, too, but I couldn’t abandon him. Tyrone and I had survived four prisons together, starting with Polk Youth Center in the late 1990s. If I was broke, he shared his snack at night. If he fought, I made sure no one jumped in. We’d been cool for 23 years. That wouldn’t change because he smoked too much dope once in awhile.
Hesitantly I leaned over his face and clapped once. “Tyrone!”
His glassy eyes popped open. “What?” He muttered.
My pounding heart slowed a bit. “Get off the damn floor!” I said, holding out a helping hand.
Tyrone gripped my palm. I lifted him to his feet, sat him in a chair, and got him a cup of cold water. In a minute or so he was back to normal.
No one knows what’s in the dope he smokes. Some say it’s synthetic pot. Maybe it’s laced with fentanyl. Others swear it’s only paper doused in roach spray. Whatever it is, a multitude of prisoners are going crazy for it.
When a good batch comes in, cell blocks turn into zombie land. A lot of guys nod out on their beds like heroin addicts. One guy will stand at his locker for an hour, frozen in time, like a mannequin reaching for an object he’ll never grasp. Another will lay on the pissy bathroom floor swimming in his own vomit while laughing hysterically. They fall off the top bunk and bust their heads open. They wash dirty boxer shorts to pay debts. They steal whole onions and bell peppers from their kitchen job to sell. They spend the $20 their mamas send once a month as soon as it hits their account. They get high with a buddy, then run his pockets for his stash when he nods out; then they help him look for the “lost” dope when he comes to. They’ll do anything to get high.
Most of them arrive as addicts. Once in prison they wallow in loneliness, depression, and self-hatred. Oppression sprinkled into the mix makes the perfect recipe for destruction.
Out of the six prisons where I served time in North Carolina, only one had a six-week recovery program, and it ended in 1999. Some prisons host Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, but that’s it. Rehabilitation is a myth here. If an addict wanted to get clean, he’d be hard pressed to find a state-sponsored avenue, because they don’t exist.
To solve the drug problem, the North Carolina prison system stopped allowing personal mail to be delivered to facilities. Now our mail is scanned and printed on tablets by for-profit companies that give a kickback to the state. It is costly and our mail is always late. Some prisons won’t allow people to French kiss their spouse at visitation, no matter how long they’ve been married—as if one couple could supply the entire prison with the miniscule amount of dope swapped in one kiss. They have done everything they can to punish us and our families. They rarely scrutinize employees as drug mules, nor have they attempted to create more recovery programs.
As far as I can tell, the problem is getting much worse, not better.
The day after Tyrone passed out in the dayroom, he came onto the yard while I was doing pushups. I’d worked up a good sweat. We spoke about mundane things, really, but something nagged at me. Seeing him unconscious on the floor scared me, but I didn’t know how to tell him that without shattering my convict persona of invulnerability.
Between sets, I asked him, “Why you smoke that shit, yo?”
He offered a shrug. “Ain’t nothin’ else to do,” he said. “I been locked up 25 years and have at least 26 to go. Why not smoke?”
Honestly, I had no counter. I once used the same logic.
Tyrone didn’t hang with me for long. He walked off, probably to get high. I couldn’t control his life. He had choices to make. When he became tired of it, he’d quit…or not. I learned long ago that I had to either accept people for who they are or leave them alone. That’s all I could do. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to kick him to the curb.
As a young man I chased dope to escape the ills of prison life. Being sentenced to life without parole at the age of 23 gave me no reason to live. I never smoked K2, but inebriation helped me forget the oppression of prison life. I felt happy for the moment. But when I came down, I was still locked up, making me want to get high all over again.
Writing memoirs helped me look deeper into who I am. Questioning my past decisions through prose made me scrutinize my future decisions, if only because I learned betterment through self-examination.
Socratic scholars call this mechanism of examination through inquisition the”elenchus.” Socrates used the elenchus to extract truth from people he spoke with. If someone held a belief, Socrates tested that belief by asking questions. Most of the time, people stalked off frustrated because the elenchus exposed inconsistencies in beliefs that gave them purpose: religion, politics, and even the definition of courage.
The best elenctic thinking begins with an examination of the self. By asking myself tough questions, I confronted misguided beliefs I held, like: getting high helped me escape prison. I wasn’t escaping anything. I was actually rooting myself deeper into a worse situation. So I stopped using.
As I lay in bed last night, I wondered what would’ve happened if Tyrone’s eyes hadn’t opened when I woke him from his drug-induced coma with a clap. What if he died that night?
Some may say that Tyrone’s death wouldn’t matter. Such a reasoning portrays all prisoners as subhumans who deserve the worst for breaking the law.
I look at Tyrone as a human being that I hope will find sobriety. This hope stems from my own incarceration and battle with addiction, but more than that, Tyrone may be the person I need to lend me a helping hand should I fall.
I wish Tyrone made better choices, sure, but I understand why he chooses to get high in prison.