Wednesday, May 16, 2012:

There’s this law in economics called the 80/20 principle, or Pareto’s Law, named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.

The 80/20 principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually leads to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards.

For example, eighty percent of what you achieve in your job comes from twenty percent of your time spent working. In business, you could say that twenty percent of products usually account for eighty percent of dollar sales value, or twenty percent of customers usually account for eighty percent of profits.

It goes on and on: twenty percent of motorists cause eighty percent of accidents, twenty percent of those who marry comprise eighty percent of divorce statistics, and twenty percent of criminals account for eighty percent of all crime. (You can read about this in the book, The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch.)

The 80/20 principle applies to addiction as well. Twenty percent of the people who use drugs account for eighty percent of all problems in our society caused by drug use.

So, if I may extrapolate here, I would say that twenty percent of all people who use drugs become addicted. That leaves a lot of people who use drugs who don’t become addicts, just as probably eighty percent of people who drink don’t become alcoholics.

Unfortunately, I’m one of those twenty percenters. If I could blame someone for all my relapses (I can’t), I would blame those eighty percenters who seem to be able to use without any damaging consequences. If they can do it, why can’t I?

Ann Marlowe, who wrote How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z, is one of those eighty percenters. And for some reason, she decided to write a memoir about addiction.

Let me start off by saying she wrote a very interesting and entertaining book. I couldn’t put it down…the same way I can’t look away from a car crash. But what you’ve got is, basically, like a social drinker trying to write about what it’s like to be an alcoholic.

She says that taking heroin is a habit that requires self-discipline. Really? She disputes William Burroughs’ characterization of addiction as “uncontrollable need.” Mr. Burroughs was only, like, the God of junkie-dom.

She’s even made a confounding case that the the reason junkies use is because they actually want to be addicted. Wow!

Marlowe had me laughing out loud at her convoluted, elaborate arguments about the true nature of heroin use and addiction, which reminded me that there are few absolutes in this life. We don’t see the world as it really is, we see it as we are.

Again, this was a fascinating, if not sometimes exhausting (she sent me to the dictionary a couple of times — valetudinarian?) read.

But Marlowe’s no expert on addiction and maybe she’s not trying to be. Maybe she just pushed my intellectual-inferiority-complex buttons one too many times. After all, she is a Jewish, Ivy league-educated woman from New York City and I’m just a white boy from Alabama biding my time in prison.

Friday, May 11, 2012:

A friend sent me the novel, Little Bee, by Chris Cleave.

Little Bee is a Nigerian girl seeking asylum in the UK. She’s fleeing from atrocities committed in her village in the name of oil exploration. The only person she knows in the UK is a morally flawed woman whom she met on a beach in Nigeria under tragic circumstances.

Little Bee is constantly looking for quick methods to commit suicide in case “the men” come looking for her.

I know what that’s like, to be preoccupied by suicide. Slitting the wrist doesn’t work. I bled for eight hours before I was discovered very much alive.

Being on suicide watch in the psych ward of the county jail in Houston is…there’s no words to describe it. “Hell” is too weak a word.

The dope withdrawals were bad enough, and a possible life sentence, well, it was definitely past check-out time.

Like Little Bee, suicide was on my mind every hour of every day for more than a year…until my brother overdosed.

He beat me to it. He beat me to death. He took the wind out of the sails of my death-wish.

In a way, my brother’s dying saved me. He’s not my Jesus, but I choose to believe that he died so I could live.

That’s sort of what Little Bee‘s about, or at least how it relates to my life — suicides, sacrifices, and perfectly flawed people looking for a better life.

Saturday, May 5, 2012:

I’m looking forward to being released from prison more than I’ve ever looked forward to anything in my life. It blows my mind to imagine walking through those gates, because, for so long, I thought it would never happen.

However, there’s only one aspect of my future that I dread — the stigma of being an ex-con.

I’ve vowed to myself to be very open about my past. Trying to hide it would cause more harm to me than if the whole world knew.

I’m aware that some people may not be as understanding and accepting as I would like them to be, but I’m confident that I’ll be able to handle it.

I know everyone’s got their issue that they wish everyone understood. My issue is what it’s like to be a drug addict and prisoner. If there’s one book I wish you could read, it would be Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul. It’s a collection of stories told by inmates(former and current), their families, and prison staff and volunteers.

The following passage about suicide could have been written by me:

Yes, to take the easy way out would hurt a few others, but they could overcome it and probably be better off in the long run. I’d reached the point where all my mental energy was directed toward devising a quick, easy and painless transition from this world to the next. I even felt a small twinge of joy at the prospect of being free from jail.

Then there’s the story about Harry who smuggled to pay for cancer treatment, but he was put in prison instead where he discovered meditation.

The irony of the story is that he credits meditation with curing his cancer.

There’s a quote by the late Charles Colson, Nixon’s “hatchet man”:

The richest spiritual experiences I have ever known have not been in vaulted cathedrals surrounded by stained-glass windows, but in the filthiest prison cells.

There’s also a story about a woman who reluctantly volunteered to tutor a prisoner. She had such a profound spiritual experience that she couldn’t tell who was really the teacher and who was the student.

And sadly, this passage:

It’s odd to me that so many people think that time is an effective punishment. Perhaps I’ve become delusional. Maybe I am being punished after all. Can a man be punished if he doesn’t know it? I can’t tell anymore, because I don’t know any other life besides the one I’m living.

I’ll leave you with this, it’s not in Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul, but it could be. It’s from Hebrews 13:3 —

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

Friday, April 27, 2012:

You know, after I was arrested for robbing all those banks, I had to accept that, yes, I am a violent criminal. I didn’t physically hurt anyone, mind you, but the trauma I inflicted on my victims was probably just as bad, or worse.

I had a hard time admitting that, and I’ve tried to come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons for why I did what I did. The last thing I wanted to admit was that I was just a bad person, that I was born bad, and will always be bad.

I know there’s a lot of people that will see it that way, even some of my own kinfolk, no doubt.

I’ve tried to explain it away by saying that I was sick, that I have a disease that causes me to lose control of my behavior.

And the drug program I just completed gave me another perspective, basically saying that I’ve let things outside myself control me and that I’m guilty of thinking irrationally, of not thinking through the consequences of my actions.

There’s also the spiritual perspective. After reading Held Hostage by Ken Cooper, I can see that I was deceived. I was under the delusion that if I do X, I will get Y. But it was a lie, the biggest lie I ever fell for.

Well, anyway, Held Hostage is a memoir by a serial bank robber who was not addicted to drugs or money. He was addicted to adrenaline, what he calls, joy juice.

He was a respected member of his community and had a high-profile job at a Christian college. He was living a double life that resulted in a ninety-nine year sentence in the state of Florida.

What’s remarkable about this story is that he put his faith in Christ and ended up serving only three years.

I’m inspired by this story because it proves that people do make miraculous changes while in prison.

The Ken Cooper before his arrest was a completely different person than the Ken Cooper who came out of prison. He tackled his problem from the spiritual perspective and was given freedom in more ways than he could ever imagine.

Sunday, April 22, 2012:

In twelve step programs, when we’re feeling depressed or full of self-pity, we’re often told by our sponsor to make a gratitude list. It works for me because it’s impossible to feel grateful and depressed at the same time.

And for today, despite having been in prison for the last eleven and a half years, I have plenty to be grateful for: I’m healthy, I have a few good friends, my mom and dad didn’t give up on me even when I gave up on myself, I have my release to look forward to, and I get a chance to start over.

But I became even more grateful after reading A Secret Gift by Ted Gup. A Secret Gift is a story, or actually many stories, about one man’s generosity during the Great Depression.

The author’s Jewish grandfather, Sam Stone, risked prison and deportation back to an anti-semitic Romania in order to build a better life in the US before the Depression. Just before Christmas of 1933, Mr. Stone placed an anonymous ad in the local newspaper offering cash gifts to seventy-five needy families.

As the author discovers his grandfather’s alter-ego, a beautiful, complex, and heart-rending story unfolds.

I’m almost embarrassed, and even ashamed, to admit that even in prison, I have it better than the people who lived through the Depression.

But I’m also grateful to have a chance to read a book like A Secret Gift. It renewed my hope in humanity and I was impressed with how one man’s compassion touched so many lives including my own.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012:

From Believing in Myself by Earnie Larsen & Carol Hegarty:

The search for greater self-knowledge is much like an archaeological dig. The farther down we go, the more surprises we’re likely to find. Some are more fun than others. Often, one of our less-pleasing discoveries is our skill in using acceptable words to name our unacceptable character flaws.

The quality we used to call perseverance, for example, may turn out to be plain old stubbornness once we clean it off and take a good look. Our compassion and generosity may look an awful lot like codependent enabling and our straightforwardness, like crass insensitivity. Of course, we realized we had flaws, but who guessed they would be so serious — or that so many of them would be the so-called “virtues” that we were proud of!

But we shouldn’t be too discouraged by our character flaws. They’re not evidence of our depravity, but of our humanity. Even the spiritual giants of this world are not perfect. Flawlessness is not a condition that applies to human beings. To identify a character flaw is like naming a disease after the lab results come in. The lab report doesn’t cause the disease. It simply tells what it is, so a remedy can be prescribed.

Monday, April 9, 2012:

I just finished reading The Heroin Diaries by Nikki Sixx. The Heroin Diaries is a journal he kept in 1987 as he descended into the hellish abyss of addiction as he and his band, Motley Crue, toured the country.

I saw them in Biloxi, MS of that year. It was interesting to see what was going on in his head the very day that I saw them perform. It was also the day that they made the cover of Rolling Stone only to be disrespected with this headline: Heavy Metal: It’s Loud, It’s Ugly, It Won’t Go Away.

Yeah, I admit it: in the eighties I was a teenage headbanger with a mullet haircut and wore black, heavy metal concert T-shirts and blue jeans. Every square inch of my bedroom walls was covered with pictures of Nikki Sixx and his cohorts.

The fact that he was one of my biggest idols (I even had a dog named Nikki) was a heroin junkie should have foretold my own descent into junkie-dom. But I must admit that Nikki’s decadence was a lot more glamorous than my own.

It sounds as if he flushed more drugs down the toilet out of paranoia that year than I ingested in all of my twenty year using career. And it just goes to show that drug addiction affects the poor differently than the rich.

When the withdrawals started, all he had to do was pick up the phone. He never woke up wondering where he was going to get enough money to help him make it through the day without getting sick.

This journal-type memoir is better than the typical addiction memoir, because no matter how committed to honesty the memoirist may be, memories distort and degrade through the years.

But with The Heroin Diaries, you see addiction in real-time, day-by-day as it’s happening. And you can see that Sixx was clearly happier on the days when he managed to clean up. When he was strung out, he wrote the words I’ve uttered to myself so many times during my addiction:

People don’t make sense to me…I have no comfort zone. I don’t know how to live. I feel like an alien.

Monday, April 2, 2012:

I just had to read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, because it was referenced and referred to again and again in other books that I’ve read recently.

I knew he was the leader of the African National Congress (ANC), that he had spent a long time in prison, and that he was elected South Africa’s first black president shortly after his release in 1990.

I didn’t know the magnitude of his strength of character.

This is a person who sacrificed his whole life to fight for the principles he believed in. As he said,

Men, I think, are not capable of doing nothing, saying nothing, of not reacting to injustice, of not protesting against oppression, of not striving for the good society and the good life in the ways they see it.

I didn’t know that after more than twenty years in prison, he was offered a pardon with the stipulation that he return quietly and peacefully to his home in the Transkei.

And he turned it down, saying,

…if I was released into the same conditions under which I had been arrested, I would go back to doing precisely those things for which I had been imprisoned.

He also had a lot to say about prison which I could relate to:

The challenge for every prisoner is how to survive prison intact, how to emerge from prison undiminished…prison is designed to break one’s spirit and destroy one’s resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, diminish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality — all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are.

In prison,

…one must find consolation in being true to one’s ideals, even if no one knows it.

And sadly, that,

In prison the minutes can seem like years, but the years go by like minutes.

I was deeply moved by this story and even though I knew he was going to be released from prison, my emotions got the best of me when he spoke of being released after 27 years.

Few people who have walked this planet can match Mandela’s humanity, and we all have a lot we can learn from his life and his struggle.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012:

A 23-year-old woman was found dead in a car.

Also found with her was the following form of Psalm 23:

King Heroin is my shepherd. I shall always want. He maketh me to lie down in the gutters.

He leadeth me beside the troubled waters. He destroyeth my soul.

He leadeth me in the paths of wickedness.

Yea, I shall walk through the valley of poverty and will fear no evil, for thou, Heroin, are with me.

Thy needle and capsule comfort me. Thou strippest the table of groceries in the presence of my family.

Thou robbest my head of reason.

My cup of sorrow runneth over. Surely heroin addiction shall stalk me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the House of the Damned forever.

Friday, March 23, 2012:

I woke up at three AM with a needle sticking out of my arm. Another drug dream. They scare the hell out of me.

Why do I still have these dreams? Do I subconsciously still want to get high?

I may have said this before, but every time I stuck a needle in my arm, it was like a mini-near-death experience. It was like jumping across a thousand-foot deep chasm to win the lottery. In the back of my mind, I knew I might not make it, but the reward was too great to not chance it. Or so I thought.

I guess these dreams are a sort of post traumatic stress disorder. The worst part of it is that my brother, Brian, who overdosed ten years ago, is always there, always giving me the needle. It’s the only time he’s ever in my dreams.

And the needle’s always dull, or like last night, it’s not even a needle. It’s made of cork and I’m trying to force it through my tough skin into a vein.

So Brian hands me a new needle and I pull the plunger out and shoot the elixir into the new one, spilling some in the process.

Finally, it sinks smoothly into my skin, I see the blood register, and I push the plunger home, feeling a slight pressure in my vein. And I wake up, holding my breath.