ex contact gang grower right here. And I grew and sold herb in the 90s in NZ, where a single nugget would have you locked up for months! I'm the one you will find inside thats training a class of over 20 inmates to build and strengthen the right way. You know the one who gets all the chicken pieces on Saturday, runs a cafe and controls all the drugs, tattoo ink, fights, hustles and most of the screws. Yeah, that's me, I'll rip your ear off with my teeth and eat it purely to see the look on your face. Have broken wrists out of spite and laughed for months while they begged their cellmate or the screws to wipe their ass for them. I'm that muthafucker! Now I'm more chill, a father, a mortgage-free house owner, retired at 45 (48now), playing smarter, not harder. Just gave my two-year-old son a cuddle goodnight i can tell you life i prefer bro...and its not the Machismo. Being ASD, ADHD, CPTSD and the rest i aint got time for no cunt irl. However when im not hunting fishing and gardening to provide for my families table i find time to share online, ive convinced myself its chipping away at my bad karma points, and that may be so..but i actually enjoy the whole each one teach one vibe from the relative safety of the laptop. Still ripping pull ups and carrying deer for miles. Just mellowed now. It has its rewards!
That post justified a decent response. Enjoy it if you can.
My story is nothing like yours. 50-year-old guy who was senior vice president at Merrill Lynch. I had offices on Wall Street. Multiple. Glass enclosed. Only for a very short while so don't think my ego is that humongous. But God damn it, I had arrived. Self-Taught no degree computer programmer. My project was presented to the board of directors and everyone thought it was the most awesome thing in the world. I implemented it on the Eastern seaboard and I implemented it in Japan and I was about to fly out to London to go party and implement it there.
And then I had a house fire and the police showed up and saw my mushroom grow gear.
Arrested my family. I didn't bother trying to fight any charges. My dad died at 68. These charges were a minimum of 50 years. Sure, I'll take anything, please let my family out of jail. I will die in jail. That's okay, I had a really good run.
At that point I learned to fight back. I learned to negotiate. I had to negotiate t-shirts to build a pillow next to the open freezing window that was an old fort gun slit. I learned to present. I have a certain amount of venom available. I have a certain amount of coloring. Should you choose to try me, it's going to cost you.
If I lose, my misery is over. If I win, I add points to my reputation. I'm going to need this when they move me to State prison. This is just a couple of months in county lockup. I haven't gotten to the show yet.
Time to exercise. 50 years old and I just spent the last year rebuilding my house and running up and down three floors of steps a couple hundred times a day.
My first night in gen pop. I spent the previous month in intake. They passed me by twice during people distribution to try to figure out what to do with me and my kids that were in jail with me.
So now I have my brand new bed on the third tier in the middle of a 40-person tight unit. 3 ft from brilliant fluorescent lights that I want off.
Hey you kids, shut the fuck up and stop screaming. Seriously, a bunch of goddamn inmates were having a push-up contest underneath my goddamn bed. It was way past lights out time. But as long as they were doing that, the guards were not turning the lights off.
And yes I will beat you in this goddamn push-up contest. When I got to 30 push-ups they were all gathering and screaming my name and when I collapsed at 35 (we used to have push-up contests on the stock exchange floor, macho competitive bullshit, but I'd occasionally win) it was okay. They shut the fuck up and went to sleep.
They chanted my name every time the DEA held a press conference on the porch of my burnt house. And they did it often. I was front page in newspapers for weeks. I held classes in jail on how to grow mushrooms. I negotiated for individual lessons.
I was given an honorary title of OG and then I actually had to earn it.
I learned the top of a three-tier bunk and a bunch of soap in a sock beats stupid muscle man any day. I learned I can worm out of a gorilla grabbing me. I learned I have personal space and if you invade my personal space I will instinctively yoke you up against the wall and crush your Adam's apple. It's better if you're bigger than me because I'm reaching up. Your weight is crushing your throat. I had no idea I could do this. It just happened. I learned I could rally dozens of people to my side (never joining a specific gang even when “invited" and I no longer had to be physical.
I learned to smile. I learned to enjoy myself in jail.
I negotiated 5 years in state prison. I had to come up with charges based on whatever my stash was. The mushrooms that they arrested me for weren't enough but the LSD was. Four hits of LSD is dealer quantity. If you have enough to give to your friends for free, it's enough to be charged with intent to distribute. That's a felony. That's worth 5 years. They released my family. Thank you very much.
On my way to prison they then said you might be able to have drug court. So they delayed that for 7 months while I kissed ass.
Keep in mind I never lied once. Truly. I had a sickness. Empathy overload. I had overdosed on MDMA a couple months before that and I had not recovered yet. I could not tell a lie. It made me vomit. I couldn't do it. I told the truth to everybody every time during this time frame.
Which in turn of course made everybody think I was lying to everybody and no one believed me about anything.
Those morons gave me drug court for my mushroom addiction. I am the only person on the planet for that one. But for whatever reason they wanted me to go to rehab and they diagnosed me with a psilocybin mushroom addiction from my once every 4 month 2 g mushroom usage. If I screwed up drug court they’d take my 5 years in state prison and turn it into 10 years. No appeal.
I had to convince drug counselors that first I was addicted to something and then I've seen the light and recovered in order for them to release me.
I refuse to play the game. I never accepted the first step of AA or na, I told them exactly why I was there, I said try to call me on any bullshit and however long you choose to keep me in this rehab is your choice, but you will never have me admit to any addiction because there is none.
Yes I was running the place in 2 months but everyone who lasts that long gets some type of authority. It was a sacrificial position where the guy running the rehab get to use me as a tool against the population but in turn I told him to go fuck himself and I wasn't playing commandant for him. The day I was supposed to be released I got put in a meeting where I was supposed to make a decision if another patient should be punished for their behavior. I told them to go fuck themselves. I would not play.
The judge said a minimum of 90 days. They let me go at 91 days. Back to the real world. Back to tight oversight.
After that it was State control with a tight leash. I saw a probation officer at least three times a week. Those visits could be at work or at home or they'd say come in right now. And I had a bicycle. A fucking bicycle. I was poor.
I learned to pump gas and wash cars again. I learned to answer the phone and be customer support again. I learned to be a dispatcher assistant and then a night dispatcher who they gave the keys to the building to. Everybody reported to me. It took less than 6 months after I was brought indoors after washing cars for a couple years in the New slushy Jersey winters humid summers.
I learned to pee in a cup in front of a probation officer. Man, pee, shy? Are you crazy, I got shit to do, give me that cup and I'll pee right in front of you. Don't get too close or I might hit you.
So anyway, now I'm 62 and in the perfect spot in the perfect house that's paid for at the edge of the US where it seems it's the only spot in the world. That climate change isn't an affecting badly surrounded by Forest and ocean, a legal state with a medical license that allows me to grow up to 15 plants.
I raised two families. Those kids are off on their own and I see one occasionally because she's around the corner and the rest of them are on the other side of the country and that's fine with me. My wife takes care of me and I take care of her.
