Gary & Thomas

Gary and Thomas moved out of our building – involuntarily. Neither man was in college. Their assignment to 4A was mere happenstance. They both are under eighteen months and were “ready” for the first phases of re-entry. Building 3 is all re-entry, with 4B twelve to eighteen months and introduction to the “pre-cog” community. Overflow from B side is housed in A’s fifteen non-college beds. So Gary and Thomas were moved to 4A. Neither man could read; both men suffer from mental illness and are loaded up with handfuls of skittle colored pills to “regulate” their behavior. And even with the pills, both men went nuts and were “checked in” to the padded suicide cell in 7 building.

            The pill life. In here close to 50% of the men are on something. Don’t get me wrong; medications have their place in modern society. We live in an age where pharmaceuticals cure or limit the effects of diseases and conditions that one hundred years ago would have meant death at an early age. But we have become addicted to drugs without adequately evaluating the consequences of our over-dependence. And that addiction comes with a heavy price.

            Nowhere is the evidence clearer of our over-reliance on prescription meds than inside prison. Pills – meds – are a means of control. It’s far easier for the state to dole out prescription meds than address the underlying causes of many of these men’s problems. And prison – while an isolated lifestyle – is not an island unto itself. The reason the Department of Corrections allows medications to be the primary method of inmate health care is because the same is true in the “real” world. Pills are the answer.

            I have a friend in here, fifty-one, retired Navy. He made a horrible mistake one night and driving drunk crossed into a controlled intersection and killed two people. That was in 2006. To this day, he can’t even mention the accident without tearing up. While he sat in jail, pondering his responsibility for the loss of two innocent lives he heard from his wife that she was divorcing him. “I’m not going to put my life on hold for ten years while you go to prison,” she wrote. He fell into a deep depression. Unable to cope with the guilt over his reckless deed and now reeling from the loss of his wife, my friend actively contemplated suicide. The jail “routed” him to the facility psychiatrist. After a visit lasting less than ten minutes the doctor called in an 80 mg prescription (twice daily) of Prozac. Three weeks ago he came to the realization that the meds (now one 30 mg dose a day) weren’t doing what he needed.

            What he needed was to come to grips with what he did. What he needed was to own up, admit his responsibility and move forward. The meds kept him from that. About a year ago, this decent man, a wayward Catholic by his own admission, returned to the church. Monthly he would go to confession when the priest would come. The confessions, the readings, the self-examination allowed my friend to begin to heal. It was this healing that led to him stopping the Prozac and sleeping for fourteen hours every day. Now, he exercises, and prays, and takes college classes, and lives.

            A personal confession. I find myself in jail. The first night they put me on suicide watch – standard procedure anytime someone from “my side of the tracks” gets locked up. The next morning, a counselor asked me, “you’re aren’t going to hurt yourself, are you? When I said “no,” I was moved to a low custody pod and forty other men. I walked in the pod dayroom and felt like I stepped into the psych ward of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I was witness to a range and array of characters and behaviors I didn’t know existed. I was a mess – on the inside – yet no one knew. I carried myself with head high, joking, out-going; all the while I planned to end my embarrassment, pain, and self-loathing. I didn’t. Why I didn’t is between God and me, but my “Damascus” moment didn’t make me brave or responsible or giving. I was still a mess, just a mess who decided to see life through.

            A week after my arrival, I met the jail psychiatrist, an out-going, funny Filipino man who took an instant liking to me. “Are you depressed?” Of course I was – who wouldn’t be? My whole life was destroyed – marriage, wealth, prestige – all was gone. He then read the articles about me from the paper and in less than fifteen minutes came up with a “proposed” diagnosis. “You’re brilliant, personable, successful. You must suffer from mania. We’ll call it a slight disorder and see where that leads.” Mania – that explains my reckless behavior I thought. I’m not responsible; I’m ill. He then prescribed me 10 mg of trazadone (an anti-depressant) nightly to “help” me sleep.

            I clutched onto his diagnosis and treatment. I exaggerated in letters my conversations with the good doctor – anything to get sympathy. And, after only two days of pills, I started flushing the trazadone. I didn’t need it. What I needed to get sleep was to admit to myself and my God what a wreck I’d made of my life. And, I needed to “man up” and do the right thing regardless of the outcome. It was during those very dark, very difficult days that I agreed to plead guilty to all charges without a plea agreement on my sentence and to ensure my family was provided for, I soon discovered self-respect helps you sleep better than a bottle or a pill ever will. Like Tom Cruise’s character in “The Last Samurai,” honor and self-respect may be the best medicine for a broken soul.

            Pills; everywhere pills. The other night there were 38 men getting meds from our side, out of 66. Many of the men getting Zoloft, and Xanax, and Prozac, are in here on drug charges. Their treatment plans require alcohol and drug programs; their mental health plan requires high doses of meds. Even the “real” mentally ill – the schizophrenics – they are over-medicated to the point of being non-functioning. Gary and Thomas would sleep upwards of twenty hours per day. Personal hygiene – cleanliness – is forgotten; all there is is a vacant stare.

            It isn’t healthy and it isn’t right. There is no actual psychiatric treatment, just monthly videoconference “how are yous.” Side effects from most of the anti-depression and anti-psychotics require blood work quarterly to verify the pills aren’t destroying the user’s liver. Men go home with new addictions, new crutches.

            What’s the answer? Let’s face it, as USA Today pointed out in a cover story this week; mental health is the expendable item in most state budgets. It’s the dirty little secret no one wants to discuss until there’s a Newtown, or a Columbine, or PTSD Marine who goes off and kills women and children in an Afghan village. We ignore the problem and then “lock ‘em up.” Worse, we think a pill can solve the problem.

            Pills aren’t the answer. Somebody needs to do better for Gary and Thomas. By the way, what’s in your medicine cabinet?

I Was Brought Low. . .

This is about death, a subject that scares the hell out of me. The other day news broke in Richmond about a horrendous murder. In a poor neighborhood on Richmond’s Southside an eight year-old boy was murdered. His head was crushed with a block by an assailant who was attempting to rape the little boy’s nine year-old sister. The little boy came to his sister’s aid and was murdered. One moment, two children playing; the next, a senseless murder.

            This facility has a connection to that tragedy. Friday afternoon the guy in bunk “70” was called up to the booth. “You need to go to the watch command.” The dead boy was his son. The assailant a fourteen year-old from the neighborhood. It took less than five minutes for everyone to know. And what do you say to a man doing five years for drug possession who is told his son is dead? There is a heartfelt moment in “The Shawshank Redemption” where the protagonist Andy Dufresne, looks at his years in prison and tells his friend, “I made mistakes and I’ve paid for them … and then some.” I’ve told myself the same thing. I’m sure Job muttered those same words. Even those words fall short when I look at the man in “70.” What does it all mean? “I was brought low and He saved me.” For what, I wondered.

            One of my close friends here is a Navy retiree – 25 years as a Master Chief, E8, in the U.S. Navy. Four years out of the service, living a good life in the Virginia Beach area, and he gets drunk and drives. He drives through a red light and hits a car. A grandmother and her eight year-old granddaughter are in that car. The impact kills both. My friend walks away without a scratch except, except he sees the little girl in the car every day. He can’t go back and get a “do over.” He can’t undo his stupid behavior. He does his sentence and tries to atone the best he can. But, the girl is dead; the grandmother is dead; and he can’t wash the blood off … and he shouldn’t. I can’t make sense of any of it. Good people do bad things; bad things happen to good people; life goes on, even in death, life goes on.

            Bug splat. That’s our military’s jargon for an errant drone attack; like two weeks ago, six kids playing in a rock-strewn courtyard somewhere in Afghanistan. One moment they are there, the next vaporized. “Wrong target. Bug splat.” Hell of a phrase.

            The other night, the state of Oklahoma tried to execute a convicted murderer. The guy lying on the gurney won’t get much sympathy. He raped a young woman, shot her three times, then buried her – still alive. So he’s condemned to death by the state. Problem is, there’s a shortage of lethal injection drugs so the states are trying all sorts of combinations of “other” drug. We aren’t far from giving a guy on death row a twelve-ounce bottle of anti-freeze.

            They strap the guy down, finally (after multiple attempts) find a “viable” vein – in his groin – and start pumping drugs into him. A “good” lethal injection leads (1) sleep (2) breathing stopping (3) heart stopping. This doesn’t work out that way. The first drug doesn’t knock him out. By the time number 2 is pumped in, the vein has collapsed and the drugs are seeping and pooling under his skin. For over forty minutes the condemned moans in pain until he suffers a massive heart attack (ironically fifteen minutes after the head of Oklahoma DOC stops the execution because it’s been so badly botched).

            And most folks’ reaction? “So what? He was a cold-blooded killer who didn’t think anything of torturing and killing poor girl.” I shake my head and realize all the talk about forgiveness, all the mom and apple-pie, July 4^th talks about “rule of law” doesn’t stand a chance against bug-splat and botched executions.

            Death. One truth I understand is, we’re all going to die. And most of us don’t get to pick the time, place or manner. Those that we leave behind try and find meaning in it all, like the guy in bed 70 trying to figure out the cosmic connection between his crime and incarceration and his son’s death. And my friend, he tries to atone – if that’s even possible.

            So often we act nonchalantly about death as it surrounds and invades our daily life. It doesn’t directly hit us; we breathe a sigh of relief. At times – like Newtown or Columbine – when we’ll hug our kids a little tighter, when our chests clutch ever so deeper, when we realize we aren’t in control and it can all be taken so suddenly, and callously, and without a moment’s thought. And we’re scared and confused.

            “Show me the way

            Take me tonight to the river

            And wash my illusions away

            Please show me the way.

            Give me the courage to believe

            I’ll get there someday

            Please show me the way.”

            None of it makes sense, the guy suffering in bed 70, the grandmother and little girl in the car, the kids in the courtyard, even the murderer on a gurney … and I close my eyes and hear David’s words, “I was brought low and He saved me.” And that has to be enough to get me through.

All in Your Head

It was bitterly cold here the other morning.  The temperature, in the upper thirties, along with wind gust hitting thirty-five miles per hour made it feel even colder.  But like so many other days with lousy, frigid weather, my friend DC and I went out to run and workout.  Neither of us wore sweats.  And it was cold.  Once I got moving, I forgot about the chill, but it still took awhile to get use to.

We both headed in on a door break and guys looked at us like we were crazy.  “How can you go out there like that?” one guy asked DC.  He smiled and said “It’s all in your head”.  His words got me thinking.

Perhaps there is no better known Hymn in America than “Amazing Grace”.  That song crosses generations, races and denominations.  Something about the words, “saved a retch like me” – most of us don’t even know what a retch is – just resonates with us.  We claim it corporately; it’s a deeply personal, moving song that somehow makes sense to everyone.

Yet, the history behind the song is more profound.  John Newton was a British slave ship captain.  He’d made a number of cross-Atlantic trips from Africa, to the Caribbean, to the Eastern seaboard of the American colonies, then finally back to London.  Each trip was the same:  human cargo piled in cramped, filthy ship holds to the islands and colonies, and then crops and products back to England.

It was a good life.  He was paid well and regarded with respect by this peers.  In the eyes of society he was a success.  His life, however, took an abrupt turn on one return trip from the colonies.  Off the coast of Carolina, near Hatteras, Newton’s ship was caught in a horrendous storm.  The ship was forced onto the rocks and began to break apart.

It was dark.  The wind howled.  The rain poured down.  And, Newton’s ship cracked and tore open as the sea’s waves slammed it over and over against the jagged rocks.  Newton knew he was going to die.  This life-long member of the Church of England, a good loyal subject of the King and country, knew he would drown.  In those hours of fear and desperation he prayed not just to live through the night but also he faced God with his life.  He realized what a sinful life he led.  And, he asked his God to forgive him.

The next morning, he awoke to find calm seas and his ship still there on the rocks.  The sky around him was blue.  The sun shone.  He realized God had spared his life.  He wasn’t sure why, but he knew, God’s hand was in his life.

Sometime later, Newton penned the song “Amazing Grace”, built around his survival that night in the storm.  He returned to England, resigned his ship captaincy, and began a career as a church worker.  He was one of the driving forces in Britain’s decision to outlaw slavery.  For the remainder of his life he tried to understand the mystery that was his God.  He was saved for a reason.

This past week, I finished reading major league pitcher RA Dickey’s autobiography, “Wherever I Wind Up”.  It is not a typical sports story.  Dickey’s career has had more than its share of ups and downs.  To describe him as a journeyman pitcher would be an understatement.  He went from Olympic team member and first round draft pick to the minor league circuit, barely hanging on, occasionally getting called up.

He carried great secrets, baggage.  Sexually abused as a child, he presented the image of a happy, faithful husband and father.  Infidelity almost cost him his marriage.  An inability to throw effectively almost cost him his dreams.  He was separated from his wife, on the minor-league circuit, barely making enough to support himself and his family when he bet some teammates he could swim across the Missouri River.  He tried…and almost drowned. 

It was the beginning of a new life for Dickey.  His pitching improved. His marriage began to rebuild as he dealt with the pain and torment caused by his abuse.  Last year, Dickey won 20 games and the National League Cy-Young award.   Dickey’s book opens with the Latin maxim.  “Dum, spiro, spero”, which means “While I breathe, I hope.”

The human mind is indeed a funny thing.  It is capable of great thoughts, powerful, merciful, healing thoughts.  It is also capable of great evil.  “It’s all in your head”.  My friend DC doesn’t understand how truly insightful his words are.

In “Forever Young”, the classic ballad written by Bob Dylan, a father tells his children all his wishes for their future.  As I’ve written before, just moments after both my sons were born, as I held them for the first time and looked on the God-given miracle that is life, I whispered Dylan’s words to them as though by reciting them they would be imprinted with those characteristics of righteousness, mercy and courage.  One line, “May you always know the truth and see the light surrounding you”, would cause me to choke up, perhaps because I wanted desperately to feel that light around me.

I have come to see life in a new way in here, surrounded by men with lives so broken, angry, and lost.  In reality, they’re no different than anyone else.  We all have baggage and it builds up, weighs us down, and eventually we find ourselves pushed against the rocks.

There are days in here when I just can’t make sense out of what these men do.  I see utter mayhem in Syria, I see the tiny white coffins in Newtown, and I wonder what is going on.  None of it – my own feelings included – makes sense.   It is as if the whole world is drowning.  Then, I remember the season, Christmas, a time of hope, and I think RA Dickey was right.  “Dum, spiro, spero.”

“It’s all in your head.”  After finishing my workout I always stretch.  I lay down on the concrete, close my eyes, and recite Bible verses as I loosen my legs.  I lay there, eyes closed, saying in a whisper the words from the final four verses of Isaiah 40.  I memorized those verses my first week in jail as I struggled with my very survival.  They are words of hope and encouragement for a people who thought their God wasn’t seeing their loss and pain.  Isaiah reminded his people that God heard their cries.  “The everlasting God, the Lord, does not grow weary or tired….”  And then he reminded everyone that those who wait on the Lord will be given new strength.  “They will soar on wings like eagles.”

“Look at that, Larry.”  It was DC.  Directly overhead was a huge eagle, wings spread wide.  He was floating on the air currents circling round and round our ball court and rec yard.  He never flapped his wings; just soared.

Was it a sign?  I don’t know.  I know there are a lot of things wrong right now.  People are hurting – in here and out there.  So many are suffering.  Lives out of control with divorce and rejection, war, violence, loneliness.  But at this particular moment in time I choose to look elsewhere.  “It’s all in your head.”  There is good news.  Dum, spiro, spero.  While I breathe, I hope.  And hope will see us through.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

 

Why?

I had half dozen topics to write about this week.  Then, as I returned to the building after a long run and workout on a day off, I noticed the eerie quiet.  Dozens of guys were huddled around their TV’s watching as the news broke about the tragic and senseless shooting of children at a Connecticut elementary school.

“What is wrong with people?”  Those were the words of a twenty-eight year old father of two who just happens to be doing three years for drug use.  “Children?  Why?”  I wish I knew.

I have seen a great deal in prison and learned many painful lessons about human failings and the consequences of our behavior.  They have not been easy lessons.  And, I have seen a great deal of senseless violence.  I’ve written much about the fights – and worse – that I’ve seen.  Candidly, it’s my way of dealing with it.  But, children?  What, indeed, is wrong with us?

Were this an aberration, a once-in-a-lifetime event, you could rationalize that a crazed person, unhinged, brought such mayhem and destruction forward.  That is not the case.  Columbine, Oklahoma City, Aurora, Newtown.  Each name evokes images of fear, death and disbelief.  We are I am coming to believe, an angry, unempathetic mess. 

Last week I finished reading writer Wally Lamb’s powerful 2009 novel, “The Hour I First Believed”.  Set against the backdrop of the Columbine shooting and a survivor watching her life disintegrate, it was an amazing story of a family’s secrets, the seeming randomness of violence and crises, and ultimately about finding faith to go on.  I found the book both personally touching and difficult.  In an “afterward”, Lamb explained why he used so many factually accurate details about Columbine.  He saw the senselessness of it all and how violence begets violence.  That I finished his book less than five days before this murderous rampage is not lost on me.  Why?

This isn’t a platform for me to talk about gun control, or mental health issues, or locking down our schools, and locking up more people.  This is just the words of a guy who thinks we’ve collectively lost our way.  I do time with men locked up for murder and to a man they all sat stunned, wondering “What is going on out there?”

A few days ago, Ms. Jackson buried her son.  He was a player on the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.  Driving to the church service with her was the man who killed her son.  He was driving drunk, lost control of his car, and crashed.  And Ms. Jackson’s son, a passenger in the car, died.  She asked the driver to go with her, to sit with her family to show anyone paying attention that God expects us to love, and forgive, and be merciful. 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted;

Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth;
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied;
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy;
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God;
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

I couldn’t think of anything else, so I turned to the Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount which tells us more about God with us, than us with us.

This blog isn’t about prison.   On second thought, maybe it is.  “Why?”  I’m not smart enough to know.  I do know there’s way too much senseless, tragic violence out there and in here.  And, we have to start doing better.