Counselor

 I grew up in a poor-family setting where alcoholism was ever-present. My step-father did not like me, and I liked him even less. I spent much of my preteen and teenage years on the streets trying to earn money to feed myself. I sold newspapers on street corners, often staying out all night long. Also, I sold another newspaper, The Grit, which I received weekly through the mail. I took this door to door or sold them at the entrance of one of our local grocery stores. I sometimes ordered greeting cards and garden seeds from the ads in comic books and sold them alongside my newspapers. Also, I carried a shoeshine box everywhere I went trying to earn an extra two bits. During warm months I pushed a lawnmower across town in search of lawns to mow. After I turned sixteen years old, I bought my first car, a 1963 AMC Rambler, for which I paid a hundred dollars. I got myself a morning paper route. I had to be up by 2:00 am every morning. I had to roll the newspapers and have them thrown before school time.

I was sixteen when I smoked my first joint. It was the beginning of drug use that would plague me for many years to come. Four days after my seventeenth birthday, I enlisted in the US Navy.

My first hitch in the service was for three years. I reenlisted for another four years and got married to a girl from my high school. We birthed two children together before I reenlisted once more for another four years and transferred to a ship home ported in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. We then had another child born. After I was in the service for ten years, I applied for a program to become a jet fighter pilot. It would require me to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS). Upon completion of that, I would be given a commission as an ensign. After receiving my commission, I would then go to flight school to train as a pilot. It took a few months before the news came back that I was accepted. However, by that time, I had realized I would not be able to continue smoking pot and fly supersonic jets. I chose pot.

At the end of my third hitch, I got out of the Navy. I had served a total of eleven years. I returned with my family to my hometown in Arkansas. It took a few months before I was able to find employment. After getting a job, I enrolled in a technical college to work toward a degree in electronics. I was working twelve-hour shifts at my job and attending school full time. My work shifts rotated every six weeks, and I would also have to change my school schedule to coincide with my work schedule. I was only getting to spend about five hours per day at home. On my way to work one night, I fell asleep behind the wheel and drove off a bridge. I landed on the roadway below. My car was totaled, but I had survived with only a cut when I broke the steering wheel with my chin. After my wreck, I decided either the job or my school had to go. I came to the decision that my school was most important for my future. I quit my job.

I came up with a plan to make a living by selling pot. I went to Dallas, Texas, and found a connection for buying quantities of marijuana. I had another friend who knew a source in Houston, Texas, where we could purchase marijuana. The two of us began making weekly trips to one of the two cities and bringing back twenty pounds at a time. Ten pounds for my friend and ten pounds for myself. This endeavor went on about a year and a half before something went haywire, and we lost our money. For my loss, I ended up getting an ounce of cocaine. The cocaine did not sell nearly as fast as the weed did as I did not know cocaine users. I ended up using as much as I was selling. I got strung out and ended up dropping out of school for a semester. I decided to go back into the Navy. After taking the required ASVAB tests and scoring high, I would be going back into the Navy in an electronics job working on guided missile systems. After two months with no definite word when I would be leaving for school, I changed my mind about going back in. I began selling marijuana again. Then six weeks later, I was busted with five pounds. I got a four-year sentence and served nine months in the state prison. After my release, I stayed off drugs until I had completed my parole requirements. Soon after the completion of my parole, I began using methamphetamine. At first, I was snorting the powder but soon began injecting myself with the drug. I became a small-time meth peddler just trying to make enough to support my habit. I did this for several years.

I eventually learned how to cook meth and manufactured it on a small scale for about a year before getting busted. I got a 15-year sentence for that. Instead of locking me up, I was allowed back onto the streets, telling me they would call me when a bed came open within the next few months. Those few months turned into 2 1/2 years. While awaiting my bed in prison, I found myself arrested another three times for possession of meth. I received a ten-year sentence for each of those arrests. My wife and I were divorced by then.

At the age of forty-seven, I entered the penal system to serve my time. When I first entered prison, I felt as though I would never see freedom again. I knew I was a drug addict and did not want to change. I would somehow continue my drug use while in prison.

A few months after being incarcerated, I transferred to a drug abuse program. I did not want to be there and told the free world counselor so. The counselor told me I would have to complete thirty days before I could sign out. I told her I would do my thirty days in the hole. She then replied, “Fine. You’ll come back to do thirty days in the program.” She sent me to my cell to think about it. I spent three days all sulled up. After those three days, I concluded my life would never be any better than it was at that very moment unless I could somehow turn it around. I told my counselor I would try doing thirty days in the program. The program was 9-12 months. I did complete the first thirty days. I convinced myself I could do another thirty days. I struggled to take in all the information I could. I set a goal to become a substance abuse counselor myself. My counselor only told me I did not have what it takes to be a counselor. I did not let that deter me and continued to share my goal with the group. I graduated from the program in nine months. After graduating, I transferred to another unit to serve out the remaining term of my sentence. To my surprise, I went to a unit that had a counselor training program. I first had to complete the three-month program as a client. Then I stayed on as a counselor in training. Being a counselor inside a prison was not an easy job. Most of the prisoners were just as I had been in the beginning. They were addicts and did not desire to change. They only wished to do their time and get out so they could continue with their lives. Many resented another prisoner having any authority over them. My style of counseling was different than most of the other inmate counselors. Most of them liked to grandiose their addictive lives. They talked tough and made it seem as though they were drug pins in the free world. Some inmates only understood tough talk, but many of them were more like myself. It always made me feel good when an inmate told me I had said something that suddenly made them realize they could change their lives. I have now been free for ten years. It has been eighteen years since I last got high from drugs. I’ve run across a couple of guys who went through the program while I counseled. Each of them told me they had remained drug-free since their release. Of course, I cannot say I alone am responsible for changing any lives that went through the program while I counseled there. However, I like to believe I played a part in those who managed to turn their lives around.