The Needle and the Damage Done
As an ex-cop, an ex-cokehead, and an ex-con—and as a mother trying to build a safe future for my two young sons—I’ve seen the drug war from every conceivable side. And I know why we aren’t winning.
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A FEW WEEKS LATER WE ROUNDED UP roughly a hundred defendants in what was billed as East Texas’ largest-ever drug bust. Death threats poured in, and one night someone attempted to take out my partner and me with a double-barreled shotgun. That got my attention.
I tried to run. Desperate to get as far away as I could, I decided to go cold turkey and joined the U.S. Air Force, hoping to be sent to another country. But first I had to complete basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where I spent six anxious weeks anticipating my escape to the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey. From there I would fly to some faraway air base and eavesdrop on Russians over the airwaves.
I got clean in basic, really clean, for the first time in a long time, and I’ve been clean ever since. When I thought back to all the drugs I had bought for the police department so that the people selling them could be locked away in cages, I shook my head in disbelief. No, that couldn’t have been me, crawling around on the floor, running my fingers along the carpet—prospecting, as cokeheads call it—looking for fallen rocks of cocaine, wanting one more shot. But it was me. And if I was a drug addict, I must be suffering from some kind of character defect. I must be a bad person.
I didn’t make it to Monterey. The day after I graduated from basic training, the FBI showed up, asking questions about cops taking drugs, about cops lying on the witness stand. I landed in the U.S. attorney’s office in Tyler, where I denied that I had ever had a cocaine habit until it became apparent that plea negotiations could not go forward until I admitted it. But even as I sat there saying yes, okay, so I had a drug problem, I was denying it silently to myself.
I ended up pleading guilty to perjury. I had taken the witness stand in a number of cases and falsely denied using drugs each time, and I had helped fabricate a cocaine case against a suspected child pornographer. I’m still glad I pleaded guilty, though I’ve since realized I probably could have beaten the charges. The feds indicted the chief of police, my boss during the investigation, and I testified against him at his trial. I’m still glad I did that too, though the jury found him not guilty.
After so much fuss, somebody had to do some time. When I arrived at the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, I made sure I had a fresh bottle of Valium (to help me survive the experience of being incarcerated), a note from my family doctor, and a prescription refill in hand. The trustee who searched my stuff promptly confiscated all three, and I never saw them again. I got the shakes, hallucinated, and cried uncontrollably. It was withdrawal from a legal drug, legally obtained, that sent me to the infirmary, and from there to Alpha, the women’s psych unit.
When I returned to the main compound, I attended a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and listened to one person after another fondly recall their drug experiences. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to me that anyone was getting help. It was more like a contest in which each addict tried to tell the best story about having gotten higher than anyone else. I opted out and bought a graduation certificate from a prisoner who had access to them. I emerged from prison a changed person. Had my sentence been longer or had I been in maximum security, I most likely would have been changed for the worse. Fortunately, I managed to get out before any lasting damage was done. And in at least one way, the experience was good. Inside I met many kind, decent people who were locked up for using drugs, and as I thought about a lot of the people I’d helped make cases on—not bad people, not monsters, just folks—I became convinced of the folly of the war I’d fought. I realized that if we continue to run drug addicts through the system at the current rate, and we don’t look for another way to deal with addiction, a significant percentage of our majority-rule nation will soon be felons.
THE DRUG WAR VERY NEARLY KILLED ME, several times and in several ways: as a narc, as an addict, as a prisoner. Today I am on the sidelines, but the war is still real to me: I am a mother of two small boys who are growing up in a world where drugs are a reality. Every afternoon, as they run around the back yard, laughing and shouting, I pray that they will never suffer the ravages of addiction to cocaine, alcohol, tobacco, or any other substance. And I hope they will not have to endure the degradation and pain of a prison term. I tell them the truth as I know it: that drugs can make you feel good at first, but that they are dangerous, sometimes deadly, so it’s best not to even fool around with them. To lie to my boys by exaggerating the consequences of drug use, which is what the drug-education programs I attended as a teenager did, is to invite disaster. If they discover my lies, they will assume I am untrustworthy in general.
I look back on my time as a narcotics agent from a great, and grateful, distance. But I have no distance from my time as a coke addict. It is with me still: the intimate knowledge of need. Though I don’t have a desire for the drug itself, I understand the desire. Here in late twentieth-century America, we are each addicted to something. We belong to a culture of addiction and recovery: food, sex, exercise, work, TV, and yes, drugs. Drugs are not evil or bad or malicious. They are mere substances: powders, pills, liquids. They have no intent; they simply are what they are. Drug addicts are not evil or bad or malicious. They are often desperate—not to rob you or burglarize your home, but to kick the addiction. I know this because I’ve run with addicts, and I’ve been one myself. Trust me: Nobody sets out to become a drug addict. It is a hellish existence. Yeah, the rush is good. Yeah, the nod is astonishing. Yeah, the thrill is fine. But it always ends. And you’re always looking for more.
When I was in prison, aside from a few stockbrokers, real estate developers, lawyers, and a politician or two, almost everyone I met was in for drugs. And there were drugs in prison too. I couldn’t get a decent pizza inside, but I could get acid, coke, heroin, pot—whatever you want, baby, we got it. In a matter of a few months, prison guards can make the equivalent of their annual salary, tax-free, by bringing in dope for the convicts. Not everyone can shake his head no to that. And if we can’t keep drugs out of our prisons, how can we ever honestly expect to keep them out of the country? We can’t. The sooner we realize that—and start dealing with the reality of addiction, which means treatment instead of incarceration—the better off we’ll be.
A few weeks ago, after taping an interview with Bill Moyers for his recent five-part PBS series Moyers on Addiction: Closer to Home, I was at a luncheon for the participants. There we sat at a well-appointed table at an elegant restaurant, looking for all the world like “normal” people. Of course, more than half of us were admitted drug addicts. And you can’t tell me that some of the producers and editors at the table had never fired up a joint or snorted a line of coke. Not everyone gets addicted, and a great many addicts get over it. Many of them struggle for years to do so—some alone, as I did, and some with help, although the wait for spots in the few existing treatment facilities grows longer each day. So what’s best for society? Would society benefit if those of us lunching there were in a chow hall in a prison somewhere, being punished and punished and punished again on top of the punishment of addiction itself, rather than living and working and dealing with our addictions as best we can?
NOT TOO LONG AFTER I HELD THE crack baby—a true casualty of the drug war—a friend sent me a clipping from the Dallas Morning News describing a bust that had taken place in East Texas. Fresh meat for the criminal justice machine. The note that came with the clipping read “The more things change, the more things remain the same.”
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