Featured

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Money

Lord help us: They say it's not polite to talk about religion or politics, but—hey—we've already talked politics, haven't we? Prayer's up.

Religion

It was my girlfriend Liv’s 21st birthday. Because I have ADHD, I naturally had forgotten to get her a present. That day I was meant to be meeting her to spend an evening drinking cocktails at overpriced bars. Instead, I spent a guilt-fueled morning gathering a collection of token presents for her, so she wouldn’t instantly remind me that I was the worst boyfriend ever. The problem was that none of the presents was quite “right.” After all, this was her 21st. I had to get her something spot-on. 

Fast forward six months to the summer we were traveling through China. On one train ride, I had been flicking through a Lonely Planet travel guide when suddenly I saw my way out of the predicament of the present. 

We’d just finished the summer teaching in Chinese classrooms and earning our TEFLs (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). Then a few weeks traveling the big cities: Shanghai, Chengdu, Xi’an.

By the time we got to Beijing, it was time to spring my surprise. I snuck out of the hostel early and spent the morning alternating between the fire that was the Beijing smog and the frying pan of Beijing’s smelly, crowded subways. I returned an hour or so later, feeling both lighter due to the pride that filled me and heavier for all the camping gear I carried. 

I sat at the entrance to the hostel and got chatting with a traveling group. They were heading to Shanghai that day and had some weed on them. Do I want to buy it? They can’t risk taking it through the airport-style security you must go through to get on China’s high-speed trains. 

Weed is especially rare in China. So, what do I say? “Sure!” This is a camping trip, after all. 

I return to our room to explain to Liv what her birthday present is—a camping trip on the Great Wall of China. She asks me if it's legal to camp on the Great Wall. Not exactly, I explain. But it’s 13,000 miles long; they can’t patrol it all, right? 

If you ever go to Beijing and visit the Great Wall, you’ll probably go to Badaling. It’s the part of the Wall that you see in tourist pictures, all rebuilt and shiny new, prepared for your tourist photos. That was not where Liv and I went. We went up to Gubeikou—via six hours of bus rides with three changes. We’re trying to avoid being caught, remember?

So, we get to Gubeikou and to the gate that admits entry onto the Wall. No other English-speaking tourists must ever make it this far because the admittance attendant didn’t have anything to say to us other than “closed.” However, we hadn’t come this far to turn back now. Plus, I was still trying to redeem myself for forgetting my girlfriend’s 21st birthday. 

As I said, it’s a big fucking wall. So, we simply walked away and began to climb again. 

An hour and a half later, we had hiked high enough away from the small village below us and up onto the Wall. Our tent was made and basecamp was established for the night. Liv offered me a wink and a wry smile that said “Well done, you.”

At this point, I pulled out the weed. It was pre-rolled so no messing about. We smoked and smoked and watched as the sun set. At that moment, we were a little pearl in a giant oyster of a Chinese summer adventure. 

It is remarkable how quickly a picture-perfect scene can be so quickly disrupted by the eerie, unnerving descent of nightfall. For weeks, we had taught in classrooms and toured the big cities. Now, up here on the hills of remote China, it was quiet. Too quiet. Unnervingly quiet. There wasn’t even a dog howling at the moon. 

“What was that?” said a startled Liv.

I brushed it off. “Nothing, of course, just some animal.” 

But the sniffing grew louder. Without any light whatsoever, it was too easy to let the shadows play with our imaginations. 

“James,” Liv said, “What animals do they have in Northern China?”

We had Chinese SIM cards, so we quickly loaded up Google to settle our nerves. No such luck. Our search revealed that they have both bears and wolves in this part of China. Now we’re panicked.

We rush into the tent. Inside it, I try to collect myself. Liv has lost her head. She’s sharing her location to her group chat and telling her friends to make sure her mum knows she loves her. I interrupt that there’s no time to think about that now. Sending those kinds of messages would somehow make this whole nightmare more real.

How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I check? Surely this isn’t how I’m going to go? To a fucking bear on the Great Wall out in the middle of nowhere? I’m not the live-fast-die-young type. Let me grow old in a care home somewhere. 

“Liv. What if we get outside of the tent?”

“If it is a bear, what if we go out?”

Liv looks at me like I have lost my mind. (At this point, there’s a good chance that I have.) If it merely smells us, it might come to investigate. But on the other hand, if it sees us, then it might turn and leave us alone and go hunt some smaller prey. Between us, we can look big in the dark, right?

She leans forward and says I should go first. We find the time to rock-paper-scissors. My heart is banging.

I lean forward. Liv lets out a scream with anticipation. I turn around to shush her sternly, fully aware I have no idea whether a scream makes a situation like this better or worse. There is no precedent for the process of my decision-making. Every reaction is now a hot mess of instinct, conditioning and my brain scrambling to piece together any scrap of Ray Mears and Bear Grylls that I’ve caught over my life.

The sniffing grows ever louder. It’s screaming in my head over against the absolute silence from a petrified Liv in the corner.

I lean for the zip. I take several attempts to grasp it because my hand is shaking so much. Eventually, I manage to steady my nerves long enough to take hold. Do I do it slowly or all at once, like a Band-Aid?

Band-Aid. Go! Zip open. I clamber out. My best foot forward. Or kind of forward. It's shaking so much that it oscillates six inches either way with every inch that I creep forward.

I see what’s going on and my brain pieces it together even though it’s forgotten all other functions. I scream. Liv practically backflips in fear. She has no idea what I’ve seen.

The weed’s got us way too high. I still hear the sniffing still but it’s not a bear or a wolf. 

It’s a rabbit. A big rabbit I must say, but a rabbit, nonetheless.

I turn to her with a huge smile on my face. I can’t even explain at first. God, it really is the biggest kind of rush thinking you’re going to die. Now don’t get me wrong. At this point, I realize I never was in any actual danger, but I thought I was. I genuinely believed I was going to die and so my nervous system acted accordingly. Blood had drained away from every non-essential area and was coursing through my body. I mean coursing. My heart was throbbing right into the underside of my ribcage.

I started to laugh and I just. Could. Not. Stop. 

Liv looked angry, as if she were going to kill me. Still laughing, I leaned in and kissed her. It was meant to be a quick kiss. A reassuring kiss. However, the combination of adrenaline and relief, it turns out, makes for a potent aphrodisiac.

I tried to pull away, but she pulled me back in. She kissed me hard. I could feel her breath panting. There was something in her breath, a heavy breath outward, the kind that would usually be rude, right in my face. She opened her eyes but didn’t look up when I pulled away.

A switch in my mind just flipped. My heart hadn’t slowed down from the scare, but my nervous system managed to spare me just a little blood for one essential purpose. And so it went—the hottest, most passionate, most animalistic sex that I ever had. There we were, young, alive and fucking on the Great Wall of China. 

Adventure

Goosebumps

NSFW

I Thought I Was Going to Die and Then Had the Best Sex of My Life on the Great Wall of China

The other night in bed my wife gazed into my eyes and then recoiled in horror.

“Your eyebrows!” she said. “What has happened!?”

It's all too true; over the last couple weeks it seems like my eyebrows have reached some sort of hideous aging threshold and have turned into old man bushy ape-brows, all thick and bristly and intense. I waggled them suggestively.

“On the downside, my eyebrows are repulsive,” I said. “But, on the upside, you need never have sex with me again!”

My wife laughed, because even after twenty years and the unfortunate eyebrow situation, she still thinks I'm kind of funny. Also, she laughed because what I said was true: We are not doing much of the sex. I can't honestly even remember the last time we had sex. There was, I think, a handjob in the last six months. Actual full-on sexy sexing with penetration and thrusting and all—over a year. Maybe more.

The sex death of our universe is not, in fact, about my eyebrows. It's not because we've grown apart, either, or because my wife does not understand me, or because she understands me all too well.

It's mostly because she has chronic pain issues.

Over the last few years, her occasional migraines have stopped being occasional, and become an every day, twice on Sundays—sometimes more than twice on Sundays—gauntlet of pain and despair. Cannabis helps, but, despite a lot of doctor's visits, she hasn't gotten much relief. Working is difficult. Sex is more difficult than that.

I would be lying if I said I didn't miss sex. Like most couples, we did a lot of fornicating early in our relationship, back when our eyebrows were young and new and filled with concupiscence. She had to get her clitoris ring out because my penis was too large and too often inserted for clitoris ring comfort. I fisted her so often that her vaginal juices exacerbated my eczema. Police chastised us for making out in my car. There may have been light bondage. We may have hired a sex worker, because my wife may be bi. There were fluids and dirty talk and embarrassing hickeys and general naughtiness. It was fun. It gave us stories to tell our grandchildren. Or rather, stories to adamantly not tell our grandchildren.

And then we had a kid, and got older and creakier and more boring, and the sex faded into the background—until my wife's migraines finally put a stake through its heart for good.

Our culture is constantly telling me that that stake through the heart of the fucking is also a stake through the heart of our marriage. Novels and television shows and relationship advice columns assure me that if the passion has gone, someone is going to start to cheat, and soon there will be tears and bitterness and drama. My wife will notice my eczema flaring up and suspect. I will hit the wall in rage like Adam Driver, but, you know, with bushier eyebrows and less brooding appeal. And then we'll have to hire lawyers and start divvying up the books and the cats and the large dog and the large high-schooler.

It's true that the future is always in motion, and you never know when you're going to turn into Adam Driver. But, overall, divorce and moving out seem pretty unlikely, and not just because of the difficulty of assignations under lockdown. (Not to mention the difficulty of moving out.)

My sex drive hasn't disappeared. But that's why God invented masturbation and, shortly thereafter, internet porn. It's not necessarily an ideal solution in every way, but the fact that our basement floods semi-regularly isn't ideal in every way either. Not everything in a marriage or in a life is going to be perfect bliss.

Different people are different, of course, and how much, and what kind of imperfect bliss you can reconcile yourself to varies wildly. Some people, I'm sure, would find a sexless marriage intolerable, just as some people would find a polyamorous marriage intolerable, or a kink-less marriage—or what have you. I don't think anyone is bad or immoral for wanting more sex in their marriage, or for feeling they can't adjust to a sexless marriage.

But I do resent all the cultural scripts that tell me that I'm boring or broken or that my marriage is doomed because I'm not fucking enough. I'm all for normalizing kink, but we should also be willing to normalize kink-lessness. Lots of sex isn't a moral failure, weird sex isn't a moral failure, and not having sex isn't a moral failure. The amount and kind of sex you have doesn't have to define a relationship. Or a marriage.

Because, clitoris ring or no clitoris ring, I love my wife. She's my sweetheart still; the person who I want to lie down beside each night and my cuddle partner. There is no one I would rather laugh with about not having sex. We've been together for more than two decades, and we've had maybe two fights in all that time. We share cats, we share books, we share the large high schooler. I still make her laugh, and vice versa. Sex just isn't the most important thing. If I'm given the choice of sex with someone else or no sex with my wife, it wouldn't be close. I'd choose my wife every time. And I do so every day.

My Wife and I Are Living in a Sexless Marriage

At some point in the past, I heard about an activity called firewalking. Those that do it have to work for months to build resistance on their feet before they’re able to walk on extremely hot coals in places like Hawaii. It’s uncomfortable and painful but, over time, their feet adapt and are able to make it look easy. 

I think that’s a good analogy for how I handle the emotional stress in my life. Most of it just feels like training. The longer I live, I build up calluses to some of the most heartbreaking and earth-shattering events, and I keep meeting people who have seen different kinds of tragedies in their life. More often than not, their experiences make me question the gravity of my own. They’ve planted an empathy in my soul that’s made me conscious and careful about whom I lend my concern but, once I do, understanding and compassion blossom in a way that makes it hard to put into words.

It’s taken years and a lot of good friends to teach me not to compare my own pain to others. There are people who have experienced trauma from a sibling constantly knocking their ice cream to the ground as kids, and that’s just as valid as someone who’s visibly seen a child die. We’re all subject to the perspective of whatever we experience—and no one’s process is any more or less valid than another. I wish I could repeat that sentence over and over again so as a culture we could decide collectively to never be dismissive of someone else’s experience. No matter what story people share with me, I make it a habit to understand how they process it. It’s so important not to judge the gravity of someone else’s experience because what could be an anthill to one person could be a mountain to someone else. True connection comes from seeing it as they do, not as you do.  

I’ve never experienced ice cream pranks with a sibling, but I have experienced a child dying—twice, in fact—and I can tell you that nothing prepares you for that. For nine months, as your baby is on its way, it’s easy to think about the kind of parent you’ll be. There is so much joy and desire to celebrate every day because another person loves you enough to bring new life into the world with your name. To have that taken all away can really make you question a lot of things.

The date was September 4, 2008. My partner and I had gone to sleep as usual, with our five-week-old son asleep on my bare chest. Every other night, when I could hold him and talk to him, I breathed over him a prayer for all the things he would be one day. I listened to his breathing so I could feel in sync with the rhythm of his every breath, for as long as I could. I was so thankful to be a dad.  

When morning came, however, something was off. He was still warm as I slowly rose to wake him for his breakfast but he wasn’t moving, and his chest had stopped the normal rising and falling at some point while I was asleep. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I reached for my glasses and couldn’t find them, choosing instead to see him as best I could with my nearsightedness. 

Was that blood coming from his nose? My partner, in a frantic yelp, exclaimed that his face was blue. When did that happen? Where were my glasses? I tried to do whatever version of CPR I could remember, being careful of my strength so as not to crush his fragile chest. My partner was screaming something. Cover his nose? Breathe into his mouth? I felt for the air entering his lungs to come back out, to somehow let me know there was a chance of reviving him, but I knew. I looked at her. She was still panicking, but I already knew. He was gone. 

I stumbled woodenly out of the bed and through the bedroom, trying to find the lights. Where was the phone? I had to call 9-1-1. The power was out, my phone was non-existent, hers hadn’t been paid. I needed to find a phone. I made my way through the little apartment complex to the payphone on the street and dialed. I didn’t know what I sounded like, and there weren’t any words to share. I had no idea what to do next, and even now remembering it, I still don’t know how I made myself finish that call and walk back into the house. My partner had wanted me to save him and I couldn’t, and now, once she figured out what happened, I knew what was coming.  

As I said, nothing prepares you for that. I wasn’t ready for Devin’s death, and I wasn’t ready for my partner thinking I killed him. By the time the paramedics came to ask me what happened, I had resigned to a few outcomes that were not good, and I was still processing a lot. If this was my fault, I was prepared to face the music. It would have been nice to have the person who I loved to offer a word of support and some belief that maybe there could be another answer. But it wasn’t to be had at that moment. I had a partner who was also grieving but didn’t know what happened and thought I was at fault.

It would be another two weeks before I’d discover we lost our son to SIDS. But for two weeks, in her mind, I was a murderer. That was a mountain for both of us, and the choice I made to do my best—to be my own support rather than ask her to have a little faith that there was another answer—took more inner strength than I ever thought. To look someone in the face who is accusing you and choose to love them rather than lash back—to look for clarity and understanding rather than bitterness and indignance—takes a kind of inner fortitude most people only discover they have at a moment like that when they need it.

One of the things that helped me get through it was actually heartbreaking at the moment. I had to forcibly tell myself that it wasn’t my fault and that expecting anyone else to support that understanding wasn’t their responsibility. Let me repeat that. Even if you’ve been with your partner for years, and have shared everything together, it’s not their responsibility to give you the support you’re looking for when you go through loss. We all have to decide to be responsible for how we feel about anything.  

In part, I think when tragedy strikes, a lot of people want someone to understand, and for people to empathize, and it’s nice when that happens. But what about when it doesn’t? What about when you go through the hardest things in your life and nobody understands? Or worse, they ridicule you for it? As long as I was susceptible to others’ support or lack thereof, it was crippling. So I started to make a habit of realizing that I might be the only one who understood what happened and just be OK with that.  

Putting that kind of pressure on someone who is also grieving may be something they’re not ready for—or something they don’t have the emotional capacity to offer. Learning how to be your own comfort when things go horribly wrong is a really helpful skill, and becoming that kind of friend to other people during hard times made it easier.

When my first child died, I thought back to all the times I’d dreamed of having a son, and why I  wanted to be a dad in the first place. I thought about all the things that I would do with him and teach him the way my dad taught me. Thankfully, I have a really attentive dad, so I have plenty of memories to reflect on, like riding around our small town in New Jersey on the back of a bicycle, like the kid from Peanuts whose mom is always running into trees. (My dad never hurt us, but the resemblance is hilarious and familiar). 

All of those things that I wanted to become were still present, I just couldn’t be those things with him. I was going to have to wait and hope I’d get another chance. And it’s in that hope, and the belief that I’d get another chance, that helped me get through that. I immediately recognized that it could be a completely different situation. Maybe I’d have to adopt or become a foster parent, or maybe it could be some other circumstance. But being in that situation prepared me to be ready to give my all to whatever situation came.

Personally, I think that’s what suffering is supposed to do—help us find ways to support others who have gone through similar experiences, to be encouraging and inspiring to one another when we reach our lows. A wise person said to me that “We’re more alike than not,” so I’ve constantly looked at my challenges and tried to evaluate who I wish I was, were I in the other person’s shoes. I don’t recommend going through that kind of emotional training on purpose, and hopefully, whatever fire you walk through won’t be anything like that, but finding your inner strength can give hope to someone else. It’s one of the greatest gifts we can give. 

Firewalking: My Baby Died in My Arms and My Partner Blamed Me

I hear a lot of things lately described as “ugh, so cringe,” but have you ever really cringed? That full-body wince of reliving an experience that stops you in your tracks? There has to be a highly specific German word for the shame of a post-hypomania comedown. What unhinged screeds did I post online? Whose boundaries did I overstep when I was feeling gregarious but acting obnoxious? Oh, God, I went to open mics, didn’t I? Even now, years later, the memories still make me flinch, clench my teeth and shut my eyes for a moment. 

All these cherished memories and more come from the year I spent on the wrong antidepressant, making me perpetually hypomanic most of that time. But before those thrills came a long history of depression, starting in my early teens. 

Looking back at it now, I can laugh at how I used to shut myself in a closet to listen to Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” or Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely” on repeat in a very maudlin, very teenage way. Harder to laugh off were the persistent bouts of suicidal ideation I experienced or the all-consuming, debilitating sadness that kept dragging me to bed while the milestones of young adulthood passed me by.

For many years, I self-medicated with alcohol. I know: Treating depression with a depressant? Groundbreaking. Alcohol never really worked for me, although not for lack of trying. Eventually, I discovered stimulants, and things got much worse. No one at the sex party where I was introduced to crystal meth warned me that I wouldn’t be able to sleep or eat for the next two days. I was convinced that this drug was going to kill me, but also that I never wanted to do anything else ever again. 

Thankfully this revelation scared me enough that I asked for help, and I ended up in treatment, getting sober at the age of 26. The depression that had plagued me for years followed me into sobriety, though, so I also started going to therapy for the first time. 

To finally talk honestly about my sadness helped, but the sadness persisted. The first professional diagnosis I got was major depression, which at the time seemed a little dramatic. “I’m fine, really,” I insisted. “I’m not depressed depressed—just a little blue.” After many months of deliberating my therapist’s suggestions, I decided to try a pharmaceutical solution. I was terrified of starting. In my newly sober state, I worried that I wouldn’t be myself anymore if I let this outside substance tamper with my brain. On top of that, I had grown up indoctrinated by my militantly New Age mother to distrust any medication beyond a spoonful of turmeric and honey. 

But I needed help. I went on Wellbutrin, which didn’t make a dent in my depressive episodes, so after a short stint of that, I tapered off and went on Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). 

Zoloft. My dearest friend. You made it hard to sleep, and even harder to nut, but wow, we really made some terrible memories together, didn’t we? 

There were clear warning signs early on that things weren’t right, like the buzzing in my brain and the inability to sleep for multiple nights in a row despite being totally physically exhausted. I soon forgot about that, though. I was too busy enjoying my newfound fearlessness speaking in front of large groups of people. I was suddenly charismatic and able to strike up a conversation with anyone about anything, and I loved it. 

I had a lot of ideas that felt genius at the time, but that now flood my body with cortisol and shame when I’m reminded of them. For a while, I became fixated on being an amateur documentarian, infuriating my family by trying to film every aspect of our lives for a project I can’t really remember the point of. Once, at an open mic, I stripped down to my underwear for the punchline to a joke about terrible tattoos (of which I have many.) That artistic decision I actually stand by. I just hope to God no recordings of it exist. In those months I was also promiscuous in a way I’d never been before. Which I’m not against—I swear I’m not some sex-negative nerd. But my behavior sometimes led me back to sex parties and the company of active meth users, and brought me dangerously close to relapsing. 

Around this time I was promoted to the head of the tiny organization I worked for. I had a very forward-facing role, and I got an impressive-sounding title that inflated my already dangerously boosted ego. I thought I desperately needed all the energy I could get from the Zoloft. It wouldn’t dawn on me until much later that I never put any of it to good use. 

What I remember most about my year on Zoloft is how intoxicated I was by what I imagined to be my limitless potential. It felt like electricity coursing through me that I could use to accomplish anything, if only I could get all that energy focused in one direction for long enough. But I never could. I had a dozen projects started at all times, rarely finishing anything. 

My fast-talking, and the crazed pep in my step, made it clear to my doctor that I was hypomanic, and she suggested I taper off the Zoloft. The thought of giving up this new life, and going back to the depression I had lived with for years, terrified me—not to mention the fact I was a very important person by then, and I couldn’t afford to lose this new charisma and electricity. I had things to do, new visions to pursue, a world to change!

I convinced myself that what I was experiencing wasn’t hypomania, but just who I was when I was freed from the burden of depression. I was how I was always meant to be: unstoppable. At my doctor’s insistence, I went to a psychiatrist with whom I spoke for maybe ten minutes. I dressed in what I thought was chic, understated business casual attire. During our session, I deliberately slowed my words and dimmed my new charm just a little, and told him how seriously I had weighed my doctor’s words, but that I wanted to continue with the medication that had lifted me out of depression. He said great, you seem fine, let us know if anything changes. 

I had just shy of a year of sobriety at that time, and it didn’t enter my mind that I wasn’t being all that sober. I wanted to believe that by doing and saying only what I thought would convince that psychiatrist to let me stay on the meds, I was actually practicing self-advocacy as an informed patient. It felt important to have control over my own brain chemistry, despite the many years of boozing and drugging that proved I am the exact worst person to be in charge of that.

I continued to be unpredictable and unreliable at work, always brimming with grandiose, vague plans, but never following through on my promises. The thing that ended up getting me fired, however, was fostering a hostile work environment. I always thought I was cheekily toeing the line of what was appropriate, when in reality it was more like kicking down the door to tell explicit jokes that nobody wanted to hear. I had no filters. I learned too late that I was making everyone around me uncomfortable and cultivating an environment that wasn’t safe to work in. This is what I feel guiltiest about from this time, the thing I still lose sleep over.

Losing that job is what finally snapped me out of it. I found a psychiatrist who I could see regularly, and he patiently explained bipolar II disorder to me. He gently suggested that this SSRI might be making me worse, despite how spectacularly un-depressed I felt. 

Besides, I really wanted to have orgasms again. Just as there needs to be a word for the post-hypomania shame spiral, there also needs to be a word for that first toe-curling, earth-shattering orgasm once all the SSRIs have left your system. 

As well as the brain-melting, I’ll-have-what-she’s-having grade orgasms, I also regained clarity. I could reexamine my behavior of the previous nine months in the cold light of day. My filterless-ness, my impulsivity, my near-total lack of executive functioning—at one point the power in my apartment got cut off because I wasn’t keeping track of anything in my life. (A little on the nose as far as signs from the universe go.) In hindsight, it was easy to see just how much of a mess my life was, and how mismatched I was with Zoloft. 

I’m not alone in having this experience. Many people with bipolar II are first treated for depression, and many of them experience hypomania as a result, but they can feel reluctant to stop the mania-inducing medication. I forget where I first read that, but it was after I’d finished tapering off the Zoloft and I remember sobbing afterward. There is no greater relief than learning just how basic I am. 

Yes, I gamed the system. Yes, I manipulated a psychiatrist to convince him to keep giving me my drugs so I could continue my reign of terror as a charming, fearless, sleep-deprived and unpredictable egomaniac. But I’m not the first person to have pulled that kind of grift, and it doesn’t disqualify me from seeking treatment now. I was just doing the best I could with an imbalanced brain. 

I wish I could offer a comforting platitude—a promise that It Gets Better—but I can’t honestly say that it does. I’ve only recently gotten insurance again and regained access to mental health services. I have enough experience raw-dogging reality to know that I can’t talk or think or pray my way out of depression, so I’m once again faced with the decision: To medicate or not to medicate?

How is it that this choice ultimately falls to me, someone with a long history of such famously bad decisions? I still feel like I don’t deserve help after making such a mess of my life. I’m worried that I can’t trust myself to honestly say, “Yes, this pill is the pill for me,” considering my history with addiction and how much I loved—and I mean really loved—being high. 

But I’m done with thinking that I’m too tragically unique to get better. I’ve met too many people with bipolar II who had similar experiences but eventually found a medication that worked for them. 

I’m scared about asking for help, but hopeful enough to try again.

Mental Health

My Year Addicted to Zoloft: A State of SSRI-Induced Mania

Of all the horrors going through my mind during my brief imprisonment at a “behavioral health facility,” perhaps the most terrifying was the thought that I might end up swallowed by the “mental health” system forever. No job. No family. No kids or grandkids. No purpose. Nothing to look forward to except endless drugs and sedation. No growing old or retiring in the countryside. Just a zombie-like existence locked up and medicated in a nuthouse. Forever. 

Those three days of torture, euphemistically described as an “involuntary examination” in an insane asylum, were without question the most horrific of my entire life. Nothing has ever terrified me in that way, before or since. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything that even comes remotely close. It was three days of hell, and even that doesn’t do it justice. 

Pray that you never end up in one of those ghastly places.   

Before I tell you the details of what it was like inside, some background on how I ended up trapped there is in order. The story is as nutty as anything you’ve ever heard. And without getting into all the details, I’ll tell you that even I don’t fully understand what happened, or why. It was surreal, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

It all began toward the end of my time in college. Some friends and I—at least I thought they were my friends—started a relatively successful and influential college newspaper. As we grew, and started looking under more rocks, we stumbled on some extremely serious crimes being perpetrated by powerful people in local government: Crimes that people would kill to conceal.   

One day, I received a strange phone call from a man claiming to be a local Freemason. I had never heard from him before, and I never heard from him again. But he said he was my “friend” and was just calling to warn me that I was in danger due to what we were working on at the newspaper. Basically, he said that if I didn’t stop, unnamed people would either kill me, get me locked up in jail, or have me thrown into a mental institution. He said not to bother calling the cops. They were in on it, too.  

As a 20-year-old college student and a baby Christian, this was all absolutely terrifying. I called my dad. He recommended calling the cops, but I never did—they were supposedly in on it, what the heck good would that do? Eventually, I started getting extremely concerned, perhaps even paranoid. The lack of sleep, from a combination of too much Adderall and too much work, didn’t help matters. And even though there is some mental haze surrounding it, to this day, I’m absolutely convinced that these local criminals of the vilest sort were, at the very least, trying to intimidate me.

At some point, after a trip to Europe during which I thought people were following me, it became difficult to know what was real and what was just a figment of my imagination. Upon my return, in a stupid effort to try to cover my ass from the people supposedly out to get me, I pretended like I was now working with various federal law-enforcement agencies and even Interpol.  

Returning to my college town following the whirlwind trip through multiple European countries—including a stop in Scandinavia to see my future wife, who thought I was losing my mind when I told her what was going on—I shared my troubling experiences with my partners at our college paper. I also shared my bullshit story about working with the feds and Interpol with them, and even told them that I would defend myself with force if somebody tried to take me down. (What a tough guy.) That was a huge mistake.  

Suddenly, a couple of sheriff’s deputies showed up at my friend’s apartment asking for me. Right away, I identified myself. And then, like an idiot, I shared my bullshit story with them, too. All I could think about was the phone call warning me about my fate if I did not back down, and so my assumption was that this was it, I was doomed. Desperately trying to bullshit the deputies, I told them that I was on a mission for unnamed federal and international agencies to root out a criminal conspiracy in the area, and that journalism was merely my cover story. 

They didn’t believe me. In fact, they thought I was nuts. And because I had guns in my truck, and refused to provide any evidence that I was actually working with any legitimate law-enforcement agency, they asked me if I would consent to a psychiatric exam. “No way,” I told them. “Let me talk to the sheriff so we can clear this all up.” 

Long story short: They put handcuffs on me and took me in under a state statute, allowing a person to be held for a few days for an involuntary mental health exam if it is believed the person may be a threat to themselves or others. The ride in the back of the patrol car felt like it took forever. I was sure I was being taken to the nuthouse, just like the creepy “friend” on the phone had promised would happen. 

The intake clerk demanded everything from me when I arrived—including my necklace and rings. At every step of the way, I demanded that I be allowed to speak with an attorney, frantically quoting federal statutes I had memorized about the deprivation of rights under color of law being a major federal crime. I think it scared them. They finally let me call a friend who was a legal expert, and I told him my bullshit story, too. He contacted my family and let them know, which may have been what saved me.  

Because I arrived late at night, the orderlies took me to my shared room without being seen by a shrink first. I would not get to see a psychiatrist until the next day. Trying to sleep in a situation like that is like trying to sleep on a nest of fire ants while covered in peanut butter—it’s absolutely, positively impossible. Another sleepless night, my mind racing, imagining every horrific scenario possible. 

The next day, I met with a psychiatrist. He read my intake report and asked me about it. Thinking he was in on the effort to get me, I had nothing to say other than I wanted to be let out, that there was nothing wrong with me, my rights must be respected, and I fully intended to pursue justice as soon as I got out of there.   

Soon after, he concluded I had bipolar disorder and prescribed Zyprexa for me, a powerful anti-psychotic. Thinking it would paralyze me and allow these creeps to do whatever they wanted, I refused to take anything. (To this day, I believe the disorders and diagnoses used by psychiatrists are even bigger bullshit than my story about working for the feds.)

In fact, after learning years later how these alleged “disorders” were invented—psychiatrists literally get together and vote on this crap, and if there are enough votes, they add it to their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—I could not believe anybody could take this seriously. Scientology and I have virtually nothing in common, but its exposure of psychiatry’s lunacy is its broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moment.

The power dynamics in the nuthouse were unlike anything I ever experienced in my life. And I believe people need to learn more about this abusive system immediately. 

There was a very clear hierarchy. At the top were the psychiatrists, who held unlimited and total power over the lives and fates of those at the lower rungs. They could set you free. Or they could lock you up forever. I think the power gets to their heads, at least for a lot of them. 

Under them, the orderlies. A lot of them were drunk on power, too. If you resisted their commands, you could find yourself tackled, locked up and even pumped full of sedatives that were the equivalent of a mental straightjacket. There was a kind nurse that I still remember, but other than that, it was horrific. It made me think of the infamous Milgram experiment in which volunteers were willing to zap people. Prisons probably have similar dynamics, though I couldn’t tell you for sure. Similar hierarchies existed among those trapped inside. 

There was one evil, giant guy in there, who was very clearly friendly with the orderlies and seemed to have lots of special privileges. He really freaked me out. Other patients warned me about him. The word was that he was in there voluntarily because it gave him access to “fresh meat.” Apparently he could come and go as he pleased. Even though nobody told me explicitly, I assumed he had been abusing my roommate, who never said a single word the whole time I was in there.  

The entire ordeal was freaky beyond belief. And thanks to that phone call, and the attitude of the psychiatrist, I was concerned that I might end up trapped in a hellhole like that facility forever. Eventually, one of the other young guys trapped in there explained to me what the secret was to getting out: Just agree with the shrink on everything and throw yourself at his mercy. So I tried that the next day. It worked like a charm, and my discharge papers were prepared shortly after that.  

As part of that agreement, though, I finally took one of the pills the quack had prescribed for me to show my submission to his “authoritay,” in the immortal words of Eric Cartman. The only thing I can compare that pill to is a (temporary, thank God!) mental lobotomy. It left me completely incapacitated. It was like slowing your brain down to a snail’s pace.

Getting out was the greatest feeling in the world. It may have helped that my dad knew someone on the board of the company that ran the facility. But I still think the real trick to getting out was just agreeing with the chief quack.   

The story has another twist. It was not shadowy conspirators who called the cops and got me thrown into that hell, it was my supposed friends and colleagues. When I finally found out they’d called the cops, it was a devastating realization, and heartbreaking, too.   

To this day I suspect ulterior motives: They had already made clear that they wanted to seize control of the newspaper from me. There had been an increasing divergence in our views. My two top deputies were homosexual libertarians, and even though I was also a libertarian, I had become a Christian. They wanted to promote the LGBT agenda with the paper. I wanted to promote the Bible.  

After I got out, we found out that our ad sales director had been sabotaging our ad sales. Not long after that, he asked me if I wanted to join Freemasonry—a secret society that supposedly doesn’t even invite people to join. Obviously, I said no. 

Perhaps I’ll never know the full truth about everything that happened in that ordeal, or why. To this day, I still don’t pretend to fully comprehend it all. But God used it in remarkable ways. And it taught me some very valuable lessons. Starting with: Avoid the psychiatric industry and their Big Pharma co-conspirators at all costs.   

It has become fashionable to fret about how the homeless problem could supposedly be solved simply by building more mental hospitals and locking up more people in them. But after spending a few days in one, I can say ending up in a place like that is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy.  

I still wonder how many people locked up in insane asylums are saner than most of us on the outside. Probably tons—maybe most of them. How many beautiful minds have been rotted out by poison masquerading as medication will never be known, but I bet it’s a whole lot. 

What I do know for sure now is that the mental health system is absolutely, positively, batshit crazy. I know some people claim to have benefited from the services of psychiatrists. But as far as I’m concerned, the whole field is a bunch of quackery, if not a giant criminal operation to peddle dangerous drugs and make big bucks. 

My advice: Avoid it at all costs. Open up a Bible instead.

I Was Wrongfully and Involuntarily Committed to a Psychiatric Hospital

He told me he liked my natural hair and that it reminded him of an African queen. Many of the women I worked with were very aware of who this guy was—and when I left they were full of questions. He hadn’t made any hints of self-importance, which I appreciated. But he was, even if I wasn’t aware, a well-known actor. 

We didn’t start dating at first—it started slowly, with a couple of acting roles, a few plane rides and fancy dinners. At the time, I identified as a lesbian and had recently had my heart shattered by a woman who I’d been with for a few years. But I also knew how to handle this situation, because working in a strip club gears you up for this kind of encounter. Usually you flirt a little, and the guy comes back regularly. That was the business, that was the point. But this guy was different. He seemed like he was just there to observe. We bonded over the fact that we were both humans within a space—not of that space. He seemed like he wanted nothing from me, and for about three years it stayed that way. Those were the good days. 

Indeed, those first few years were amazing. I quit my job at the club and started acting. I moved out of the city and ended up getting a larger role within a few months. I flew down to the city where we were shooting and stayed for two weeks. I barely saw him while working, but I always knew he was nearby and keeping an eye on me. He felt more like a mentor than anything else. About a year after landing that role, I was cast in a film that he independently produced. The process of auditioning for the film was long and hard, but I eventually ended up landing a different role and flying out to Los Angeles. This film would change the course of my life in many ways. 

This little indie film was short and sweet. It took a day to film my scenes and I stayed out in L.A. at his guest house for a week. I met some other actors and got to hang out with them, too. One particular actor shared an intimate moment with me and though I wasn’t prepared for the interaction—and still wasn’t sure if I liked men—I went along with it out of ignorance and fear. This particular decision, however, would come back to bite me. So unaware of the world I was entering, I had succumbed to a shark and would soon be paying for it tenfold. This encounter ended how most encounters seem to end with millennials—I was ghosted. I left Los Angeles the day after feeling useless and wondering what would happen next.

The next year, I was called down to meet the big-time actor—my original romancer—in Miami. By that point, I hadn’t worked since acting in the indie film he had directed the previous summer, and I was excited to shoot more. He’d purchased a one-way ticket for me and we spent quite a few months in Southern Florida shooting a television show. This is where our relationship rooted. When either of us wasn’t shooting we would spend time together. We hadn’t made anything official, so I was still able to do as I pleased without the “courtesy check-in.” Florida was our honeymoon phase. Things ended up going so well that he asked me to come to L.A., but I still had my own life and responsibilities. I said I would come eventually. 

“Eventually” happened fairly quickly. My cousin had a wedding in California on New Year's Eve, so he attended with me and my family. That night we made things a bit more official and I ended up staying with him. I wouldn’t say my life changed overnight, but it certainly became a lot more glamorous. I went from being a regular woman to receiving VIP treatment everywhere we went.

In certain places, servers and waiters gave us free drinks or the best seats, but for the most part in L.A., things were normal. Elsewhere, it was far more extensive. If we flew to Atlanta or upstate, we’d leave from LAX, which was its own sort of trap. No matter what, I was destined to meet the paparazzi at least once, and I was never ready for them. For those who have never experienced being bombarded by strangers with cameras, it's not as fun as it seems. If you’ve ever walked through a grocery store deciding what to buy, and then suddenly come face-to-face with an ex you haven’t seen in years, it's that kind of shock. At least, for me it was. It took some getting used to, but it was my least favorite part of the entire experience.

We continued to date. We continued to go to places and run into people he knew. Our routine consisted of auditions, workouts, pool time and L.A. adventures. One night, I decided to tell him about what happened the previous summer. At that point, I was all about being transparent and honest with my partners. I told him everything, even the part about not really wanting to do it. His response wasn’t of understanding but of complete disgust. In one evening, I went from being his favorite person to being worthless. His words, his emotions, his actions all led me to feel that way. I slipped into a deep depression. In my eyes, I had been the sun in his life for so long. Now, I was nothing. I wasn’t even worth keeping around to him, but he kept me and brought in other women to fill the gaps.

I found myself as the castaway girlfriend, the buffer for other girls who had to be nice in order to talk to him—a sort of comical gatekeeper. This wore on me, as I’m sure he knew. We began to drift apart, but we stayed together for a few months longer. When we finally did break up, and I moved back to Atlanta, I quit acting and became a standup comic. 

Dating a celebrity is similar to dating anyone else once you remove all the fame and the glamour. We had our problems and we handled them poorly, just like everyone else. We had public breakdowns, seen by other famous actors and civilians. We had horrible moments that we then had to push aside for red carpet events, for the semblance of unity. Dating an actor meant me laying down my comforts to pretend with him—to pretend, to this day, that our relationship was beautiful and beneficial because I was made to feel like I’d been given some sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The fact of the matter is you can date anyone who is available to you. But you shouldn’t. Sometimes you see a lifestyle and you go for it, head first, without knowing the cost of the endeavor. Without this experience, though, I would have never discovered what I won’t put up with. Or how to read people without even knowing them. Or that I could be brave enough to become a standup comic.

Pop Culture

This Is What It’s Like to Date a Famous Actor

If acting can be considered a job, I got my first when I was just five years old. That’s not just a story I tell my children. At such a young age, I learned a lot: from the value of hard work and delayed gratification to the existence of a very real type of “white privilege.” 

Wait, a conservative talking about white privilege? It’s not what you think.  

Over the years, the more I pondered being an American-born kid living in Mexico, the more obvious it became. My child-acting career was successful thanks in part to white privilege. But it wasn’t the Marxist-inspired fraud known as “white privilege” that supposedly plagues the United States. Rather, it was a very real phenomenon in the Spanish-speaking country.

The hard work—and it was hard work, especially for a young child—provided valuable lessons. The hours were often grueling. Sometimes we would stay on set almost all night. The seemingly endless repetition was enough to drive a person mad. Why couldn’t I go play with my friends like normal kids? Even school would have been better than standing in the same place, repeating the same dumb lines, making the same dumb motions over and over and over again. And I hated school. 

There would supposedly be a reward someday. But my parents just took all my money and invested it in a fund, whatever that meant, promising me access when I turned 18. To a young child, waiting until 18 sounds like waiting for eternity. Another lesson learned: delayed gratification. By the time I got to be 18 and received my money, I wasn’t much more mature than when I was earning it. And so, naturally, I spent it on drugs, parties and road trips. 

Occasionally there would some be instant gratification. One time, for example, my brother and I did a commercial for chips featuring “tazos”—a Mexican version of Pogs that came inside bags of chips. The team let us keep a whole suitcase full. Now that was cool! All the kids at school were so jealous. Suddenly, my brother and I were the tazo masters, carrying at least one of almost every version made.

At eight years old, I was hired to act in a commercial for a new movie about fires set by Saddam Hussein. Basically, the ad showed a cake with “trick” candles that were impossible to blow out, right in front of me. The commercial ended up becoming ubiquitous. Anybody who watched TV saw it and saw it again. I learned how cruel some people could be—especially kids. 

At school, some of them would tease me. “You are so pathetic, you can’t even blow out some little candles,” they would laugh. My cheeks would turn bright red and I wished I could just hide.

There was a flip side to that lesson, too. One of the projects I worked on was 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, much of which was filmed in Mexico City. I’ll never forget sitting next to a young Leonardo DiCaprio at a beautiful cathedral where he entertained me and my brother for hours on end with fart jokes. Yes, seriously. “Pffrrt.” He’d squinch his lips together and then look at us. “Hey, what was that? Who did that?!” We keeled over laughing and had a great time before finally going back to our personal trailer to relax for a while.  

Not really knowing who he was, my mom decided to snap a few photos of us standing next to Leo. I almost completely forgot they existed, but years later, attending middle school in Brazil, I learned that basically every young girl on the planet was madly in love with this funny, fart-noise-making actor. My brother and I got some of those pictures printed, and soon every girl at school was begging us for a signed copy of it. My brother and I started selling the pictures for about two bucks, learning about entrepreneurship in the process. Now that was fun. Today, as I see DiCaprio flying around the world on private jets lecturing me about my “carbon footprint,” it makes me want to barf. Still, as a kid, it was cool to claim I knew him.   

Those two memories were important learning experiences. People can be cruel if you can’t blow out candles, but they can be cool if you knew a handsome celebrity, making you Mr. Popular. Are people that pathetic and superficial? Certainly, many of them are. It’s sad but true. 

The bizarre experiences as a child-actor in Mexico taught me about what real “white privilege” looks like. Growing up as a fair-skinned, light-eyed descendant of mostly Northern Europeans in Mexico City in the late '80s and early '90s, I never really thought about race or skin color. It was very clear that lighter-skinned descendants of Spaniards were far wealthier than the darker-skinned masses of “Mestizos,” or the descendants of Aztecs, Maya and other native peoples. But I had not consciously processed it.  

Though I didn’t really think about it until years later, the relatively small white minority in Mexico really did hold almost all the power, both economically and politically. Our wealthy upper-class neighborhood in the hills outside the city consisted of virtually all fair-skinned families, with the exception of the maids, cooks, drivers and security guards. On set, whether filming commercials or movies, it was usually the same—aside from some lower-level employees, almost everybody there had very light skin, light eyes and light hair. The Mexicans even had a term for people like me and my brother: “Güero.”  

Looking back, this was wild. With “whites” representing a small minority of the population compared to the overwhelming majority of native and mixed-ethnicity people, how could it be that almost everybody on TV was white? In Poland, Iceland or the Czech Republic, that would make sense. But in Mexico, where the overwhelming majority of people were brown-skinned?  

Of course, it had been like that for hundreds of years, since the Spanish conquistadors arrived and subdued the powerful empires of the region. Apparently, it’s slowly changing. But if you want to experience real white privilege, I highly recommend a trip to Mexico or Latin America.        

Parents often tell their children about their first job, how hard it was and the lessons it taught them. When I tell my kids that I was sometimes working 12- to 16-hour days before I was six years old, they typically laugh. But it’s true, and while it might have been tough, the lessons learned—and the money earned—were well worth it.

I Discovered My White Privilege as a Child Actor in Mexico

You’ve heard the moth-eaten adage before: Actions speak louder than words. So, when thinking about mass incarceration in America, it’s imperative to consider the actions of the offenders. Day after day in court—in my role as a deputy district attorney—what I hear people saying is: “Judge, please send me to prison.” Those may not be the actual words coming out of their mouths but they’re saying it loud and clear.

Past actions are the best predictor of future behavior, right? There’s a saying that the definition of “crazy” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So, let’s look at mass incarceration from the viewpoint of the judges who sentence people to prison, and the deputy DAs who recommend people be incarcerated.

I spend every working morning in a courtroom handling a criminal adult felony docket. I have been doing this for 14 years. The first two years were spent in a small rural jurisdiction and the last dozen in a large urban area. I heard the same thing in the small town that I hear in the big city: “Judge, please send me to prison.”

Let’s start with pre-conviction and talk about bond or bail. There are many people incarcerated pre-conviction in America. There is change happening across our nation in terms of how we address bond. Bail schedules are being challenged and deemed unconstitutional. It is not fair that a poorer person remains in custody after an accusation and a wealthier person does not, simply because of their ability to pay or post bond. The ability to pay should not be a determinative factor in pre-conviction incarceration. Both are innocent unless and until proven guilty by the government—so why should a poorer person remain in custody whereas a wealthier person does not?

This is an area where we are making progress in the criminal justice system. We are moving away from bail schedules that dictated the amount of bond one must post simply based on the severity of the charge(s). We are moving towards individual risk assessments. Judges are trying to set bonds based on not only the charge but on the offender, too—considering the existence or lack thereof of various factors. Good idea.

Additionally, we are trending towards releasing more accused persons on their own promise to return to court—what we often call personal recognizance bonds. You sign a piece of paper that says you will come to court when required, and you are released from custody without having to post or spend any money on bail or bond. Again, a good idea.

But what do we do about those who sign the personal recognizance bond promising they will abide by the conditions and come to court when required but don’t? When the accused misses a required court date, a warrant issues for his/her arrest due to the failure to appear. Eventually, that person is picked up on that failure to appear warrant and they are back in front of a judge. Maybe the same judge that released them on a promise to appear. What is the judge supposed to do now? Release he/she again on a promise to appear? At bond advisals, which occur every day in basically every courthouse in America, I hear accused persons tell judges that they will appear next time and that it was a mistake the first time they did not. But actions speak louder than words, right?

Now: incarceration post-conviction. The accused has now been convicted at trial—or much more likely—has accepted a plea bargain and admitted that he/she is guilty of a crime. Now it is up to the judge to impose a sentence. The judge has options (besides in the most serious cases where mandatory prison sentences are legislated). Most felony convictions, and nearly all misdemeanor convictions, are probation eligible. The judge decides if you go to jail or prison, or if you go on probation, or if you just pay a fine and close the case.

Let’s assume someone has pleaded guilty to a first felony. The judge is determining the sentence and decides to give the convicted an opportunity to serve a community-based sentence—such as probation. The convicted will be required to meet with probation and comply with any requirements the probation department puts on them, or whatever requirements the judge specifically imposed—e.g., monitored sobriety and/or domestic violence classes. Some convicted persons do everything required and complete probation. Their cases are closed. This is the result everyone at the courthouse hopes to see. But, oftentimes, probation is not completed successfully.

Look, you can’t be involved in the criminal justice system 14 days, let alone 14 years, without dealing with addiction and addicts. Addiction underlies so much of what goes on in and around the criminal justice system. Hell, I’m an addict myself—lots of prosecutors are— whether it’s alcohol or exercising or something else: Most prosecutors I know, and I know hundreds, are addicts. We are no different or better than the people we are working with in court. But let’s get back to the judge and the convicted person who has chosen to not comply with probation. What is the judge supposed to do?

Eventually, the probation department files a motion with the court informing the judge that the convicted is not complying with the requirements of probation. The convicted is brought back to court and back in front of the judge to be re-sentenced. The judge gives the convicted a second chance to comply with a community-based sentence and reinstates probation for a new term with the same conditions as before. The convicted leaves court, does not comply with probation again and probation eventually files another motion with the court saying that the convicted is non-compliant. The convicted is brought back to court, back in front of the judge—so now what?

The convicted asks the judge for another opportunity on probation because the alternative is, ya know, incarceration. If you are convicted of a felony, you are going to be put on probation or sent to prison. So, probation or prison—those are the judge’s options. What the convicted says to the judge does not comport with their actions. They say they want another chance, they say they will attend probation meetings and therapy appointments, they say they are serious about substance abuse treatment and they just need a third second chance. From my prosecution table, I listen to the words coming out of their mouths, but what I hear is: “Judge, please send me to prison.”

Let me give an example. There was a woman in my courtroom recently who was driving drunk one night several years ago. Police attempted to pull her over on the street but she pulled into a fast-food restaurant. The traffic stop occurred in the drive-thru lane in the middle of the night. She was arrested for DUI, a misdemeanor offense. She was uncooperative with police on the scene. I get that: She was drunk and making poor choices, i.e., driving. She chose to call the police horrible names—which is not illegal—and choose to physically assault the police. That is definitely illegal, a felony in most instances. She kicked the police officer in the face as he was driving the police car to the police station. The officer almost lost control of the car while driving at posted speed on a highway.

So, she was additionally charged with felony assault on a police officer. She took a plea bargain. She pleaded guilty to a reduced felony offense and a DUI. She was put on probation. She did not comply. She tested positive for alcohol and marijuana. She submitted diluted urinalysis (UAs). She set up treatment but never followed through with it. She was brought back to court on a probation revocation, was revoked and reinstated to probation. She got a second chance. She did not comply again. She continued to drink and drop hot UAs. She continued to miss required UAs. She was discharged from treatment due to lack of attendance. She was brought back into court for another revocation. The judge gave her a third chance to do probation, to avoid incarceration. The judge told the woman that if she came back again he would impose a prison sentence—that this is the last opportunity to comply. She did not. She chose to keep drinking and therefore failed additional UAs. She chose to not attend probation meetings. She even picked up a new case in a different county for assaulting a police officer. She was before the judge again, asking for another chance on probation.

What is the judge supposed to do? The judge finally incarcerated her. The convicted gave the judge no other choice.

Judges do not like sending people to prison. Deputy DAs would much prefer a convicted person take advantage of the opportunity to do probation and use the resources probation provides than suffer the alternative. Judges will suspend prison sentences as an incentivized threat to a convicted person: ”You better comply with probation or I am going to impose the suspended prison sentence.” The convicted does not comply and, in my experience, more often than not, the judge will still give a person a second chance on probation—even though he/she told them otherwise. On drug cases, I have seen probation sentences revoked and reinstated six different times. On the one hand, it’s hard work to wind up in prison on a drug possession case: Judges will give offenders multiple opportunities to comply with probation. On the other hand, it is easy to wind up in prison on a drug possession case when the offender chooses to not comply with probation. It comes back to choice.

Follow Us

Upcoming Curation

Featured

Have A Story to Share?

Company

Engage