Speaker 1: I'm Greg Glot and this is the War on Drugs.
Speaker 1: Here we go, episode ten. We are reaching the end
Speaker 1: of our war on drugs journey Man, final chapter of
Speaker 1: season one. Yeah, yeah, we're getting down to that last
Speaker 1: little piece man, that the last little piece of blunt
Speaker 1: left man is the roach. Yeah, but sometimes it is
Speaker 1: the most potent part, and it's the most hard hitting part.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what this episode is today. What
Speaker 1: a beautiful metaphor, Clayton, you ever, Hey, hey, sometimes things
Speaker 1: just come together nice. But I think at this point
Speaker 1: in our journey Man, we gotta ask, and I think
Speaker 1: you're the right person asked this question too. How long
Speaker 1: are we going to continue to keep treating addicts like criminals.
Speaker 1: I always like to have an answer for you, Clayton,
Speaker 1: if you ask me statistics and this or that, or
Speaker 1: what's legal? What's the schedule one drug? I'll give it
Speaker 1: to you. But it's got to the point where that's
Speaker 1: what I expect from you. I expect nothing less. Well,
Speaker 1: you should really lower your expectations at this point with me, Man,
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish I had a good answer. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we're getting closer, but I don't think we're
Speaker 1: there yet. I think more and more people are understanding addiction.
Speaker 1: But man, the war on drugs, it's not just the incarceration,
Speaker 1: it's not just the civil fortune, it's not all these
Speaker 1: things that we've talked about, the policies. It really is
Speaker 1: the social fabric of our country and how it hasn't
Speaker 1: been ingrained because we've just been hit with this propaganda
Speaker 1: machine for you know, over one hundred years now, and
Speaker 1: that's really really hard. It's gonna take a long time.
Speaker 1: But hopefully podcasts like this more people speaking, you know,
Speaker 1: people like Morgan Godman our guests today, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of telling her story and understanding the tragedy of the
Speaker 1: drug war and how it touches on some of the things.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that'll help, you know, maybe maybe it's not just
Speaker 1: one answer. But I think Morgan actually she shows us
Speaker 1: from the top to the bottom, or should I say
Speaker 1: the bottom to the top, how this were on drugs,
Speaker 1: like affects people and everything that we've talked about in
Speaker 1: previous episodes I think are highlighted and illustrated in her story.
Speaker 1: So today we're gonna do something a little different, you know.
Speaker 1: I know, most of the time, as us and the
Speaker 1: guests and we're jumping in there and stuff. But today
Speaker 1: we're just gonna get out the way. Man. We're gonna
Speaker 1: get out the way, because this is a story that
Speaker 1: you need to hear, uninterrupted, unfiltered, and from the mouth
Speaker 1: of the person who lived it. Yeah, bad news you
Speaker 1: don't get to hear Clayton's smooth, soulful voice. Good news,
Speaker 1: you don't have to hear my nasally deviated, septing voice
Speaker 1: for the next thirty minutes. So, and we're going to
Speaker 1: steal an idea from Jason Flom, who you may remember
Speaker 1: from one of our quick fixes. He's, you know, the
Speaker 1: has his own podcast, Wrongful Convictions, where he does amazing
Speaker 1: work helping get people exonerated. He has a thing on
Speaker 1: there called closing Arguments where he allows for the experts
Speaker 1: and guests that he's brought on to kind of have
Speaker 1: that final word. And we're going to kind of take
Speaker 1: that and expand on it and give that final word
Speaker 1: to Morgan for the next you know, thirty thirty five
Speaker 1: minutes for y'all to kind of hear her journey, because
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna be the best way to really
Speaker 1: hear this and really wrap up this season with a
Speaker 1: real life example of you know, tragedy and triumph. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll let Morgan take it away. I always felt like
Speaker 1: a fairly upstanding citizen, and it wasn't always easy to
Speaker 1: maintain that. During heroin addiction. There was times when I
Speaker 1: had no money and I would think, well, should I shoplift?
Speaker 1: Should I steal? I just couldn't do it. I watched
Speaker 1: some of my friends go there, and I knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't for me. I would pick up an extra shift
Speaker 1: at the Dominoes and I would make it, and I
Speaker 1: always made it, and I never turned to other forms
Speaker 1: of crime, and it didn't matter. The first time I
Speaker 1: tried to kill myself, I was eleven years old. Is
Speaker 1: a painfully awkward and shy child. Had I came of
Speaker 1: age now, I would have probably been diagnosed as being
Speaker 1: on the spectrum definitely neurodivergen. I don't care to label
Speaker 1: it anymore because I'm grown and my life is fine.
Speaker 1: Definitely had social issues, severe social issues, severe mental health issues.
Speaker 1: There was violence in my household, just you know, the
Speaker 1: standard round the mill stuff. I had a middle class background,
Speaker 1: but then was cast into sudden poverty at the age
Speaker 1: of sixteen, my mom had a gambling addiction and was
Speaker 1: caught embezzling and her house was foreclose. By the time
Speaker 1: I was sixteen, I had found the drug subculture. We
Speaker 1: had ecstasy pills, then cocaine, and then this girl who
Speaker 1: had broken her leg riding horses had forty miligram oxycon
Speaker 1: bills and she said, I'll trade you two of mine
Speaker 1: for two years ecstasy. I'm like, yeah, sure, and we
Speaker 1: do the trade. That is the first time I tried
Speaker 1: to oxycotton, and I just crushed it up with the
Speaker 1: coating on and all I didn't no better, snored it,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, why did I ever do cocaine?
Speaker 1: This is so much better. Come to find out, oxyconton
Speaker 1: was actually really expensive and so we couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: do it that much. I was already working as a
Speaker 1: pizza delivery driver. This was right after I turned eighteen
Speaker 1: years old. And my friend Justin's we went to high
Speaker 1: school together, and I meet him and he sells oxyconton.
Speaker 1: That's like how he makes his living. Justin was like, yo,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money that you just spent, and like,
Speaker 1: I'm here to make money, but you're my actual friend,
Speaker 1: you know, there's an alternative, right, And he showed us
Speaker 1: how to smoke heroin on foil and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, and my own my mind exploded. When I
Speaker 1: was sixteen and there was no food in the house,
Speaker 1: I dropped out of high school to go work full
Speaker 1: time at McDonald's because I had to eat, and so
Speaker 1: life was pretty miserable, and so drugs were an escape
Speaker 1: for that day. And they were pretty fun, you know what.
Speaker 1: They worked quite well in the beginning and for a
Speaker 1: long time. Honestly, drugs work. That's why people doing them,
Speaker 1: and it gave me something to look forward to. People
Speaker 1: are medicating emotional pain they've learned maladaptive coping mechanisms. Most often,
Speaker 1: addiction is a response to childhood trauma are sometimes adult trauma,
Speaker 1: but especially adverse childhood experiences. Then the societal response to
Speaker 1: that is traumatizing you further and then sitting and scratching
Speaker 1: our heads like, well, why isn't it working? That pain
Speaker 1: existential dread, physical pain, emotional pain. That's why people are using.
Speaker 1: We try to punish the hurt out of people. You
Speaker 1: cannot punish the hurt out of people. I worked in
Speaker 1: the hood as close as you know, portlandis has a hood.
Speaker 1: I'm in my Dominance uniform. I remember my boss needed
Speaker 1: to cut one of the delivery drivers and I volunteered,
Speaker 1: and I regretted that for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Then my friend Tim, who works at the bar two
Speaker 1: streets down, he texts me. He says, I'm so sick.
Speaker 1: I'm sick at work. Please come. I don't get off
Speaker 1: until two am. He's a bartender, can you get me
Speaker 1: through my shift? And I was like okay. And there
Speaker 1: I am in my Domino's uniform, sitting in my car
Speaker 1: and the parking lot of this really grungy dive bar,
Speaker 1: cooking a shot and I have these big over the
Speaker 1: ear headphones on because I'm watching How I Met Your
Speaker 1: Mother on my phone, and so I gets stuck in
Speaker 1: my dash and I'm just like cooking Dana Da And
Speaker 1: then I just remember and I looked to my left
Speaker 1: and it's a thick and Portland police officer and I
Speaker 1: know right then I am going to jail. And the
Speaker 1: police support's funny because I had like drawn up the
Speaker 1: heroine in the syringe as he was knocking on my
Speaker 1: door and he's like step out of the car. I
Speaker 1: squirted it on the ground and he tried to arrest
Speaker 1: me for obstruction of evidence for that, and the DA
Speaker 1: declined to prosecute. But then I had a Graham or
Speaker 1: just let's send a Graham hidden in my car, like
Speaker 1: it was about eighty dollars worth of heroin, twenty four
Speaker 1: hours worth of heroin, and so that's what they gave
Speaker 1: me the felony four. I just want to clarify, being
Speaker 1: addicted to heroin is synonymous with being a hardened criminal
Speaker 1: in the eyes of the law. No one was accusing
Speaker 1: me of being a drug dealer at that time. All
Speaker 1: they were accusing me of was simple drug possession and
Speaker 1: that's all that it takes in the United States to
Speaker 1: be considered a hardened criminal. But it's Portland, right, so progressive.
Speaker 1: So they put me into the kinder, gentler to alternative
Speaker 1: to incarceration drug court. I ended up going to jail
Speaker 1: over and over and over because I couldn't stop doing heroin.
Speaker 1: But I did everything else that they asked me to do.
Speaker 1: I would go to my groups, I would meet with
Speaker 1: my po I would pee in their cup and it
Speaker 1: would be positive for her. But I'm like, but hey,
Speaker 1: look I'm engaging. I'm here, but I was still using
Speaker 1: That didn't work for them. They didn't like that. So
Speaker 1: call it which you want to call it. Drug court
Speaker 1: is just an extension of the war on drugs. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm jumping through their hoops because at the time I
Speaker 1: hadn't yet been convicted of the felony. He was still pending. Right,
Speaker 1: it was deferred. So as long as you jump through
Speaker 1: all our hoops for a year and a half and
Speaker 1: we'll dismiss it. So I'm jumping through their hoops. I'd
Speaker 1: done twenty eight days in impatient with my car parked
Speaker 1: out front of the treatment center. I'm out in Washington County.
Speaker 1: I get pulled over, he said, wavering within the lane,
Speaker 1: which is a fun one that they love to use,
Speaker 1: like suspicion of d y. The officer asked me to
Speaker 1: search my car. No, sir, I did not consent to searches.
Speaker 1: Over and over starts threatening me, says he's going to
Speaker 1: do the field sobriety test. I said, go right ahead,
Speaker 1: and then he just starts screaming at me. What the
Speaker 1: fuck is that? What's that handed to me now? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, what, I don't know? What he's talking about,
Speaker 1: and I'm like picking up random bits of detritus, like
Speaker 1: is it this? What do you want, dude? What do
Speaker 1: you want? And he makes it sound like it's a weapon.
Speaker 1: He was talking about pieces of trash and I picked
Speaker 1: up like the first thing, it was like a receipt.
Speaker 1: He was like no. I picked up the next thing
Speaker 1: and he was like no, And I picked up the
Speaker 1: next thing. He goes that, he takes it out, He
Speaker 1: opens my door, snatches me up and pulls me out
Speaker 1: of the car, shoves me against the car and pats
Speaker 1: me down, and I'm like, what is going on? And
Speaker 1: he said that piece of plastic tested positive for heroin
Speaker 1: residue and that I was under arrest for felony drug possession.
Speaker 1: I was like, dude, I picked my car up from
Speaker 1: treatment today, that that car has been sitting in the
Speaker 1: treatment center parking lot since before. What do you mean
Speaker 1: I'm under arrest for residue? And it's actually super common.
Speaker 1: There's just thousands of Americans have gotten felony convictions for
Speaker 1: residue amounts not visible to the naked eye, on detritus,
Speaker 1: on trash. I am really emboldened. I go in and
Speaker 1: I said this was an illegal search for it the
Speaker 1: Poison Street. There's no way that any of this is valid.
Speaker 1: I declined the search, and he pulls up the police
Speaker 1: report and it says, here, can we search your car?
Speaker 1: And then it says miss Godwin, Yeah, sure, go ahead,
Speaker 1: and I fucking excuse me, and I'm like, pull the
Speaker 1: dash camp footage. They're lying. I did not consent to
Speaker 1: that search. In fact, I repeatedly declined, and he goes, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the Washington County sheriff Department doesn't actually have dash camps
Speaker 1: or body cameras. And my lawyer had to sit me
Speaker 1: down and said, hey, listen, you were just arrested for
Speaker 1: drug possession a few months ago. You are literally in
Speaker 1: drug court. Do you know how this looks. It is
Speaker 1: going to be your word a junkie for saccap and
Speaker 1: a court a law who you think is going to
Speaker 1: win that, and then if you lose that at trial,
Speaker 1: it's going to be so much worse for you. I
Speaker 1: can probably get you a plea deal that has no
Speaker 1: jail time but a felony conviction or a felony conviction,
Speaker 1: and I got both those felonies back to back. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with the War on drug Hi. I'm
Speaker 1: Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
Speaker 1: Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drugs,
Speaker 1: and many other great podcasts. Today we're asking you, our listeners,
Speaker 1: to take part in the survey. Your feedback is going
Speaker 1: to help inform how we make podcasts in the future.
Speaker 1: You're complete and candidate answers will help us continue to
Speaker 1: bring you more insightful and inspiring stories about important topics
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Speaker 1: for your support. The War on Drugs PO guests is
Speaker 1: sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community
Speaker 1: that partners with America's boldest change makers to tackle the
Speaker 1: root causes of our country's biggest problems. Christina Dent is
Speaker 1: one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand Together to end
Speaker 1: the War on Drugs, the root cause of so many
Speaker 1: problems and communities across the country. As a foster mom,
Speaker 1: she came into contact with the War on Drugs when
Speaker 1: she saw how it was ripping apart the family she
Speaker 1: worked with. She witnessed how kids were affected, and her
Speaker 1: mothers wanted something better for their families, but didn't have
Speaker 1: the tools to get there themselves. Christina Dent started a
Speaker 1: nonprofit called Ended for Good because she knew there was
Speaker 1: a better solution to help these families. She's working to
Speaker 1: end the war on drugs in Mississippi and build consensus
Speaker 1: around the state to help families struggling with substance abuse
Speaker 1: problems find a different path forward than the one they've
Speaker 1: been given. Stand Together has many more stories like this one,
Speaker 1: as it partners with thousands of change makers who were
Speaker 1: driving solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: To learn more about Stand Together their partners, or how
Speaker 1: you can partner will Stand Together, go to Stand Together
Speaker 1: dot org. The definition of addiction is continuing to use
Speaker 1: drugs despite negative consequences. Therefore, laying on additional negative consequences
Speaker 1: does not work. Addiction itself, outside of the sphere of
Speaker 1: criminal law, is already using despite negative consequences. It's causing
Speaker 1: issues at work, it's causing issues in my relationship I
Speaker 1: use anyway, that's addiction. But then the just system coming
Speaker 1: in and say, well, how about if we make it worse,
Speaker 1: will that make it better, and surprisingly, no, no, it
Speaker 1: does not. I had gotten a founy conviction while receiving
Speaker 1: federal financial aid, so that torched my ability to continue
Speaker 1: going to school. I got fired from my job. I
Speaker 1: got an automatic six month license suspension, which was standard
Speaker 1: practice if he were with drugs in your car. But
Speaker 1: that took away my livelihood as I was a pizza
Speaker 1: delivery driver. For the first time in my life, I
Speaker 1: found myself unemployed. So I'm like living in my car,
Speaker 1: staying and broken down RV's with my friends. I just
Speaker 1: descended into the bowels of addiction and the underworld at
Speaker 1: that time, those things that kept me one foot in
Speaker 1: addiction and one foot out because I still saw a
Speaker 1: better way for myself. I lost that one foot out,
Speaker 1: so I jumped in both feet in addiction because what
Speaker 1: was the point. I just remember this one time, I
Speaker 1: lined up three syringes as much heroin as each could hold,
Speaker 1: and I re lined them up in a row, didn't
Speaker 1: even bother trying to find a vein, stuck them right
Speaker 1: in my hip, injected one after the other, and I
Speaker 1: went to lay down on my bed and I really
Speaker 1: hoped I wouldn't wake up, but damn if I always
Speaker 1: woke up. I just didn't care whether I lived or died.
Speaker 1: I was so suicidal. And then I had some inner
Speaker 1: voice shine through and say, hey, this isn't actually life
Speaker 1: you want for yourself, This isn't actually you you want better.
Speaker 1: I was frustricted with my own lack of self control.
Speaker 1: I did not want to keep using as if there
Speaker 1: I was of two minds, a fractured mind warring, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted to remove that element of self control.
Speaker 1: And I wanted someone to make me take my medicine
Speaker 1: for seven days, because the issue with the suboxin is
Speaker 1: I would take it a day or two and then
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, I'll square this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do heroin, and I would stop taking it. And I'd
Speaker 1: never taken it multiple days in a row. I was
Speaker 1: never stabilized on this medicine, and I just concocted this
Speaker 1: grand plan of well, in jail, don't make me take it.
Speaker 1: As long as I can get that those seven days stabilized.
Speaker 1: I think from there I'll be good. And so my
Speaker 1: next drug court check in, I walked in with my
Speaker 1: sabo oxen and a letter from my doctor to the
Speaker 1: courts imploring them to keep me on it because it
Speaker 1: was important life saving medication and my written prescription. And
Speaker 1: I walked up to the podium and I asked Judge
Speaker 1: Ryant to take me into custody because I needed a
Speaker 1: fresh start. I needed to be stabilized on my medication.
Speaker 1: I volunteered for Joe. I had some notion that jail
Speaker 1: was there to help us. Even after all the life
Speaker 1: I'd lived and being persecuted by the police, prosecuted, I
Speaker 1: still was raised with this the authorities there to protect
Speaker 1: us military brat mentality, and that really permeated deep into
Speaker 1: my subconscious You asked me, now, why would I volunteer
Speaker 1: for jails. It sounds ridiculous. I was obviously incredibly naive
Speaker 1: and stupid, but at the time, you know, the system
Speaker 1: was leaning hard on me, and I thought, okay, what
Speaker 1: if I lean in? And I get into the Multnoma
Speaker 1: County jail that night, and I asked the nurse for
Speaker 1: my suboxon and she laughs in my face and tells
Speaker 1: me that they do not prescribe that medication. And I
Speaker 1: kicked cole Turkey and an open dorm with seventy seven
Speaker 1: women staring at me while I puked into a trash
Speaker 1: can with fluorescent lights that never turned off, and for
Speaker 1: seven days of agony, I had to remind myself that
Speaker 1: I chose that that I did that to myself. This
Speaker 1: was about six eight months after that day, I volunteered
Speaker 1: for jail. My mom died. She was a Air Force
Speaker 1: veteran one hundred percent disabled from her service, and she
Speaker 1: took prescription medication, but she took too many morphine pills
Speaker 1: one night. Whether on purpose or because she had a migraine,
Speaker 1: I will never know. I was supposed to be the
Speaker 1: one that died. I'm a suicidal junkie. But I found
Speaker 1: her and how to call the police, and that meant
Speaker 1: that I got life insurance, her military life insurance, real clever.
Speaker 1: She'd put it into a stipend for me so that
Speaker 1: I didn't get it in a batch. So I got
Speaker 1: like one lump sum thirty thousand dollars. And I thought,
Speaker 1: if I could just buy enough heroine, that all my
Speaker 1: problems would be complete. Like I really only thought, for
Speaker 1: you know, since the time I was like nineteen twenty,
Speaker 1: that my only problem in life was that I didn't
Speaker 1: have enough heroine. And if I could just have enough
Speaker 1: everything would be complete. I was just doing more and
Speaker 1: more heroine, burning through the thirty thousand dollars, realizing, holy shit,
Speaker 1: I'm going to run out of money within a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. And it was right in that period that
Speaker 1: my friend Justin texted me, the one who first showed
Speaker 1: me how to smoke heroin of foil that first time
Speaker 1: I overdose. He'd saved me from several other overdoses. Later,
Speaker 1: he texted me looking for a Graham, and he'd left
Speaker 1: his wallet at my mom's house the day before she died.
Speaker 1: When he came over and I'm like, yeah, dude, I
Speaker 1: can sell you a Graham out of my bag, and
Speaker 1: I have your wallet. I can finally give you back
Speaker 1: your wallet. I was so proud of myself because my
Speaker 1: mom had died, I was addicted to heroin, and I
Speaker 1: had kept his wallet safe and I knew where it was.
Speaker 1: I had moved into a trap house, and I still
Speaker 1: had saved his wallet. When you're addicted to heroin, you
Speaker 1: will find these little semblances of normality to latch onto,
Speaker 1: these little moments of responsibility, And so I was so
Speaker 1: proud of myself for having saved his wallet and so
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I would sell him the gram out
Speaker 1: of my bag. He came. I sold it to him
Speaker 1: and then I'm like, oh, let me grab your wallet.
Speaker 1: He's like, nah, no, I'll get it next time. I
Speaker 1: gotta go. I was like okay. Then next night he
Speaker 1: texted me again looking for two grams. And I'm sitting there,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for Justin to come, and the door just
Speaker 1: flies open and it's the swat table and they just
Speaker 1: stick guns in my face and are screaming at me,
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, man, my roommate's in trouble because
Speaker 1: he's the one that sells heroin. And then they read
Speaker 1: the warrant and it was in my name, what me? What?
Speaker 1: I wasn't like selling to support my habit. I didn't shower,
Speaker 1: I didn't leave my house. I didn't need nothing. Come
Speaker 1: to find out that Justin had not texted me that day.
Speaker 1: Was the police pretending to be my dead best friend.
Speaker 1: I was only informed of that while being put in
Speaker 1: handcuffs and being told that I was being arrested for
Speaker 1: drug delivery resulting in death for the overdose death of
Speaker 1: Justin DeLong, a charge that carries a twenty year mandatory
Speaker 1: minimum sentence. Justin had died the night before the night
Speaker 1: that I sold him a Graham. He went home and
Speaker 1: overdosed alone in his bedroom. Justin was one of my
Speaker 1: closest friends, closest and oldest friends, and I knew his sister,
Speaker 1: I knew his family. I was in between panicked and ashamed,
Speaker 1: so I didn't attend the funeral service. His family did
Speaker 1: not want to see me go to prison. They testified
Speaker 1: on my behalf at my sentencing. They had watched him
Speaker 1: struggle with addiction, and they thought that the prosecution was
Speaker 1: cruel because that Justin had been so abused by the
Speaker 1: system while he lived. They were really clear that they
Speaker 1: didn't blame me, and that if I held any guilt,
Speaker 1: that I needed to forgive myself. That was a terrible
Speaker 1: period in my life. And then I find myself in jail,
Speaker 1: and of course you know, I'm detoxing cold turkey because
Speaker 1: despite the fact that jail has been promore friend, they
Speaker 1: never prescribe it. But that is not when I got clean.
Speaker 1: Wish it was. Wish I could say it was not.
Speaker 1: My mom had died six months before, my friend Justin
Speaker 1: had died three months before that, and I was literally
Speaker 1: being prosecuted with his death, which really complicates how to grieve.
Speaker 1: I will say, there's so much heroine in jail. There's
Speaker 1: much more heroine in women's jail than men's jail because
Speaker 1: women have an easier time smuggling in the drug and
Speaker 1: so there is a lot of drugs that come into
Speaker 1: County jail, and I saw absolutely no point and not
Speaker 1: using them. Jail is miserable. My life was objectively miserable,
Speaker 1: and so I saw it escape anywhere that I could.
Speaker 1: I was having issues with self control and I was
Speaker 1: still using. So I went to court and I asked
Speaker 1: the judge to transfer me to Columbia County Jail, which
Speaker 1: I had been to and knew, who had far fewer
Speaker 1: drugs because it's so small. There's a lotless traffic coming in.
Speaker 1: There's only ten women in the norm, and there I
Speaker 1: found an environment that promoted my sobriety and my self
Speaker 1: worth because the deputies were kind and they called me
Speaker 1: by my name and not a number, and they were
Speaker 1: just so respectful. That promoted this mutual respect and kindness
Speaker 1: like I have never seen in a jail or prison
Speaker 1: before or after. And I really credit them with like
Speaker 1: setting me on the course to true recovery and like
Speaker 1: achieving success because they were the first ones who told
Speaker 1: me that I could and that I wasn't just a
Speaker 1: piece of shit because I did drugs. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's right, I'm better than this and I can achieve
Speaker 1: more than I've been achieving. And I never used her again.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with the war on drugs. Pot
Speaker 1: guess I realized, like, Okay, this really bad thing happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can channel this suffering into something positive. And
Speaker 1: I know that sounds wild because I've talked about people
Speaker 1: dying and my mom overdose from morphine, justin overdose, but
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't let it all be meaningless. There
Speaker 1: was so much hurt that I lived and somehow survived.
Speaker 1: I couldn't let it be meaningless, and so I got out.
Speaker 1: I still had twelve thousand dollars left in my bank
Speaker 1: account for my mom's life insurance, so I was able
Speaker 1: to pay cash for my first quarter tuition at Portland
Speaker 1: State University, and I decided I was majoring in public health.
Speaker 1: Even though I didn't really know what that meant, I
Speaker 1: knew it had something to do with the opioid crisis
Speaker 1: and that I wanted to channel my suffering. Then the
Speaker 1: dean of the School of Public Health, doctor David Beingsburg,
Speaker 1: found me. I don't know. I signed up for like
Speaker 1: a coffee with him, and he was like, you're special,
Speaker 1: You're going places, and no one had ever told me
Speaker 1: that before. Born State didn't help me at all with
Speaker 1: the transition. I'd never heard of Google Docs. I annoyed,
Speaker 1: would any of my classmates were talking about I felt
Speaker 1: like I came from Mars. They're talking about like memes
Speaker 1: and music videos and I didn't have the Internet for
Speaker 1: four years. I annoyed. I just felt it goes from Mars.
Speaker 1: But then the dean dean is sitting there and like,
Speaker 1: how can I help you? What do you need and
Speaker 1: introducing me to people, and then he invited me to
Speaker 1: speak on a local news town hall and that changed
Speaker 1: my life. We started a group I was like perfectly
Speaker 1: involved in that justice involved student group. There there was
Speaker 1: a few, but because of the nature of criminalization and
Speaker 1: shame and stigma, very few people would I self identify,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to find even the few that did
Speaker 1: exist because I was the only one shouting it from
Speaker 1: the mountaintops. I was sent to prison for my best
Speaker 1: friend's overdose. But then I realized the more I told
Speaker 1: my story, people would come up to me and be like,
Speaker 1: I have a felony too. I was giving people permission.
Speaker 1: It's okay to talk about this. This isn't your fault,
Speaker 1: like this city is broken, not you. You are not
Speaker 1: a bad person because you did a bad thing, and
Speaker 1: especially not just because you did drugs. I just would
Speaker 1: tell my story with anyone who would listen. And so
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, they said, hey, they're looking at a
Speaker 1: measure to decriminalize drugs and organ I jumped at it
Speaker 1: because doing nothing, literally not responding at all to substance use,
Speaker 1: would be superior to what we are doing now. So
Speaker 1: Measure one ten, passed by an overwhelming majority the voters
Speaker 1: in November twenty twenty, now possession of small quantities of drugs.
Speaker 1: So for heroin, it's one grammar less is a class
Speaker 1: A violation akin to a traffic citation. It comes with
Speaker 1: one hundred dollar fine that can be waived if you
Speaker 1: complete a screening just essentially, do you have a substance
Speaker 1: use disorder or not? Type screening that will connect you
Speaker 1: to services. What it does is it stops the harm.
Speaker 1: So no longer are we making people worse. We're not
Speaker 1: getting people fired from their jobs. We're not making them
Speaker 1: homeless because they choose to use drugs. So the harm
Speaker 1: has stopped. The healing phase is much more complex after
Speaker 1: we decriminalize drugs. The organ Health Authority was tasked with
Speaker 1: creating the Oversight and Accountability Council that was written into
Speaker 1: the measure as a bunch of people with lived experience
Speaker 1: who were going to drive the ship, unheard of in government.
Speaker 1: I applied and because I was so heavily criminalized for
Speaker 1: my drug possession and then got out of prison to
Speaker 1: major in public health and become a drug policy researcher,
Speaker 1: I was appointed. Successfully. I am a council member. Only
Speaker 1: Measure one to end oversight in Accountability councils called the OEC,
Speaker 1: and we meet several times a week, usually trying to
Speaker 1: get this money out to fund the behavioral health resource
Speaker 1: networks in every single county in the state. We're currently
Speaker 1: trying to get two hundred and seventy million dollars out
Speaker 1: the door. I did the math. I approved thirty six
Speaker 1: million dollars to go out. It's just like, who am
Speaker 1: I to be, like, Yes, here's thirty six million dollars.
Speaker 1: It goes to harm reduction, so that can include syringe exchange,
Speaker 1: n locks, one distribution, some wound care, and drug checking.
Speaker 1: We fund intensive outpatient less intensive outpatient vastly trying to
Speaker 1: ramp up medications for opioduce disorder. So we're funding methode
Speaker 1: sbox and clinics getting method on in sbox and into
Speaker 1: the jails. We're also paying for peer venturing, which is huge,
Speaker 1: and housing. So the point of everything that we're paying
Speaker 1: for as we are giving people better options, and with
Speaker 1: better options come better choices. Why do we have mass
Speaker 1: incarceration at the same time as the worst overdose crisis
Speaker 1: in human history. That's because everything we're doing is making
Speaker 1: it worse. We are doing everything so wrong, okay, and
Speaker 1: so even our best public health messaging does not reach
Speaker 1: people we have pushed into stigmatize them so badly, and
Speaker 1: then so we push them really far away, and we
Speaker 1: put all these barriers in between productive, normal society and
Speaker 1: their drug use, and we make it almost insurmountable for
Speaker 1: them to come back. Oh, okay, you don't want to
Speaker 1: be living in a tent smoking fatable anymore. Well, too bad,
Speaker 1: you have seven felony convictions, outstanding court fees, you know, like,
Speaker 1: oh you can't get housing, Oh no, you can't get
Speaker 1: this job. And it's like people who need more help
Speaker 1: because they've been struggling with addiction and I just mean
Speaker 1: the actual psychological effects of addiction. That's a person who
Speaker 1: needs more help. But because of our criminal justice system,
Speaker 1: they get infinitely more barriers. And then we wonder why
Speaker 1: people don't get better. See, when people are presented with
Speaker 1: better options, they make better choices, and as you restrict
Speaker 1: their options, the choice is worse. There's nothing about using
Speaker 1: drugs that inherently makes your criminal. It's not like using
Speaker 1: oxyquotum comes with that. A side effect on the label
Speaker 1: is shoplifting, as if every other facet of your character
Speaker 1: decays and you only become a drug user, which is
Speaker 1: synonymous with you know, sinner criminal. Okay, that is not real.
Speaker 1: Drugs do not making me a criminal or engage in
Speaker 1: criminal conduct. But a funny thing happens is if you
Speaker 1: believe that it's true, and then you create laws that
Speaker 1: respond as if drug use were criminal, that actually promotes
Speaker 1: people into criminal activity. That really destroys hope for the future,
Speaker 1: and everyone needs hope for the future. I remember one
Speaker 1: of the times in treatment I was writing hip hop
Speaker 1: songs to myself and there's this line. It's always told
Speaker 1: I had so much potential, but now that shit is
Speaker 1: inconsequence because I already had felonies and there was just
Speaker 1: no hope held the whole world in my palm, mailted
Speaker 1: down into the spoon, shot in my arms, something like that,
Speaker 1: and that is really illustrative for how I felt about
Speaker 1: what my future would hold. And as I sit before
Speaker 1: you today, I have changed organ law multiple times. I
Speaker 1: regularly work with my United States senator try to change
Speaker 1: federal law. It doesn't work. How so far it hasn't worked,
Speaker 1: but that's because our senate has great lund. I have
Speaker 1: a career that I didn't know existed, founded around the
Speaker 1: fact that I have been to prison okay, and that
Speaker 1: I was addicted to heroin. Those are my primary too
Speaker 1: job qualifications. I have been able to channel all of
Speaker 1: the hurt and the harm and the suffering that I
Speaker 1: lifted through that was imposed on us, that we got
Speaker 1: ourselves into both types, and I try to create a
Speaker 1: better world for the people that came after me already.
Speaker 1: I know, in this state of organ no other Oregonian
Speaker 1: will experience what my friends and I did. Every single
Speaker 1: friend I lost to overdose to heroin overdose was incarcerated repeatedly.
Speaker 1: What are we doing? If we're not doing this to
Speaker 1: save lives? What are we doing? My success was entirely
Speaker 1: despite the War on drugs. In fact, the War on
Speaker 1: drugs tried to crush me. I am the exception, I
Speaker 1: am not the rule, and that is the problem. Wow,
Speaker 1: So we're back that last line, I'm the exception, not
Speaker 1: the rule, and I think we've seen the rule play
Speaker 1: out in the War on drugs when you look at
Speaker 1: the numbers, and I hope that we've put some faces
Speaker 1: to this war and the casualties of this war and
Speaker 1: what it normally does. It's amazing that we were able
Speaker 1: to see Morgan face to face because there's a very
Speaker 1: strong likelihood, you know, there's a lot of different ways
Speaker 1: that could have gone where or we would have never
Speaker 1: known her and she just would have been in another
Speaker 1: casualty of this war. And I think it makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense now if you've kind of gone on
Speaker 1: this journey with us, why we saved Morgan for last
Speaker 1: because it touches on everything everything we talked about throughout
Speaker 1: this entire series. I think she just had a no
Speaker 1: story there. Now. I thought it was so profound that
Speaker 1: she said, every single one of my friends that died
Speaker 1: of an overdose was incarcerated multiple times. And so our
Speaker 1: government who says that the entire purpose of this war
Speaker 1: on drugs is to get people, is to remove the
Speaker 1: scores of drugs and get people clean in our country,
Speaker 1: because that's good for our country, and that's a good
Speaker 1: goal for everyone to have. It actually like exacerbates the problem.
Speaker 1: And you have these people here under your control, and
Speaker 1: we actually put them in a worse spot. And she
Speaker 1: just keeps saying, what are we doing? And sometimes when
Speaker 1: I'm doing my work, I say that to myself quite
Speaker 1: a bit as well. It's just like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: are we doing? Guys. That's just what stuck with me
Speaker 1: in that episode and properly throughout this entire series. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this has been a hell of a journey that
Speaker 1: I've been on with you, you know, just to this episode,
Speaker 1: ten man, this is the last episode. We started this
Speaker 1: thing a little while ago, and I just hope that
Speaker 1: everybody that came along with us on the journey learned
Speaker 1: as much as I felt like I learned or was
Speaker 1: able to get a little more understanding into why things
Speaker 1: are the way they are and that they really don't
Speaker 1: have to be that way. You know, we might need
Speaker 1: to come back. We might need to come back. We're
Speaker 1: doing because we might need to bring a season two
Speaker 1: back around just to like, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: we got to keep applying pressure. I can't ease up.
Speaker 1: You can't ease up. We did a half court press.
Speaker 1: We might as well go full court press. Force some turnovers,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Season two more solutions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm guaranteeing. And they're and they're out there.
Speaker 1: The playbook is there, Like we actually do have the playbook,
Speaker 1: and I want, you know, season two to, like you said,
Speaker 1: like expose a lot of these success stories, like the
Speaker 1: solutions that we're seeing. You know, we touched on a
Speaker 1: little bit of you know, places like you know, Switzerland
Speaker 1: where they're you know, actually treating this as a health
Speaker 1: issue and some of the other places what Portugal's doing.
Speaker 1: And maybe we can find in the budget to allow
Speaker 1: you know, Clayton and I just go on like a
Speaker 1: European vacation for a few months and recording out there
Speaker 1: and we'll see that works. Yeah, Bali, Hawaii, everywhere. The
Speaker 1: Maldives have an eximate drug program. Yeah, their forfeiture laws
Speaker 1: are a little suspect, but we're gonna get there. Their
Speaker 1: banking systems solid though. Yeah, we're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: down yeah, um yeah. But there is actually like these
Speaker 1: glimmers of hope and solutions and people doing things from
Speaker 1: a big, you know, from a countrywide standpoint, and then
Speaker 1: just communities figuring this out. And like we talked about
Speaker 1: like just being just being a human being and showing
Speaker 1: empathy towards someone and like the successes that can come
Speaker 1: from that. And so I'd love to show a lot
Speaker 1: more of that to kind of outweigh that playbook. Now
Speaker 1: that we've brought kind of a lot of the problems,
Speaker 1: and now let's season two. Let's bring a lot more
Speaker 1: of the solutions. Yes, I'm with it. Make sure you
Speaker 1: followed the War on Drugs podcast so you don't miss
Speaker 1: any new episodes or any of our quick fixed bonus content.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. Executive producers for War on Drugs
Speaker 1: are Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis. Senior producer is Michael Epstein.
Speaker 1: This episode was edited by Julia Dewin, Michael Epstein, and
Speaker 1: Nick Massetti. Associate producer, Sound design and mix and mastering
Speaker 1: by Nick Massetti. Additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Anna mcintee.
Speaker 1: Be sure to followed the show on Instagram, Twitter, and
Speaker 1: Facebook at Lava for Good. You can follow Greg on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Greg Gloude and you can follow Clayton English
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Clayton English. The War on Drugs is
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association The
Speaker 1: Signal Company Number One. I'm your host, Clayton English, and
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Glad and thanks for listening to the War
Speaker 1: on Drugs podcast. M