“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.“
— W.C. Fields

During my penance for having had the gall to believe in and ‘Act Out’ a bedrock principle of Democracy, Freedom of Speech, as a journalist I took notes while experiencing ASAT (Alcohol and Substance Abuse Training program). For four years I paid the price for exposing corruption in the fabulous Hamptons where the criminal DA stole openly and prosecuted innocent opponents. I spent 6 months in a prison drug program. It was the New York State prison’s (DOCCS) answer to drug addiction and drug dealing. While immersing myself in a journalstic nightmare, I learned a lot. About just how little New York and the universities knew agout mental health treatment. Columbia, New York University, UCLA, Simmons, and most graduate programs are clueless. In fact, since none of the professors or admissions people do understand criminal justice or addiction, they’ve erected a smokescreen and instituted a licensing exam (ASWB). This useless test is intended to make sure you can’t treat drug addiction or the drug dealing mentality without paying an extra fee and taking a four hour exam before pretending to understand what it’s like in a prison drug treatment program. So, folks, here’s a sample of what it is really like.

By the way ASWB (Association of Social Work Boards) openly discriminates against the disabled.

Enjoy the program.

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ASAT started again, and no one had  any ideas about how to get the juices flowing without resorting to stupid shit. This time, the guy in charge of Creative Energy was Jones, also known as L.A. He wasn’t from L.A., he just liked the sound of it. He was a 6 foot tall black kid of about 25 who sold drugs, had an Afro, and was not particularly bright. He laughed a lot and was often clueless. He was in charge.

So, he got a blue rubber ball and a garbage can.

“So, we form a group fellas,” he said and the chairs started scraping as they formed a 30 man oval, one side 30 feet from the center, the narrower part about 20 feet wide. In the middle, L.A. put a blue plastic garbage can for them to use for waste in the middle.

“What a we doin’?” said Green.

“We doin’ a game bouncin’  a ball inta a can.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said to Cuba, who was sitting next to me.

Cuba just shook his head and pursed his lips. I shook my head as well. 

“Hey, I coon’ thinka anythin’ else,” said L.A. Jones.

“So, whaddawe doin’?” said Bigs, before almost nodding off again sitting in his chair. This time he almost fell off of his chair from the narcolepsy.

“We bouncin’ da ball an’ da winna gets it inna can,” said L.A. meekly, realizing that he wasn’t getting a lot of excitement with his idea.

So the “contest” began and by turns each guy bounced the ball once so that on its second bounce it would land in the garbage can — where all of the shit, food, hair, effluent, and debris had formerly been. Until Hernandez, the other Cuba, thought to put a plastic liner in it.

This went on for almost 10 minutes before, frustrated over the stupidity of it, guys just started throwing the ball at each other in the group. Roddy watched from the Bubble where she had been watching the Group, like a bunch of kids that needed supervision. But, she was too busy describing her last hangover to care about what was going on.

“Okay, so da loser gotta tell a joke,” said L.A. 

Great, I thought, another stand-up from the Catskills.

Myers was the first to miss bouncing the rubber ball and he laughed, displaying his missing front teeth and lack of any consciousness. He sat back and tried to think.

“Okay, how ’bout insteada a joke I jes’ tell a funny story?”

“Yeah,” said another, realizing that nothing about this game was really working.

“So, I go to this convenience store an’ I buy a six-pack. An’ I take onea the cans an’ drinkit inna store. Y’know?” and he starts to laugh. Nobody else is laughing. “Then, afta I finish  the can I go inta the bathroom an’ I piss inta the can I jes finished. An’ I pudit back, y’know, wid the plastic, an’ putid back onna shelf. Den some guy comes in an’ buys it.” 

Myers descends into a wild gale of laughter. He rocks in his chair and flashes his missing teeth as the others look at each other, mystified.

Myers was a cook in our Mess Hall and only he thought this was funny.

He calmed down a bit, bouncing forward and backward, head leaning way back and coming forward again with his gapped-tooth look, and says, ]

“Hey, I gotta ‘notha’ one.”

“I was workin’ inis place sellin’ stuff ana girl comes in an’ she’s fucked up an’ needs a cigarette. She looked like she was strung out.”

“Was she doin’ crack like you, Myers,” said Wayne, laughing at Myers’ lunacy, and the rest of the group joined in the laughter at that.

Roddy was still in the Bubble so no one was monitoring this exchange. “Ya mother,” said Myers.

“OOOhhh,” said Green, “so wadja do Myers?”

“So, I says ta her, ya can havea packa cigarettes ifya pull ya top up. She looked like she had good tits,” he laughed. “So I wasn’t gonna jes give it ta her fa nothin.”

“What happened Myers?”

“She takes me ova by the bathroom an’ she jes pulls up her  top and I jes did this.” He put both hands out in front of him and made movement with both hands as if he were squeezing a couple of grapefruits on a stand. “It was cool.”

At the break after Myers told his “jokes” I spoke to Dierburger who’d been pulling  back from the group in the last couple of sessions. He really looked like an alky. Missing teeth, thinning hair, about 45, walking with a halting gait, glassy eyes. I hadn’t smelled anything on his breath but he appeared to be out of it.

“I jes foun’ out that my girlfren’s got anotha’ boyfren’. Y’know, I KNEW somethin’ wasn’ right. 

“Every time I called she wanned ta get off the phone. Y’know, ‘I gotta use the bathroom, I gotta go, I gotta get somethin’ on the stove, gotta go,’ y’know there was jes too many asscuses evey time I called. Then she finally tol’ me the otha’ day. It’s fucked up when you’re in prison. You don’t know what’s goin’ on, can’t see what’s happenin’, can’t check on what someone’s tellin’ ya.”

I shared his pain. While I had a solid relationship, many did not. And, in the Law Library I handled the Divorce Packets. It was a very popular item.

The failure of the game that L.A. had started left a big hole in the session. Guys were just sitting in a circle staring at each other. Nothing to do, no leadership, and boredom. And, Roddy was out of the room getting advice from Slaney, the Army Drill instructor – on love.

Danger picked up on this vacuum and grabbed the garbage can in the middle of the room and turned it upside down and started banging on it and the others started clapping. 

I began to feel like I was sitting around some African campfire with the natives cooking some white guy for dinner.

Green began dancing and walking around the Group and smacked a couple of guys on the head as he writhed and wiggled. Danger started rapping in a combination of Spanish and English and guys were hitting on other things. Africa, hit the shelf he was leaning on. 

Green was slapping guys in the head. Myers was slapping his legs and knees. There was gyrating and laughing and Danger’s rapping took over. 

“Mothafuckin’ Roddy gonna’ suck ma dick an’ eat ma       asshole an’ I get a Massey blowjob. 

We fuckin’  alla cops an’ we gonna gettum back. 

We gonna gid outta heah an’ gedda lotta dope…”

They were rolling and rocking and laughing. Cuba turned to me and said, “Who the fuck would believe this?” 

“No one,” I said, “how could  anyone believe that this is what goes on in prison? In a drug treatment program?”

“This is unbelievable,” said Cuba.

The beating of the drum/garbage can continued, the dancing continued, until Roddy finally decided to poke her head into the room.

“Okay,” she said, “it’s time for a Life Story. How about you Hernandez?”

Hernandez, or Cuba, taking in all of the insanity while she was out of  the room, didn’t know what to do. But, he was leaving next month and the tradition was for someone about to leave had to do his “Life Story.” 

“Jes, I doing it,” said Hernandez.

“So, I grow in Cuba,” said Hernandez, “an’ I am elefen year an’ I go to embazee of Peru, an’ eed fill an alla dee peeble ged on bots.”

“Wait,” I asked, “were you living with your family?”

“Oh, jes.” said Cuba.

“You were living with your parents?” 

“Oh, jes,” he said, confused.

“Well,” I said, “are they still there?” 

“Oh, jes,” he said, now more confused.

“Well, I don’t understand, didn’t your parents go with you?”

Henry, the drug dealer/heroin addict, was helping Hernandez with any translations necessary. So, he said to Cuba in Spanish what Harry was trying to find out. But, Henry wasn’t getting it either. Harry wanted to know why an eleven year old had to leave by himself. Why didn’t his family go with him? Were they sending him off on his own to face the unknown? But, Harry never got an answer. Apparently, this was the great boat migration by Fidel during which time he’d emptied the prisons and told everyone — “Go, but you can’t come back.”

“Zo, I go. An’ I am being in Flow-reeda an’ I fin’ place weed peeble to stay.”

“Were they gay?” said Danger. The room erupted. 

“Pardonne?” said Hernandez. Now, using a French accent to add to his fractured Spanish.

The laughing was now uncontrolled since Roddy had returned to the Bubble in the dorm room and wasn’t supervising this.

Danger laughed. “Were the people you lived with gay?”

More uncontrolled laughter. Hernandez was trying to maintain his composure and, at the same time understand what they were saying.

“I don’ unnastan’. What guy?

“You got ta Florida an’ you were in onea those camps?” 

“Oh, jes, I was wid de two frenz. Een camp fow dayz.” 

“Did you meet Tony Montana? You eat wid ‘im?”

“Oh, jes, I eed wid Tony Montana.”

The group went wild at the mention of Tony Montana, the Al Pacino character that supposedly arrived with the boat people flotilla that Fidel had allowed to leave Cuba,

“Bro, who would believe this? This is crazy,” said the Cuba next to me. 

“No shit.” he said.

“You gotta’ do a screenplay. This is right outta Cuckoo’s Nest. Lookit that chick who did what, ‘Orange is da New Black? And she was only in a year at a Club Fed. C’mon bro, people wouldn’t believe that this shit really goes on. Stupid drug dealers who can’t speak? I’m tellin’ you, this makes the Khardashians look smart.”

“So, why you here?” said Green.

“Wha?” said Hernandez-Cuba, slightly confused. Feigning, or maybe not feigning ignorance. 

“HERE, why are you here? Whadyou do?”

“Oh, here? Oh, No, No, No, no-teeng.” said Hernandez. He was shaking his head and his beard which was following his head, slightly delayed.

“You mean you’re innocent?” laughed Henry, next to him.

“Oh, that’s right, we’re all innocent here, I forgot,” followed by laughter. Everyone knew that Morgan Freeman line by heart in prison.

“No, No, No,” smiled Hernandez. “I go pass a plaze an’ peeble waz having fight. An’ dey poin’ finga.”

“You were walking past people and they pointed the finger at you?” said Green, now laughing at Hernandez’ story.

“Jes,” said Hernandez, “I go an’ guy poin’ finga to me an’ say I do sometheeng I no do anytheeng,” he said, his head back aristocratically, smiling nonetheless.

Almost everyone in the group looked at each other, and at Hernandez.

He was trying the classic bullshit tack of  “It wasn’t me, it was somebody else.”

“Oh, okay,”said Green, “so you’re innocent and this was all a mistake.”

“Yeah,” said Cuba, next to me. “He hit him with the wrong pipe. It didn’t kill the motherfucker. But – he got caught anyway. Never fuck with a Cuban Jew over money. That’s the lesson to be learned, bro’,” he laughed.

Recovery was well underway. They didn’t need Roddy’s expertise. The ASAT prison drug program was working.

Copyright 2025 Gulag