Comment by BryantD

Comment by BryantD 4 days ago

3 replies

Without judging this guy's current state, he makes it clear in his first blog post that he was a dealer.

"So instead of coming back home broke and apologetic, I ended up pretty deep into this and soon was making tens of thousands of dollars a week, very much unapologetically."

Then, after his first sentence:

"I was left with the difficult choice of either living there and walking to a temp agency with hopes of making $10.50/hour doing manual labor (without an ID or social security card at this point), or getting on a bus to NYC to see some associates, and coming back in a week or so with $15-25k in my pocket and living in comfy luxury hotels until I could rent an apartment... I chose the latter: and obviously, was back in prison after a short 14 months of addiction and misery."

dvektor 4 days ago

Yes unfortunately for a long time my whole life revolved around 'drug culture', and so did of all my 'friends' and my entire social circle.

I certainly cannot act like I did not deserve to come to prison, and it's definitely the only reason I am even alive right now. Coming to prison, specifically in Maine, was the best thing that ever happened to me.

  • komali2 3 days ago

    Well, yeah, selling drugs is bad, but it keeps happening and nothing we're trying is stopping it. Clearly, the fact that people end up in prison isn't disincentivizing people from choosing the 10-15k in their pocket option. Humans aren't good at understanding risk or connecting long term consequences to short term actions, in aggregate. We should design our society around this fact.

    Hence why I typically argue for legalization and regulation. You have a pretty unique perspective though. I suppose in your position you're incentivized to always say you did the wrong thing, drugs are bad, etc etc, but to the extent you're able to discuss it, what's your take on arguments for legalization and regulation?

  • BryantD 3 days ago

    Yeah, the really interesting thing there for me wasn't what you did, it's the clarity with which you presented your options as you saw them at the time. I am firmly pro-rehabilitation and that means I've got to be aware of the obstacles to getting out of that culture.