i remember going to the adult authority board in solid that and said in front of the board members trying to get released and they told me they said we have a letter  level for the rest of his  life been told it sixteen fifteen sixteen years old it out be and sank when before i was twenty one you know so it was a real deal forecast it had been projected for me i was the guy that everybody thought would be you know in the book warming the nerd and be successful but i was also the guy that nobody thought would do anything wrong i used to have high crack cocaine  say i'm not going to smoke this today that lasted ever resolve last it is long as that last piece of crack glass next thing you know i was i was in a break in the draw down getting it out and smoking it up and you couldn't stop i never could stop you would have shackles on your legs and you would also be shackled at your waist and they would pronounced dead man walking dead man walking so it was a constant reminder that your  time i had just really excepted this the lifestyle that i had lived all that i was live and it was just going to be a continuous play while somebody just really get hip to me you know and put me out of my misery either kill me or just just throw away the key because this is ridiculous m m m m mind myself and everybody else with this game  me was i want to spend a night over one of my friend's house and he had brothers and sisters and it was different from when i went home when i came in the house that night it's like automatically i had to turn into an adult because the adults who was there in eighty and go for no childish stuff and i had to act like an adult and it was so different when i went to spin and my friend's house my mother had eight brothers and seven sisters and a huge family and big family reunions and and so i had all these aunts and uncles and i had just a multitude of cousins but i always wanted a brother or sister my early childhood was a little different and both second of nine children and my mother father had born and raised in danville illinois and the small town about one hundred twenty five miles south of chicago i remember growing up i would a lot of family support and i remember the holidays really really outstanding because everybody would you know get together during the holidays christmas labor day those type of holidays and it was real really good experience that i had wanted it down to my father he was in the air force and you know i had a good mother and all of that but i always missed my father because he was using in town long enough to get my mother pregnant and go back to wherever he station was taken  i remember the first nine years of my life particularly missing my father always you know looking for him and you know anticipate him coming back home had a lot of calls that lived near me i grew up in the projects  in illinois in the projects there were a little different in the projects here in the small town it was you know everybody knew each other with a lot of support in family so even i know we were living in the projects it was a good lifestyle it existed there and i i have very fond memories of it i grew up in south central los angeles believing in the flag and apple pie and watching the t v shows back then because my family wasn't wasn't well off but we want impoverished either we want poor and i recall i didn't get in a lot of trouble as a kid you know because i was just basically what you would call a nerd and so i did well in school  and won the spelling bee in the class and was considered a teacher's pet and stuff like that i had it easy with schoolwork schoolwork was easy for me so i didn't have trouble with math and science  just like you guys talk about the spelling being the stuff i would shun away from that kind of stuff i would try to get away because i don't want to participate because i couldn't it was like a broken record i could get to a point and then it just wouldn't go through it would just get to a point and click  like that and as a result of that i gravitated towards people that didn't expect out of me they expected me to be able to fight they expected me to be able to start participating in some criminal activity african american male wasn't really expected to achieve but in certain of arenas you know i was aware is as a young young young boy growing up that they expected you to be able to play basketball and football and even baseball but if you if you were able to do well academically you didn't get recognition and you didn't get encourage men in that arena you know and you would you would even get discouraged so i had eventually what he did turn me off to that to that system and i look for other ways where i could be acceptable without be little in myself because that is also with the kind of person where i couldn't kiss you know behind you know i couldn't kiss my daddy's mother brothers sisters i couldn't kiss somebody else's behind and to be accepted something in my good i guess to steal made me wanted to succeed and i was trying to find things to do that didn't involve reading or writing or spelling and all of that kind of stuff in sports came into play i learnt at that particular time that and it's nothing something that i practice or anything but i had a real deal for fighting and for some reason other i guess it's just you know it in our society as males it's like when you can be physical like that nothing else matters and i remember when  would call at a pretty young age you know watching my uncles primarily my uncles and my father and my grandfather drinking alcohol and it was a regular part of what they did and  growing up with older brother who was relatively close to my age of seven years older than me so he related with me pretty well i always knew that as some point i would be expected to use  because first it was like you know my father drank and i would drink a little his beer and we'd be on fish michael something like that for some reason or another for me to take that first drink to make a conscious decision to take a drink myself and i took a drink and it was some kitchen wine that my mother had in there it changed it to wait it out failed and i had drank i had drank white lightning and stuff when i was kids and but it was likely it was somebody else and was responsible for but i made a conscious decision to drink take a drink i was twelve and it changed all of that right my dark skin and nappy hair none of that stuff didn't matter after i took th drink and as a result of that i continued to try to use anything to to change the way that i felt when i first actually experienced drinking alcohol remember it was one evening and it was a school night and i was supposed to be at a certain time and one of my friends and two girls they went to bus stop and they had a fearful why and they called me over there we start talking we drank to fifa wine and before i knew it i was way past the time that i should have been home and i was drunk and i was so good that there was no find out and i got drunk so my plan at that time was to sneak into my bedroom and get him be and just sleep it off  at that time me and my younger brother who is about five years younger than me we shared a bedroom so when i climbed up to the window sill to get into into the bedroom his bed was right beneath that window and when my stomach hit the window seal i vomited all over him so he wakes up scream and holler and then everybody turn and lights on in the house you know my mother comes in you know she's having a fit and i'm still throwing up just drink the whole thing down and by the time you drank that down then they started to a point to where you would have to drop two red devils with it after that and man and i would be a like another completely i started experimenting with drugs and alcohol drinking coffee and alcohol and smoking marijuana and taking peels and this went on for maybe eight months and then i was arrested for possession of marijuana at seventeen years old would pick pockets and stuff like that and we went to the guy's house to buy the cocaine to take to the to the monterey jazz festival and he didn't have any he told us he said wait he said a guy  it was synthetic white hair when in the water all it would take like maybe a twenty one and the minute that drug started to drain down in my system and it felt like my feet was on fire did to change the way did i feel the feeling of heroin i fell on my back off the red devils and had so many close calls that i thought well you gotta stop doing it so i stopped doing it and stopped going around those people and i went back to the straight way and then get involved with any kind of alcohol or even drugs until much later in life when i came to san francisco i knew that that was part of why ended up in the youth of thought it was my problem with using  abusing alcohol and drugs so when i first got out of california youth authority i was committed to a life of sobriety and i maintained that for about ninety days but all of my associates my peers the people i was hanging out with the places i was going that was a routine behavior so eventually i started indulge in when i would party on the weekend and things like that and in that turn into drug habit i started to experiment at that time with and i couldn't get out i actually could not get out became a bus driver bus driver for southern california rapid transit district and during that time for five years in that five year period i was earning my living honestly as as a solid citizen and everything was going along fine and i ran into some of my old friends that i used to hang out with you know and when i used to hang out with them we used to smoke a little now and then  and that would be it but these guys when i run into them again my buddies the next thing i know they take me to their house and when i'm back and then we go out into the garage and in the garage they pull out the pipe and this was the first time i used crack cocaine and first time i tried the pipe and got the smoke in my lungs and the guy said look you're wasting the drugs you're wasting the money let me show you how to do it right it seems as though there's always somebody around to your breath for like thirty seconds and then just let it out and the first time i did that it was like i couldn't move on to me no more i couldn't feel my feet anymore it was like everything changed the person set in front of me didn't look the same no more you know all of them look real sinister not all of them look like they had an agenda to help me over now when i stayed there with him because i wanted to feel and it was a strange feeling because it showed me i had no control over it and i thought to myself in my mind you know that part of me is looking at my behavior to say this stuff is from hell you know this is bad shit leave it alone but i didn't leave it alone because i feel so good i wanted another hit and i took another hit and another hit and another and next thing you know i'm calling and i'm sitting in my uniform right i'm supposed to be going to work the next morning the night is past the morning is here and i call in and i put myself on a sickness because i had all the sick time accumulated from five years of perfect attendance and they put me on a sickness and i called him one day to put myself on a sickness and the manager of the division came on a ladder and he said abdul you need to come in so i can talk to you i said ok i've been tomorrow and i'm off t he said no you need to come in now you know because your job is on the line and you should have seen me taking a shower you know doing everything else trying to get myself together trying to calm down sitting in the water trying to you know because i was hyped for the cocaine sweat was pouring off i mean everything so i call myself down enough to go in and i went and he told me he said one more time on the sick list and you will be terminated excessive absenteeism says no you have a perfect record yeah perfect attendance until you start going sick you sad thank you using drugs myself i think you ought to get in a program we have an employee assistance program here and you ought to get in it because your job is on the line and you've been a good no you shouldn't be doing this shit get out of my office because if you come in here one more time like this you're fired you know what the next time i got high i didn't even think about ways by the time i took a second hit he went completely out of my mind do the job went out of my everything just completely went out of my mind except for getting the next hit and i did it and next thing i know i got the notice in the mail that i was terminated so in a span of a month's time i went from someone who had a forty five thousand dollars a year job immersed sadie's ben's nice apartment to someone who'd car is now gone because they reported the car payment of the notes over the past four months ok the department i'm kicking in i'm locked out of the apartment locks have been changed my stuff locked up in an apartment in the apartment now and i don't have a job either and here i am down trying to get on welfare i went to my mom she but she sympathize she cried she prayed you know she gave me money i won't get high with it all that stuff too much in her house and next thing i know i'm coming through the back door and my mother says how you  doing trying to sneak back in a bag with some cocaine because i'm going to bedroom you know that i was raised in and actually use cocaine and my mother saw me and she stopped me and she said  she said you have a problem you need to get help i've been praying for you but it hasn't worked you know you need to get help look at you go look in the mirror i don't like what she i could be a drug addict but i couldn't be my mother's boy in front of her and it hurt like that so i left my mother's house and i went to the mission in downtown los angeles and it felt very bad to sit in the mission and let them give me  d for two years i stayed there homeless smoking crack chase and smoke on able to stop i turned my will in my life over to the care of heroin and didn't care about anything else i'm talking about there was nothing they could stop me or should i try to put dissipate and act like to a certain extent be involved in some stuff that didn't have anything to do with ultimately my thinking got to a place where i use whatever or whoever to participate so that i could be participating in the use of heroin i realized three things about the drug in me number one once i started using it i was not able to stop using it at any time at all until there was no more left and number two once i began to use it i realized that i had no control over how much money how much money i spent on it and number three i could be confronted with the deterioration of my held by looking in the mirror and seeing that now i've got these sags in my face and on my eyes and i got bags and stuff and i've lost about twelve pounds in the last two weeks and guess what i could steal see that and continue to use drugs all the time drawbacks was very physical you know you would have aching bones and runny noses and all that kind of stuff and it was a serious situation you want to feel physically sick and so i started to really participate in a whole lot of criminal activity i was scared to say all drugs i was really scared to say all drugs seem like to me people they sold drugs a real easy way out it wasn't a lot of steals and selling drugs you get some drugs you put some other kind of code on it and you make some more and you sell it to some people there's less fortunate there wasn't that didn't excite me what excited me was the instant gratification and adrenaline rush of being able to to go into a store right and short change to be able to take a person  and turn him make them open a cash register and turn him to think about something else and go on at a cash register to be able to go into somebody's house store house with the pump  shotgun and pump it and shoot it up in the air and when that when the ceiling starts to fall on their head to watch the fear in the eyes then they they couldn't even see your face after that they would one of holies came and say well give us a description and they would they didn't have a clue all they saw was a shotgun and that shit falling on me here that was a something there was a real same like to me it was the skill of being a criminal ultimately what happened to me and three other guys were like i was eighteen and we was on a sunday a sunday night we robbed a gas station down in sunnyvale and  we got arrested and i think we got about one hundred i know with one hundred fifty six dollars out of this gas station robbery and we got arrested and i remember it was kind of like this the jail you went to the county jail in the jail experience was so new for made till it just seemed like one big weekend learning all of this stuff what happens in jail but reality set in and when i stood in front of the judge and i like i say i was eighteen years old  and looked at alcatraz and said that's where you know your bad people are going to wind up and i guess the when i when i realize in a knowledge did drugs have sent me to this penitentiary place i needed to find out a way not to participate in anything but what i quickly realize even in the penitentiary that i couldn't stop as like what you were saying i couldn't stop when when drugs and alcohol came into the prison there was nothing that i was involved in anything that i was doing that would make me not use it would not participate in you know even though i didn't didn't want to it was like i realized that this thing that i'm doing is very destructive and i don't want to do it but i just i couldn't stop doing it you know and i think i spent a bit i guess maybe at that time i spent about two years in the joint and i got out and you spoke about of friends in you know we have friends and we have good counseling in a joint you know a lot of people don't realize what kind of advice they hav joint and they told me they say ok you get it now young blood you get now ok and don't do this and don't be with those people and don't do this and go over here and do that somebody told me so well if you don't do it you did last time you'll be all right and i drugs because it seemed like they say well that other stuff got you here but if you do something else you'd be all right so i started trying to say you know what happened was i got a grand jury sentence for ten years to life twenty two years old and for me that meant it was over and i saw people that were in this prison that had those kind of sentences and it was like be my own self that alcohol and drugs was a problem for because whenever i adored him i found myself in some trouble in the use it was serious trouble and i would also give reports about things that i did while i was under an influence that i wouldn't think about doing when i wasn't under the influence so when i went to california youth authority for the possession of marijuana and i got out i think i remain abstinent for about a nine into a department store to steal and while i was committing this crime i was in a position of a guy on leave in stablish where i was committing a petty theft a security guard attempted to stop me grabbed me by the way felt the gun in my waist and panicked and began to try to draw his gun a scuffle i ended up shooting him and as a result of that i was sentenced to die and  i came to the mission one night when obit saw both sleep on the sidewalk there they try to wake me up when it was time to go in and get a baby and i would land in a line with other people but they couldn't wake me up but i called an ambulance and i was in hospital when i woke up and the doctor told my vitals out was so low it had something to do with my blood pressure going to low something like that and that i was close to die it might sound very insane to hear a person say this but out i got comfortable in jail and it was an easier softer way i didn't have to worry about where i was going to be going to be they it i didn't have to worry about paying the rent have to make rational decisions not to have to set goals not to have to see that frustrating look in and a mother's face when you don't eat all your dinner it's like you don't want to eat all your dinner and do so that became like i said that that kind of lifestyle became something that i really kind of gravitated towards and then what intensified it for me was the use of heroin because if i wanted to a a time to do something different that heroin kept me stuck in that situation i'm talking now seriously stuff i thought about time where i might want to stop using but when i thought about those times that i might want to stop using this level what else would i do a big crisis in my life really was the fact that changed me being faced with death in an up on death row knowing that i couldn't stay the way i was inside cause me to seek help it also was a time for self reflection great deal of remorse on my part in having called that family to suffer and also to cause my own family to suffer my mother my father my brothers and sisters you know the pain and i call for them in addition to pain at our calls for the individuals family whose life i had taken there was a great deal of emphasis on self reform on accountability for one's behavior taken a mall posture in life and those ideas were very helpful me helpful to me during that period i was here in san quentin and i called home one day and i had a son problem if she starts started telling me what was going on and a thought but the thought of me being in prison and i saw this happen the thought of me being in prison and happened to go down processes programs and none of that kind of stuff any time that any of that kind of stuff was introduced to me not for me that's for the weak people that's what people do they can't cut the mustard no mode s for people that recovery whether was church off on drug and alcohol recovery or just even going to school so many times they failed back into the same old pattern over the same old behavior and it was like why go through it i've got in the program and i was in a program three days and i went back out on another run one more run you know i'm young i can handle that one more i went back got in a program stay clean eight days and went back out again i went back out this time though i was just walking around after being in a program for eight days i'm nice and clean again and i've gained some weight back everybody is happy to see me in the program the people i know on a mission  happy to see me and i'm feeling good and i'm walking around in my stopping grounds and there are people getting high and some some girl walks by hey what's up abdul come on american morning you know she just grabbed my hand pull me down abbi what are she started smoking and she handed pipe to me and i pushed it back and she she knew what to do right what she did was she feel her mouth was smoke from the pipe and pushed me up against the wall was in the united states supreme court and they were trying to case on the issue of the cruel and unusual punishment and they said that type of treatment that individuals received on death row in the united states w death row in california all of those individuals their sentence was changed from death to lie depending on the nature of the crime some of them were life would possibility of parole their sentence was changed to life without possibility i was individual who sentence was changed to life with the possibility of parole and i was eligible for parole in seven years so i begin at that time to become hopeful i had again been smoking crack for a couple of days and i was tired and i stumbled in this five and dime hoping to just drink some water from the fountain and so i walked in and a lady an elderly woman so sort of touch me on arm and she sa help mother to our to get her little money order together here and she handed me a money order and this woman when i looked at her when she handed me the money order senior me that she had my grandmother's eyes and that was a battle that took place right there at that moment in the battle was between mark crack cocaine mine and my all of the at minish ns and and the spirituality and the goodness that i had been raised with as a child they battle you know good away evil right here and the result was was that i was thinking about taking this money order because it was for and she was just an elderly woman like us have a bout my grandmother's age all i had to do was take it and run it was a blank money o and she was asking me to help out i guess she couldn't read or write very well but i looked at her and when one mind said take it and run another man said no just low because if you do this it's totally already at your bottom now don't go any lo stuff it was so sad it was she told me you know i felt when she said you want to have meals like you clutch me in the chest it was like you have a drug problem and i couldn't even answer i couldn't even say yes or no i couldn't answer at the same time healing and humiliating for me to say to her yes i want help not out of my mouth not no not having enough energy it curves to say it out of my mouth but just to nod my head and  her to take me where she wanted to take me i went into their recovery house in the lang which was so different it was like like going to a foreign country where you don't know how to speak the language and everybody else seemed to be speaking this language they was talking about stuff like sobriety recovery they had all these clues shay's that they were using first things for us and let go and let god in all right and all of that  awful parole after about three years they discharged me from parole i had the jail test the first year they had me do the testing maybe twice a month but the first six months i was drug tested twice a month and they went into the program and being clean for six months and even up to a year many times i will go to sleep at night you know i hadn't done anything different than any other day or any other night or drank or ate anything different but that p particular night the same dream would come back it was me some place and somebody gave me some coke some crack and i'd smoked it and it was so good it was better than any and i had ever had and the women in the dream always very beautiful and in this particular dream i kept coming back to this place that i couldn't couldn't see your find out what it was but i would always get high in just as i was getting high and taking that first hit on  pipe i would always wake up and waking up i was surprised to find that i'm still at the mission i'm in my bed i'm not where i was in a drain and there's no doubt you know and got to me was a part of my recovery i refused to go back to my old neighborhood when i did go back and visit my family and my parents the drug trafficking was right there and one of my father's friends you know he offered me some cocaine refused to state my clothes there for a few days until out of a place in another city i don't want to go back to the whole environment because that already slipped in at me you know my philosophy is you know you see all slick if you see cars reckoning turning over and kids you know if you know the average food think well i can control the vehicle you know i always control i know in that environment if i had a stayed in it environment eventually i would have lost control so i look for  insanity disease i can deal with this i think some diseases can be cured i have some medicine i can be managed maybe this is one of those kind of diseases that i have hope maybe it is you know and they said that this disease could be arrested that they could did it did have a prescription for it and to prescription for what was a twelve steps recovery for me when in the midst of my disease i often asked myself am i crazy you know you're an intelligent person you know you didn't come from from a family of dysfunctional drug addicts only only young people there and it had that problem and you swore you were going to be like a mom your father wasn't like that your mother wasn't like that you know why are you like this is there something wrong with you but then i realized that i wasn't crazy what i was doing was crazy i feel much different than i did say for instance eight years ago  knowing that after i leave this place right here i don't have to go back inside the prison there that i'm going to cross the bridge and go to my house and deal with  things that happens out in the world things that i had invaded and tried to escape from all my life and what i found out is that those things are not so horrifying you know they're not so terrible david they can't even measure up to the things that being a drug addict or being a criminal that i had to face and and by the grace of god so by all days are not is not just go back and go down an alley where i used to smoke it or go down go go by a place where i used to combat you know where i used to get my best don't from just walk by and test myself to see if i could do it and my second grateful recovering cocaine addict then and then i'll feel better again you know i feel like oh ok i can i can make it you know it's like this this this gorilla that i got on that i had on my back and when i walked into the door as a recovering you guys took the gorilla off my back in locked him in a cage and then took the key to the cage and start passing it among yourselves and every now and you know and i have to i have to remember that on a daily basis so i go to meetings i go to twelve step meetings i go to therapy i participate in a group of african american man where we do some real confront of stuff it's like we call each other on our behavior behavior that can resist start to result in using drugs because that's the primary purpose is not to use drugs and we say things get better so if we see each other  using again being sober and not being addicted is more than just the absence of substance abuse it involves health is a healthy sense of self esteem it involves restoring yourself back to where you were before you started using and then moving on from there and volved going back to the people who you lied to you stole from who you deceived and why you and your addiction and all those other things that i've come to learn and come to value this thing that i call recovery and i would give it away for nothing i'm not an advocate of any one form of recovery as a as a as a means to treating the disease just like in medicine they have different type of treatment you know they have  sometimes peels sometimes surgery some time is there some time with all of these things to treat the disease of addiction whatever the disease might be and the same thing is true of the process of recovery you know you have to find out what each person has to find their recovery or find the things or the combination of things that works for them to get them there that takes them that protext i'm just going to survive but somehow you just gotta realize that if you fall down you can get  where is too much in the same process has to happen where you have to have somebody to walk you hold your hand and i have found nobody since i've been to recovery that has laughed at me or is there you close to know how to do this most people say oh ok you know this is what you need because that's the way life is we need other people good people in our lives to loftus and help us hold on here through things hope even in the most desperate situation i did have hope and i had a desire to better myself never to find myself in those conditions again something i often say when i'm asked to come into the present to talk about the experience of being an african american male and some would call it a trick question but i call it truth or consequences what i say to them is this how many of you here today listening to me i think that life in america as an african american male is like being invited to your own lynching all the hands go up and i say well if that's how you feel think about this for how many of you went and put your head in the news that you were lynched where did they come and find you and seek you out and let you or did you go to the place where the ledge was waiting for you and put your head in so i'm saying that to say to them be accountable be responsible don't blame it on the man the white man didn't make me become a drug addict the white man didn't put drugs in my hand or a gun to my head guess what the white man didn't get me on a program and get me sober and make me come keep coming back so i would say to them don't give up and don't say that you're a victim of  society because you're a victim of your own weaknesses or your own right on this whole idea of drinking too much or too deeply from the idea audiology that you're a victim in this society makes you irresponsible or makes you feel as though everybody else is to blame for your plight in life no you are to blame for your plight in life whether you succeed or fail is largely upon you you know i remember when i was on death row and i used to sometimes after i came into my renewed outlook on life and  my new faith and i told people while i was there that i wouldn't die on death row and they told me i was space and i was tripping you know i was dreaming but i didn't believe that a person would come to the kind of understanding that i was coming to about the importance of life and importance of family and importance of working to make this society better i didn't think that god would let a person like me die like that and some of the people who laughed at me and thought i was crazy for thinking like that th in your state penitentiary if i have a drink here you know but to be able to to acknowledge that you know that when i drink alcohol or when i use drugs serious things happen i'm real happy about it i can brag and say i'm sober and clean for twelve years now and you can't you couldn't put a pistol to my ear to make me smoke a pipe today but at that time i mean you know you could appoint a pistol on me and not stop me from smoking  i took him to airport and he put him on a plane he got a full scholarship to hastings university in nebraska and i know i clearly know that's a result of me changing my life and i heard him say that one time i heard him tell a probation officer the probation officer said what made you change the course that you was on and he looked at me and