Running From the Boogey-Man & Facing Your Fears

I have been arrested three times in my life. None of the stories are very cool, and at least two of them are pretty damn stupid. Who am I kidding, all three are damned retarded on my part.

Eleven years ago, some poor choices I made culminated in my last arrest. What started as an argument between an exhausted me and a drunk bitch at 7 AM ended with me in jail for 2 things. One I did do, and one I didn't do. (maybe that story will be told later...maybe not. Probably not.)

The thing I was actually guilty of was possession of marijuana under 2 ounces. Thank goodness I was ripped off by my dealer the night before, or I would have been looking at possession over 2 ounces, which would have drastically reduced my chances of making bail.

In the end, I pleaded guilty so that I could get probation (again). This time I was determined to stay out of trouble, however. I paid my fines, court costs, and paid my lawyer and went home. I stayed clean for maybe a month, and then I realized that I wasn't going to be clean while I continued to hang out with my friends. Then I realized that I didn't want to leave these people. So....I started getting high again.

I wasn't addicted to the high; I was addicted to getting high with my friends. Hell, at that time in my life I didn't make friends with someone unless they were willing to get high with me. I was addicted to the laughter, the camaraderie, the philosophical discussions, and the activities around smoking weed. You hear heroin addicts described as being addicted the needle and spoon as much as they are to the smack. Pot heads are addicted to the process of smoking weed too. The buying it, the breaking it up, the separating the seeds and stems, the rolling it in a joint, the making of a bong, the lighting it, the munchies, and especially the people you do all of these things with. That was a bigger part of the addiction for me than the high was.

I was required to meet my probation officer every month for the next nine months. I knew I was flirting with disaster if I continued to get high every freaking day, but I did it anyway. I'd show up to the probation office sober and fooled myself into thinking it was going to be a breeze to get through it.

I would show up, and the conversation went something like this:

PO: You have your administration fee?

AWC: Yeah.

PO: You have any wild parties this month?

AWC: No.

PO: OK, we'll see you next month.

AWC: OK, bye.

Until about the fourth month.

That fourth meeting, my normal probation officer wasn't in town. Some other guy was taking his cases for the week. And he decided it was time for me to take a drug test. SHIT!

I pissed in a cup and left that day assuming that I failed that test, and the next time I showed up would be my next trip to jail. So, I never went back.

I spent the next 10 years wondering when the other shoe was going to drop, wondering when I was going to have to go back and settle this debt. My driver's license had been suspended. I couldn't fly anymore because my ID had expired. I couldn't even get carded at a bar without fear of being turned away.

I can't even really describe all of the issues one deals with by not having current valid identification in the U.S. I probably told the same lie a thousand times: "Uh..I lost my ID last week, but I have an old expired one....It's still me." I only had one establishment tell me that they wouldn't accept it, and that happened in front of my in-laws. Luckily, no one really questioned me about it.

Now in 2009, I am clean, and rarely not sober. I am married, I have a beautiful daughter, have had a steady job for 8 years, and still couldn't figure out where my life was headed.

Finally, I became fed up with my job, and decided I wanted to quit. Unfortunately, it's kinda hard to get a new job without a way to identify yourself. It's also hard to get identification when you are wanted by the police. My wife & I finally decided it was time. It was time to get this monkey off of my back once and for all. I was going to have to turn myself in, and serve my time.

I called a lawyer that next day. I gave her the specifics of my case and my personal information. She asked that I give her a few days to check it out before I do anything else. No problem. I wanted this done, but I wasn't in a big hurry to go to county jail.

Three days later, my lawyer calls me back. She proceeds to tell me that she has never seen this before, but I do NOT have a warrant out for my arrest. As far as she can see there was a request to revoke my probation after I quit going, but a full twelve months later, the judge denied the request. I had been discharged from probation without a warrant for almost nine years! Apparently, judges like to brag about how much money in fines they collect, not how many people they send to jail. Since I had paid all my fines and court costs the day my sentence was given, he didn't care if I completed the terms of my probation. That was my lawyer's theory, anyway.

Don't get me wrong... I know how lucky I am. For all intents and purposes, it shouldn't have gone down like this. I should have had to spend 90 days in jail, and spent the next few years struggling to make ends meet on the only jobs I could find in this crappy economy, but I didn't. I guess it's times like this that an agnostic can start to lean away from the atheist point of view a little bit. (Just a little.)

I guess, at the end of all of this, I learned a couple of things:
1) Take care of problems when they come up. The consequences might not be as hard to deal with as it is to attempt to avoid them. I could have been done with this in 3 months in 1999, or known the facts about my case in 2000, but I spent 10 years running from something that never existed in the first place.
2) Pay your fines and court costs first. Judges like it more when you don't owe them any money.

-A.W.C.