Updates

I quit Prozac.  This was unexpected -- I had been thinking about quitting for a few months but took it for granted that I would not.  I was very afraid of experiencing my old emotions again.  The reason I had been thinking about quitting is because it seemed to me that the effects of the drug were becoming milder and milder, which I expected, just not so soon.  I had been taking it for less than a year.  I thought that I would have to either double the dose or face my mind armed with only willpower.

Before I quit, my energy levels were changing, my countenance was also becoming more generally stoic and grim -- more like my old self -- and the inmates I talk to most often would often stop me and ask if I was okay -- somehow I was acting differently and people were taking notice, except for me.  I even began to suspect that the doctors had switched me to a placebo to save money, which is, admittedly, something of a paranoid thought.  I was thinking more and more about quitting.  But I also had the rest of my life to quit.  I could not decide.

Ultimately the matter was decided for me, after a fashion.  The medical facilities here (at the prison) are not managed better than anything else is.  Much effort is taken to remove simple human error from the administration of medication, but we humans always find a way.  For whatever reason, the nursing staff had forgotten to restock my med-card, and others they would tell me to 'stop by medical' later on, which the guards aren't always willing to allow.  (Walking around the facility for any reason is risking a write-up, depending on who's working, and write-ups have unpredictable consequences.)

Missing a day of medication used to prompt a massive headache that would last all day.  In nine months I only missed one day.  That week I missed four.  I suppose I took it as an omen that I should just quit.  I was sick of the headaches and the runarounds, and somewhat angry at the nurses for being so... I'm not sure what the word is.  Obviously there are craploads of inmates on meds, and mistakes are bound to happen.  I was just mad at the situation and decided that at least my willpower, in the battle against my more destructive thoughtforms, is readily available, at my own discretion.  And Prozac, for all its merits, is not.  Not here, anyway.

Courts and judges like to pretend that it is.

But it's not.

---

I'm working on a next entry that I like a lot, but it's still a ways from completion.  I am aware that it's taking goddam forever.  I anticipated this sort of thing a long time ago and decided that I wouldn't let t bother me.  I also decided that it could give the reader a sense of the nothingness that is so pervading in prison.  Understimulation, for months and months and months and months.  It changes a person's sense of work and time.

I saw a report on CNN lately that was about inmates.  Someone mentioned that after a few years, an inmate loses the skills that make him employable -- simple things, like the ability to show up on time, work unsupervised, etc.  I've worked with many ex-cons in the past and I know exactly the sorts of things the report was talking about.  And my dwindling ability to write in a timely fashion is an obvious example of the same phenomenon.

Ah, if only inmates could have laptops ... heh

Want to hear something silly?  When an inmate receives a TV he ordered, it comes with a remote control.  The guards make the inmate throw away the remote control.  Why?  I have no idea!  The theory is that someone spread a rumor that remote controls can be modified to remotely open the outside gate, like a garage door opener.  Isn't that just the dumbest thing?  That can't be the reason.  So what's the reason?  So many of the rules in prison are just like that.  It's almost mania inducing.

So yeah, we're probably not getting laptops anytime soon.  But it's actually really funny.  I mean, just think about it for a minute.  It becomes funnier and funnier and funnier.

---

I found out something weird lately.  I've heard inmates complain about being 'Paroled to their MRDs' (Mandatory Release Date) since the first day I got here, two years ago.  I always just thought it was an optimistic way of saying they got denied parole and were waiting for their MRDs, when their mandatory parole periods would start, and that the parole boards claimed this mandatory parole period as a granting of parole for their paperwork.  (For non-Colorado residents this may sound confusing -- we're given two sentences; a prison sentence and a parole sentence that's separate from the prison sentence, but which can start before our MRDs if the parole board grants it.)

Apparently this is not the case at all.  The actual meaning of the phrase "paroled to MRD" became clearer to me when I overheard a conversation on the yard.

Two inmates were talking.  The first said, "oh, guess what.  My brother told me something interesting on the phone the other day."

"Yeah? What's that" asked the second.

"He said he looked me up on inmate locator, and it says I'm paroled.  He was expecting me to call him and say where I was staying.  But no, I said, I'm still here.  At Bent County."

"No shit!"

"Yeah, they parole us without telling us, and then they don't let us go neither!"  He laughed.

"That's such a fucking racket!"

"Money, man.  It's just money with these guys."

"I'll bet CCA's loving it.  Do you think it's a coincidence that you're here?  They're making thirty grand a year off you!"

"Yup."

"How much time do you have till your MRD?"

"Shit, six months or so.  They denied me last year."

It went on like that -- the ol' conspiracy theory.  The longer you stay the more you buy into it.  But I didn't know they could parole you and not let you out.  I didn't know that that's what people had been complaining about this whole time.  I had never heard an adequate explanation of it -- that when people on the outside look you up, it says that you're no longer here, that you've been paroled.  But you *are* still here!  The taxpayer thinks you're not when you are!

I wanted to put that online.

Mm, rumor is, BTW, that Colorado Senate Bill 11-257 would change the whole parole ballgame, pending some amendments that make the bill retroactive, and some other things I don't know about.  I hope the amendments are made and that it passes at the soonest opportunity.  Me and everyone else here.

So that's new, too.

---

I did end up getting my appliances back ;P

That's all that's worth mentioning for now.  Still working on my songs, I have 4 that are reasonably done, and six that aren't.  I only have a few hours a week to work on them, so it's not like I'm able to really focus on them.  But I'm doing okay.

Back to writing that other thing.

Thanks for reading,

-B