Alcohol Rehab is Not Fun
One man's recollection of his experience at Oriana House Driver Intervention Program.
I figure that several of you may be asking what my rehab
was like etc,. so i'll compose this email in an attempt not
to tell the same
stuff over and over to different askers.
I went to Oriana
House Driver Intervention Program (DIP) for first-time offenders for 72
hours. I did not know at the
time that this jail is actually sissy
jail, so i was kinda nervous. There were bunk beds, and the older guys got
assigned lower bunks so they wouldn't have to climb. Except me. In
the first 30 seconds, the thug in the next bunk told his buddies: "Hey, y'all.
Dig the old ofay. He got a top bunk. This be fun to watch". The usual way to
mount the bunk is to plant one foot on the lower steel-barred footboard, grab
the steel on top, and jerk/lift yourself so one knee is on the upper
footboard. Then twist/roll onto the mattress. But i didn't do
that. Instead i bent my knees with both thumbs near them and vaulted
onto the top bunk. It's about the same height as these metal closets in
our cubes. I tore the crap out of my left backstrap muscle and couldn't
catch my breath because of the pain. But i faked normalcy and pretended to
read a book so they couldn't see pain on my face. Not one thug came near
me after that for the whole 72 hours.
They wake you up at 0600
every day and expect you to eat, clean yourself, and make your bed by
0800. Classes begin then and last until as late as 2200 with meal breaks
and cigarette breaks. Lights go out at 2300, so it's a 17 hour day.
I did the whole thing pacing back and forth in the hallway (the only body
position that didn't hurt) or sitting on the folding metal chairs with all my
weight on the right thigh and buttock. I must have walked 100 miles during
those 3 days. The other 27 inmates named me Walkman.
The
night shift guard was corrupt. By the 2nd day, the thugs learned of this
and began working him. The lunchroom was about size of our dining area at
work, and it looked totally full whenever he was in there. The guys let
him know they were fond of euchre, and in nothing flat he was letting them play
cards, read, etc. instead of going to bed like we were supposed to. On our
last night, the guys bribed him and ordered Emidio's Pizza. That was the
first food fit for human consumption during the entire time. The pizza was
all i ate in the 3 days, i slept a total of 6 hours in 3 days, and never took a
dump. Just like when i patrolled Laos back in the day. But again, that was sissy
jail.
The final thing they do there is evaluate you. It's
required by law. Based on your score on a written test, they write you up as
needing more treatment-or-not for your drinking/drug problem. One guy
scored so much beyond 8 points (the border between acceptable and not
acceptable) that they wrote him up for 4 follow-up evaluations at
$280.00
apiece. I got an 8 and no followup.
At 1700 on the 3rd day,
they release everybody from that building. The guys who are not charged
with super dui (higher than 0.17 on the breathalizer) go home. There were 12 of
us who were doing super dui. They walked us to the building across the
street. That building was the real jail.
On the way over, the guard
stopped at a trash can and warned us to pitch our cigarettes and lighters or
else face a felony contraband charge in the jail. They puffed their last
puffs right then before we began the next 3 days of our sentences.
The guard turned us over to a different guard at Glenwood
Jail, and he yelled for us to line up and step inside. I took the
point.
This was real jail. I couldn't believe it. It
was an old elementary school with all but 2 exits blocked and alarms
everywhere. The capacity was rumored to be 105, but there were 160 inmates
including us. Yes, there were women inmates too. These were
segregated to some area i could not see, and we were warned not to speak to them
or look at them. They didn't seem like women to me for some reason.
They all had open sores on their faces and were several months
pregnant.
The place was loud and chaotic at all times. My
ears were ringing immediately. After the interesting search of our body
and belongings, we were assigned a bunk and given "linens". They ran out of
pillow cases by the time i got there, but some inmate had stolen the pillow off
my bunk anyway. Some guys got no bunk, but they got "linens". These
slept on big pads on the floor. The entire building stank. It wasn't only
a locker room kind of smell,
but also b.o., rotten feet, urine, mildew, and
marijuana.
The smokers went crazy right away because smoking and
smoking paraphernalia are forbidden. The inmates ran businesses based on illegal
contraband, and smokes were 5.00 apiece and 300.00 per carton. There
wasn't enough to go around. I walked upstairs to my "dorm" as ordered, and
a bunch of guys all asked if i was new, did i have cigarettes, and did i have a
"joint". When i answered in the negative, they asked me if i wanted
any.
The "dorms" were tiny classrooms with those old green
blackboards and a big ceiling fan. There were 20 guys in mine. One
of them stuck his chest in my face and said: "Say, man. I took your box because
i didn't get one. You got a problem with that"? A box is a small locker,
like an Army foot locker. I was carrying one change of clothes and toilet
articles in a grocery store bag, and told him i was traveling light and
didn't need a box. He said: "Yeah, unh-hunh, you cool". Other guys
said: "Man, you gotta lock yo' stuff up or they steal it". If they want my
dirty scivvies they can have them is all i said. Then i asked where the
bathroom was. Whew, doggies! A guy was sick right in front of me and
barfed into the shower stall, even though the commodes were right in front of
him. The stalls and commodes are all in the open with no doors.
There was one guy who hung his bedsheet over the commode stall so he could have
some privacy. It seemed like the hot water would help my back, so i took a
shower right away. Next to where the sick guy was
barfing.
The 12 of us from Oriana House were the lightweights in
jail. We stuck together probably from being afraid of the thugs, and
called ourselves "the dirty dozen". Each of us handled jail his own way.
Rodney (Hot Rod), aged 57, promised his jailmates they could have his stuff when
he was released. Since clothing items were high rent things, they all liked him.
(I was brushing my teeth one morning, when a guy at the next sink said how happy
he would be if he had a washrag so he wouldn't have to wash his face "no mo'
with this dang sock"). Lance, a former Army Ranger now in the National
Guard, slept 20 hours per day to pass the time. Others watched the 2
televisions in the 2 cramped rooms on the main floor. I walked another 50
miles.
The exercise facilities are great in Glenwood jail. I
could walk the length of the 20-foot hallway, go down the North stairs, cross
the 1st floor hallway, go up the South stairs, and repeat. If you use your
imagination, it's like walking inside a hamster wheel. Other guys did
pull-ups from pipes in the basement. And if you were prudent enough to
bring a pair of gloves, you could do all the pushups you wanted. The
centipedes like to run across the floor when you do
pushups.
Glenwood jail is minimum security, meaning there are no
bars on the windows or cells. But in all other respects it is jail.
As i said, the "dirty dozen" were the lightweights. These other guys were
in for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, 60,90,180 days. Some guys were doing a
year, and the guys in the orange jumpsuits were "overflow" from the County Jail doing
several years. In my dorm, the guys doing 10 days were dui people on their
2nd offense. One of them got his 1st dui 12 years before and it was not
"on record", but when interrogated by the police during his recent
dui
arrest, he blurted out that he had one back then. If he had kept mouth
shut, he would have come across as a 1st time offender and only gotten 3 days in
sissy jail across the street. Other guys had multiple dui's with multiple crimes
on top. Like failure to pay child support, receiving stolen property,
domestic violence (one guy had smacked
his wife in the face with a piece of
chocolate cake), driving under suspension (6 months in jail for that one),
resisting arrest, fleeing the scene, possession of drugs,paraphernalia,illegal
explosives,stolen guns,silencers,automatic weapons, etc. Several told me
that after serving their time, they were to be transported to other
jurisdictions where they had more jail waiting for them (two of these hid in the
jail when their names were called to be released).
The public
address system blares at you all day telling you when to wake up, go to bed,
eat, and stand by your bunk for headcount. They had 5-6-7 headcounts per
day. There was a midnight fire drill the first night. Guys ran
outside wearing only their shoes and a blanket. It was snowing. The
guards laughed at us, and promised more drills if we gave them any sass.
The guards are the main suppliers of contraband.
You get the sense
that you won't get killed in jail. The guards have tasers instead of guns,
and the inmates don't seem to want to increase their sentences by getting caught
with weapons. Within 5 minutes, i had fashioned a lethal weapon out of a
ballpoint pen just in case.
Most of the inmates don't eat the slop
provided by the system. They get money regularly and eat vending machine
food. I was just as afraid of the vending machine food as the other stuff, and
wouldn't eat it. I came to jail with the maximum allowed currency of
$25.00 and left with $21.00. $3.00 of that went for pizza in Oriana
House.
But the system screwed up. We were admitted to jail on
Sunday night at 1730 hrs and released at 1700 hrs on Tuesday. The bureaucrats
think that's 3 days when it's only 2. I couldn't believe it. At
release time i asked one the guards to call me a cab. I froze outside in
the rain for an hour waiting when a woman deputy on the next shift took mercy on
me and waved me inside to get warm and use the phone. The cab company said
nobody had phoned them before.
Lastly, the dui guys were not what i
thought. One was a multiple offender, middle-aged, lost his family and
business , wears a suit to work, paid ten grand in lawyer fees to get a small
sentence, sold his two homes and possessions and hid them from his wife so she
won't get them in the divorce, and stockpiled a bunch of money in case he gets
busted again. Another guy was was 25-ish and was a chef at a classy
restaurant . There was a truck driver, 9 or 10 college students from Kent State. A middle-aged roofing
contractor. A teacher. Two probationary firemen. Half the guys
were young, very loud punks. The rest seemed somewhat introspective. I had
the highest education of anyone by far. All of them except me blamed their
probs on the judge and getting
caught.
PS
0.08 blood alcohol is considered
"prima facie" evidence of dui
guilt, meaning you cannot get out of it. But lesser amounts are still
evidence of dui in the minds of the cops. Yes, there are offenders who
tested below 0.08, but were charged and convicted of dui anyway because
their driving appeared impaired.
So, advice to you all. If
you know you are bombed and will get the mandatory 6 days for blowing high like
me, refuse the breathalizer politely but firmly. This will get
you a 1-year suspension. Then when you are arraigned, plead
guilty to dui. This will get you a 6-month suspension instead of the
1-year, and they will only give you the 3-day sissy jail sentence because there
is no evidence of how high your blood alcohol actually was.
Back to northroyalton.net home
North RoyaltonNorth Royalton
North
RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth Royalton
North RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth
RoyaltonNorth Royalton
North RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth Royalton
North
RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth RoyaltoNorth Royaltonn
North
RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth RoyaltonNorth RoNorth
Royaltonyalton
North RoyaltoNorth Royaltonn