I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity forever.

I felt compelled to blow the whistle on the penal system, under the delusion that doing so might result in some change, or at least save a few women from the same fate. Eternally naïve, that's me.

The loss of a sexual life is one of the worst things about getting really old. The worst thing.

Although I was simply what today would be called a "mule" - the bottom of the food chain in the drug biz - the federal system treated me from beginning to end like a major criminal, and I still don't know why, other than that in those days, 6.5 ounces of heroin was a big load. Ludicrous by today's standards, when coke, heroin, and weed are shipped across the border by the ton.

I don't believe anyone can go through the prison experience without being changed by it. The experience becomes part of your identity forever.

I was already a wreck when I went in, and prison nearly destroyed what little was left of me. I was worse when I came out than I was when I went in, and was not positively changed in any way.

I was addicted to amphetamines at the time I got busted, but I tend to think I was on a determined, self-destruct course that had little to do with the effect of Benzedrine.