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 can say now is that sneaking up on people is a major delight in my old age, but it always has been. A desire, even a need, to shock.

The only thing I remember writing in prison is a couple of poems for an inmate magazine they did once a year.

My husband regarded my prison past as a dirty secret and never asked me one single question about it. But what I had experienced and witnessed was eating at me and I needed to "tell somebody."

Prison experience puts distance between me and any person who hasn't been there, done that.

I had a naïve idea that if I could tell the story, people would be outraged and do something about conditions in the jails.

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.