Locked In, Looking Out
They passed around the pencils and asked a simple question: Who do you look up to, and why?
I was a “stoner” locked up in juvenile hall at the time for violating probation. Young, angry, sharp-eyed, tired of being told to respect systems that never once respected me.
Most kids wrote about their moms, a coach, a soldier.
I wrote about my cousin Jorge… and Al Capone.
Jorge wasn’t flashy. He didn’t roll deep or flex heavy. But he got up early, went to work, stacked paper, and did something nobody in our circle had really done before—he saved. Not just for shoes or rims. He saved for freedom. For mobility. For something more than surviving paycheck to paycheck.
At that age, I didn’t have the words for it, but what Jorge showed me was compound interest in motion—financial, moral, and personal. He wasn’t loud. But his discipline spoke volumes. He made the grind look honorable. That stuck with me.
Then there was Al Capone. I didn’t admire his violence. I didn’t fantasize about becoming him. But I saw the game he played for what it was: Prohibition made alcohol illegal—but it didn’t stop demand. The law said “no” while the people said “pour me another.” Capone read the room and monetized hypocrisy.
I argued—probably too confidently—that Capone could’ve crushed it as a legitimate businessman if the economy wasn’t rigged to reward the outlaw over the entrepreneur. But bootlegging was too profitable. Whoring was too fun. And being treated like royalty? That shit’s addictive.
“Se la vi,” I wrote. I meant c’est la vie—such is life—but I spelled it how it sounded in my head. Even then, I understood: the system molds the gangster as much as it does the banker.
Jorge and Capone weren’t opposites. They were two sides of a truth I was just starting to grasp: People follow incentives. If the system rewards exploitation, you’ll get exploiters. If it rewards quiet discipline, you’ll get Jorge.
But the sad truth? In America, the Capones usually win. And the Jorges? They grind in silence. No headlines. No mansions. Just dignity.
That wasn’t just about admiration. It was my first real analysis of power, profit, and pathology. I didn’t know I’d grow up fighting corrupt research institutions, digging through court rulings, launching veteran-led policy campaigns, obsessed with archives, gardens, and uncovering cannabis criminalization’s real history.
But I knew this: I didn’t want to become Capone. And I didn’t want Jorge’s story forgotten. I wanted to fix the game that forced kids like me to choose between them.
Power doesn’t always look like a badge, a bank, or a ballot. Sometimes, it looks like a cousin who keeps showing up. Sometimes, it looks like a kid in a cell, writing his way out. And if the
A System That Misreads Survival
They would’ve kept me indefinitely if they could have. Not because I was dangerous. Not because I was out of control. But because I refused to become small in a system designed to shrink people.
My time on juvenile probation didn’t start with a crime spree or violence. It started with weed.
I got caught one night—maybe 15 and a half years old—smoking after work in a place I wasn’t supposed to be. That one moment spiraled into two and a half years of drug tests, surveillance, and system contact that never once led to help.
I smoked cannabis daily. Heavily. Not to be cool. Not to be rebellious. To function. To quiet the noise. To feel normal—whatever that meant back then.
From the first test to the last, I never dropped clean. Not once. But the system kept me anyway. Clocked me in. Marked me down. I wasn’t getting better—I was just getting older.
Before probation, I’d already done time inside Charter Behavioral Health, a so-called treatment center. They drugged me into silence—loaded me up with pills, held me down under a different kind of force. I left numb and warped, no toolkit, no guidance, just growing mistrust in anything calling itself help.
They handed me off to the courts like I was a defective product, not a kid trying to make sense of what had just happened to him.
Probation didn’t offer answers either. They offered piss tests. Sent me to counseling that didn’t ask real questions. Pushed me into scared-straight programs—as if fear could undo trauma.
They enrolled me in a military-style reform school for delinquents. When I tested positive for THC there—not because I brought anything in, not because I broke any rules, but because my body was still carrying the weight of survival—they kicked me out.
I remember asking:
“Isn’t that why I’m here? To get clean?
If I can’t get weed on this campus, why not let me stay?
Why send me back to the same streets where I can?”
They didn’t answer. They just sent me home.
That was the pattern. At every turn, rejection—not rehabilitation. Discipline without understanding. Structure without care. Judgment without context.
And when I turned 18, it ended. Just like that. Not because I got better. Not because I found peace or made progress. It ended because the state ran out of legal claim over me.
If they could’ve kept me longer, they would have. But the clock saved me. Not the system.
I think about that a lot. Because I wasn’t trying to be defiant—I was trying not to collapse.
No one ever asked what the weed was doing for me. They only punished what it was doing to me.
The truth? I didn’t need to be fixed. I needed to be heard. I needed to be safe. I needed to detox from more than THC—I needed to detox from despair.
That’s why I write. That’s why I tell this story—not to glorify the past, but to account for it. Because there are still kids being cycled through the same machinery I barely escaped.
And I use that word deliberately: escaped. Because it wasn’t healing that got me out. It was time. It was age. It was luck.
And I’ll be damned if I let the system claim that as a win.
Escaping the Loop
This is my message to those still going through it. From someone who knows—because they were you.
I see you. Right now.
You think this is the end of the line.
But I’m here to tell you—it’s not.
I’m speaking from the other side of the cage. Not just the bars—but the silence. The shame. The systems that said you’d either disappear or detonate.
I’m here because I didn’t. And you don’t have to either.
They gave me a number. A rap sheet. A clock running out. Said I was broken, dangerous, too far gone.
But I was a spark. And so are you.
They don’t see it yet. But I do. Because I was you.
Yeah, it’s wild. Not in the “someone came and saved me” way.
It was bruises turned into battle cries. Rules learned just to reveal the game. Pain alchemized into purpose.
The system thought I’d stay quiet. Stay broken.
But I turned my silence into structure. My file into a flame. My time into testimony.
And one day—you will too.
I know the nights are long. That loneliness is a weight no scale can measure.
I know what it means to pray with your teeth clenched, to hold back tears ‘cause even water feels too expensive.
But hear me—you are not your worst mistake. You are not the box they checked. You are not the chain they tightened.
You are potential, compressed. You are a storm in incubation.
And if you can survive this? You won’t just walk free.
You’ll fly.
You’ll build platforms out of rubble. Testify in rooms that once locked you out. Turn your story into a torch for others still sitting where you are now.
You’re not a case file. You’re a case builder.
You weren’t supposed to make it.
But you will.
And when you do—you’ll change everything.
Hold on.
We’re waiting for you.
Photos courtesy of Ricardo Pereyda.
This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.
