EIGHT
I never took drugs to have fun. I just took drugs to face life.
—ANIKA JOHNSON
Once she found out she was pregnant, Clara knew she had to get clean. But she didn’t know how. It felt like drugs had always been part of her life, and the reasons she kept relapsing were always the same. She and other women who’d been locked up faced so many obstacles once they were released—children, money, housing, jobs, partners, family; the list was endless. And all that didn’t account for what they didn’t talk about—the background noise of deep pain that was a constant element of the trauma they’d experienced throughout their lives. Their bodies and their emotions were on red alert, but not because of a single crisis; they were dealing with a lifetime of multiple traumas that often began before they even had their first period.
Most women in jail and prison are victims of multiple abuses—sexual abuse in childhood, passage through the child welfare system with resulting abuses there, then intimate partner violence—a perfect storm resulting in mental health issues and self-medication through drugs. In most cases, drugs ultimately lead to criminal activity and incarceration. And once they leave jail or prison, drugs are what lead women right back in.
The research attests to this. Studies show that severe trauma is a major contributing factor in female incarceration. So is addiction. Eighty-six percent of jailed women have experienced sexual violence, and the majority have problems with substance abuse. There’s often a feedback loop between the two: drugs can serve as an escape from trauma, and addiction can make a woman more vulnerable to further abuse.1 Over nearly two decades, researchers have agreed that “the most common pathways to crime for women are based on their history of trauma and abuse, poverty and substance abuse.”2
How did the substance abuse begin? From the time they were girls, most women developed treatment for their trauma “on the fly.” They didn’t go once a week to see a therapist; they didn’t receive “trauma informed care.” Instead, their default was self-medication. “It’s hood therapy,” a woman named Vonnie Johnson, who’d been incarcerated seventeen years for killing her abuser, told me with insight and accuracy. But if “hood therapy” was cheaper than appointments at a professional’s office, the bill for self-medication soon came due: addiction and heightened criminal activity. Women sometimes talked about “getting high” or “partying” when they referred to drug use. But despite their using words that connoted fun and enjoyment, drug use was not about fun. It was about survival.
Drug use was also, always, about medicating the trauma. From the time she was thirteen years old, this was exactly what Ivy had done. She could never remember a time when there wasn’t drug use and drug dealing going on in the house. And, so, it was no surprise that by the time she was thirteen Ivy was already using cocaine, a habit that only escalated by the time she dropped out of school at sixteen. Drugs were what got her through her first abusive relationship. When her ex-boyfriend and her mother died in the same year, drugs were what got her through the loss. Ivy knew without knowing that the trauma of these deaths, especially her mother’s, was too much to bear. She’d been depressed before, but now she sank even deeper into hopelessness and despair, engaging in a cross between self-medication and slow-motion suicide. All she wanted to do was get high—it was important; no, it was a matter of survival—not to feel anything. Ivy did whatever she could do to avoid the pain: drugs, drinking, gangbanging. Even after she gave birth to her son, Jessie, the pain and self-medication continued.
It was not until she was arrested on drug charges and sentenced to two years in state prison that depression gave way to fear. The fear was not for her own life but for Jessie. She feared that he’d go into the child welfare system and would be lost to her forever. Finally, she knew, this was a loss and a trauma she could not survive. She vowed she’d never use again. I still didn’t know what happened the day that Pedro shot the deacon. There were rumors Ivy had relapsed, that the emotional and physical pain of having fallen into yet another abusive relationship was too much for her to handle. No one could say for certain. Many of the women at the Homegirl Café faced the same losses, the same traumas, and the same struggles with using that Ivy had confronted, but they hadn’t resorted to violence. We all shared our thoughts, but I was haunted by what one of the homegirls asked me: “It coulda been any of us. Why Ivy?”
Incarcerated women of every racial and ethnic group report high levels of substance abuse and addiction. And this kicks off a tragic chain of events: drug-related arrests and recidivism make up a large segment of the overall arrests of girls and women.3 This all begins at a young age. Even in the juvenile system, research shows, girls are involved in more extensive drug use than boys, experimenting as well as showing the signs of addiction with a broader range of drugs. Their drug use also leads to a higher rate of resulting problems when compared with boys, and in what is a recurring problem, there are fewer drug treatment programs for girls than boys while they’re in detention or in placement.4
This happened with Denise, who started smoking dope when she was part of the hood. She drank and smoked bud pretty steadily, worrying that she was suffering from substance abuse. Once she started working, Denise began limiting her drug use to weekends. Then, her drug use tapered off even more once she became involved with Eric. Falling in love made her far happier than any substance she might have used in the past. But things started to change as her relationship with Eric became more tumultuous and violent. Eric was alternately controlling, then adoring. Their living situation in LA worsened—Eric wasn’t working, they couldn’t afford their rent. The couple moved to San Diego, and he ended up going to jail there. “I still loved him,” Denise says, “and I waited for him the whole year he was locked up.” Once Eric was released, the two traveled back to Los Angeles, where they started working. Denise felt hope again, until she discovered that Eric was cheating on her with one of her friends. She told Eric she was done and left, moving in with her aunt. Almost immediately, Eric begged her to come back. “He kept saying, ‘Please, please, I love you, I’m sorry,’ and I kept saying, ‘I’m so done.’ He was trying to do things to show me he was being a better person. I just didn’t believe him.”
Eric kept hoping this was going to play out just like other breakups the couple had gone through, until the night everything changed. Denise’s voice turned to a whisper as she talked about what happened. “It had been about two weeks and Eric came over with his friends. He was already drunk, and I sent him back home, to his godmother’s. A few hours later he came back, and he had a gun. I wouldn’t let him into my aunt’s house. I stayed outside, talking to him, and he kept saying he was going to kill me and kill himself. I told him to go home. . . . Then he tried to shoot me, and I ran into my aunt’s. I don’t remember much. I swear, I didn’t hear the gun shots. But I opened the door and I saw him lying there, in the front yard. I knew he shot himself. He was dead, and I don’t remember anything . . . only his body, lying there. I remember screaming and hollering. Then I went blank.”
Denise rarely cried in front of me, but now tears were running down her cheeks. She sat silent for a moment, then motioned for me to go ahead.
“How did you get through it?” I asked.
“I. Did. Not.”
Denise looked down for several moments, then continued.
“I did not get through it. His sister was talking shit to me the next day—she said I was having an affair with another man. I stopped talking to her. Then I started talking to his godmother. I told her I wanted to die. She wanted me to go to the hospital—she said I needed help. I thought she was right, so I called my boss.”
Denise’s supervisor told her she’d be fired if she didn’t return in two days, so she went back to work. In the meantime, Eric’s mother told the police Denise had killed her son; they launched an investigation and quickly confirmed that Eric had killed himself. After that, Denise’s aunt told her she had to move out; she’d traumatized her family. “I lived with my mom for a couple of months. Then she told me to leave, and I was on the street.” Denise was twenty-two years old.
Soon after that, Denise met a new guy, Dino. She moved in with him because, she says, “I felt safe. He was taking care of me. He had money and he told me not worry.” Dino was the first person who completely supported Denise. He was also the person who introduced her to crack cocaine. It was cheap, brought on an immediate high, and proved to be extremely addictive. Whatever pain Denise felt about Eric, about her life, became meaningless—with crack, it all went away.
The trouble started when Dino’s money ran out and he started boosting merchandise from stores. Denise had no idea how much illegal activity was going on until Dino was arrested, pled guilty, and went to jail. His departure barely registered; she was still doing crack, and a month later, she was evicted from Dino’s apartment. “After that, I went back to my mom’s for a few months.” But her mother wasn’t prepared to provide long-term housing and told Denise to leave. Again.
“I was living on the street five maybe six years.” Denise didn’t “seek treatment” for her traumas. She was in survival mode. The only treatment available involved substances. These weren’t prescription-based pharmaceuticals; she relied on street drugs for relief. I could only imagine her life and how she must have felt like she was being electroshocked—a melding of pain and unreality, with both past and future slipping away.
“I was on Western Avenue selling dope and whoring. I smoked crack because I was so fucking damaged. My life experience from when I was a girl had just hurt me so much. Having my boyfriend commit suicide and not being able to save him was like the catapult into drugs. Whatever I could do, I would do to make it go away. I was in and out of jail. I got locked up and then I would get out. Over and over again—put me in jail, stay behind bars, then back on the street. It wasn’t as bad for me as some of the women I was locked up with—they had kids. Kids. In that life—can you imagine?” Denise looks at me, wide-eyed. It’s hard to reconcile this reality with the woman sitting in front of me, clad in knee-high boots, black pants, and a brightly colored turquoise sweater. She has a backpack full of books on public policy, race relations, and a guide to MSW programs in California.
It’s a miracle that she never got pregnant, never had to have a baby or an abortion. She insists she faced fewer obstacles because she was alone—not a single mother with a child—but even so there was nothing out there to meet her needs, no one to help. “I didn’t need reentry services, I needed entry services—like how do you enter into a normal life? Reentry is a lie; it’s the wrong word. What we need is help on how to heal, how to live, how to enter this world.”
When I ask Denise what enabled her to survive, she answers, “I honestly don’t know.” Listening to her story, I don’t know either. She remembers “random acts of kindness. There was a guy named Charlie—he did heroin—and the two of us were doing drugs when the police rolled up on us. Charlie took the blame and went to jail that day.” Denise never forgot what he did for her. “Every time I saw him, I’d always ask, ‘What do you need?’ I told people on the street, ‘He’s good; he took a motherfucking case for me.’ Those random acts of kindness, they were genuine; they kept me going.”
Despite this kindness, Denise knew she wasn’t going to rely on anyone. She had to take care of herself. What helped her get through each day was crack or whatever other drugs were around. Addiction is the thread running through all of her memories. Addiction and incarceration.
Cycling in and out of jail was dehumanizing. “The police would pull up on me and say, ‘What’s up, China?’ and I’d think, ‘Here we go again.’ It was ridiculous. I’d do three or four months and then I’d get out and start using again. If you got sick on the street, sick from the dope, you don’t go to the hospital or rehab, you go to jail. If you go to jail, you get a place to sleep and maybe, just maybe, get the basic treatment that you needed.”
Jail offered its own set of humiliations. But living on the street had fine-tuned her coping skills, and Denise adapted. “After going through it all so much, it got to the point that it was par for the course. You know that you’re going to jail—you know what the process is like. You know what’s going to happen. They’re going to look up my ass with a flashlight. They’re going to make me squat and cough, they’re going to give me two minutes in a shower. Most of the guards are disrespectful motherfuckers—there are a few good ones who are kind, but they don’t last long. And no matter how many times you get locked up and no matter how much you get used to it, you never forget. . . . It’s always bad.”
Eventually, Denise experienced a break in the cycle of street and jail with the passage of Proposition 36, the California State Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000. Because of Prop 36, anyone who was arrested for “simple drug possession”—meaning they were an addict, not a dealer—was supposed to be sentenced to treatment instead of incarceration. But treatment was never straightforward. Anyone who gets a Prop 36 sentence enters a twisting system of drug court and drug testing and 12-step groups and antidrug education that must be fulfilled. Still, all this was better than sending someone into the disastrously overcrowded county jails and state prisons. No one in the justice system, from cops to wardens, wanted to deal with people who were simply addicts, not criminals.
Whenever she qualified for a Prop 36 sentence, Denise would complete all the necessary steps in her treatment, then go right back to using. She had a spot in an alley where she lived. If she needed to shower or clean up, she would stop by the home of a friend or relative. No one offered her a place to stay permanently. There was no plan for the future—she simply existed day to day.
I’d never spent time with a woman whose experience on the streets was as extreme as Denise’s. Some women faced temporary homelessness that lasted two or three months until they ultimately found some sort of housing. Very few had to resort to sex work for an extended period of time. No one matched Denise for the sheer number of years spent on the street. But whatever the women’s experiences, there were still more similarities among the women than differences. And the biggest similarities always came down to the relationship between trauma, self-medication, and drug addiction. So many had encountered physical and sexual abuse within their families and then had fled into relationships with abusive men. With only two exceptions, every single woman I interviewed had struggled with addiction to drugs and drinking. And in every single case, substance abuse was never recreational; it was always to dull the pain.
This was achingly clear with Rosa and Denise, who despite their different ages and different colors were sisters under the skin. They both experienced cycles of unimaginable trauma which led to self-medication and substance abuse. When I asked Rosa what her drug of choice was, she laughingly told me, “All of them.” But her laughter was hollow and underwrote a reality for every woman who’d been locked up for criminal activity: crime was not the issue. Crime was secondary to all of the related problems that drove women to substance abuse. Susan Burton understood this reality, which was why she talked about the “criminalization of trauma.”
From the time I began studying gangs, I quickly learned that for both men and women, drugs represented the greatest risk to their survival, especially when they tried to go “mainstream” and leave gang life behind. When faced with anxiety, fear, rage, or any of the by-products of trauma, gangs, and incarceration, individuals often succumbed to the need, again, to self-medicate. In recent years, with the ready availability of medical marijuana, the picture of drug abuse and self-medication has grown even more ambiguous. Most of the women involved with the criminal justice system come from homes and communities where drugs were part of the wreckage of families and violence. I had seen firsthand how the crack-cocaine epidemic had a long-term impact on families already mired in poverty. What civil rights attorney Connie Rice often referred to as “the spiral of despair” was turbo-charged by the ill-fated War on Drugs, which filled jails and prisons, fragmented families, and never addressed the root causes of substance abuse. And these problems were not in the past. The women I interviewed described long-term struggles with addiction, and they lacked any resources to deal with it. Even if they made progress and moved toward mainstream life, the vulnerability to relapse was always there.
That vulnerability plagued Clara as she struggled with addiction, not knowing where to turn. She couldn’t afford a rehab facility, and even if she could, she wasn’t sure how to find the right one, especially one that treated pregnant women who’d been incarcerated. Desperate to start over, Clara moved with Eduardo to Kentucky, where his cousin helped them get settled. But Clara couldn’t outrun her trauma, and her drug use continued until she received a long-distance phone call from a DCFS social worker telling her they’d found Theresa. Her relief at the news was short-lived: Javier had been arrested for child abuse, accused of sexually abusing his other daughter. Theresa was in foster care—Clara’s worst nightmare. As quickly as she could arrange it, she flew back to California, and in this jumble of crises her third daughter, Veronica, was born. She was on overload. Still, Clara felt hopeful because “this time Javier was the bad guy. Maybe I could get Theresa back!”
Her hope didn’t last long. The newest DCFS social worker warned her that she had to leave Eduardo or they’d take custody of Veronica. Clara wasn’t about to let that happen. When Veronica was two weeks old, they moved into a domestic violence shelter managed by House of Ruth, an organization that helped women and children victimized by domestic violence. I knew about the House of Ruth—it had long been a resource for women at the Homegirl Café. Many of the homegirls had sought refuge there when they tried to leave abusive relationships. Although it didn’t have a program specifically geared to formerly incarcerated women, it offered the services Clara desperately needed. It would turn out to offer even more. The agency had an emergency shelter program, where Clara received housing, food, and clothing along with counseling and help in dealing with DCFS. She told her case manager she wanted to stop using drugs and rebuild her life. Her desires fit her new environment; the shelter had a zero-tolerance policy toward drug use.
After a few days, Clara was relieved to learn she could stay for a longer time, moving from the House of Ruth Emergency Shelter to their Transitional Living Program. This program provided women with job placement, case management, counseling, the services they needed, and, most important, a place to live for up to two years. There were children’s programs, child abuse treatment, and assistance in ensuring that school-age children would continue to go to their usual schools so their education wouldn’t be disrupted. Equally significant, once residents of this program were working or receiving government assistance, they were required to save 30 percent of their income to eventually obtain housing, buy a car, or pursue educational goals. All of this was designed to help women work toward independent living in safe, nonviolent homes.
In this supportive environment, Clara finally stopped using drugs and began creating stability in her life, saving up money and focusing anew on her relationships with her children. Still, DCFS continued to derail her plans, failing to document or even see the progress she was making. Javier’s mother was awarded temporary custody of Theresa. Again, Clara told herself this was better than foster care—and then she received more devastating news: Aracely had been legally adopted by Eduardo’s parents.
She felt despair but kept going. Several months later, the bureaucratic inconsistency of the child welfare system finally worked in Clara’s favor. DCFS awarded her custody of Theresa, who joined Clara and Veronica at House of Ruth. Eduardo’s family was bringing Aracely for visits, encouraging her as she stayed off drugs. They’d always urged her to leave Eduardo. “Now, his mother told me, live your life. This is your chance; this is your opportunity.”
Clara decided to try again to pursue her dream of getting an education, feeling excitement as well as fear, remembering her past failure. But now she wasn’t completely alone. This is what made the difference as she tried to move forward—she had support.
Often, what causes women to fall back into a pattern of self-destructiveness is the sense of being alone as they face a tsunami of obstacles. Women who’ve been incarcerated struggle with addiction alongside the lack of an economic and emotional safety net. Both factors are critical in sustaining change.
For the first time in Clara’s life, she had an entire system of support at the House of Ruth. Four years had passed since she’d last been enrolled in school. Now, things felt more positive. She met Rowena Smith, a coordinator at the Los Angeles City College Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) office. Rowena was a recovering drug addict who’d been in an abusive relationship. “I don’t even remember how I ran into her. All I know is, she guided me, she helped me, and that’s how I started school.” Clara was still in the shelter, required to attend parenting classes, domestic violence classes, and other learning skills classes. With so many commitments, Clara worried that she might not be smart enough. “School was hard . . . I’m not the brightest star in the sky.” The EOPS office helped, offering financial assistance with books and school supplies; they also provided counseling.
Even as she struggled with school, Clara drew upon depths of encouragement as well as services that every formerly incarcerated woman needs. “I’m very, very grateful for House of Ruth. They gave me a home. They really helped me. They would give me bus tokens for me to get to class. They would take care of the baby. But I didn’t want to take advantage. I knew I had to get ready to be on my own.”
It was time to get out into the real world.
After eighteen months she left the shelter. She believed she was ready for the next step in finally changing. Then she went back to Eduardo.
To so many people it’s unthinkable that Clara would do this. But I understood. It’s part of being in the club. Anyone who’s been in an abusive relationship knows how both psychological and economic dependence can drive you back into a relationship that you know is abusive, and nevertheless you believe you need to survive. I wasn’t formerly incarcerated; I didn’t have struggles with trauma or drug addiction. I was white and I had a graduate degree, yet it took years for me to end a relationship that had been emotionally abusive. I could have walked out at any moment. But I stayed.
The experience of domestic violence lives inside many women’s narratives, intertwined with substance abuse. Relapse is a theme in both of these struggles. In 2014, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 40 to 60 percent of the men and women who’ve been treated for addiction or alcoholism relapse within a year.5 In the same way, women “relapse” into abusive relationships, and research shows that it takes multiple attempts to escape. Most victims of domestic abuse make an average of seven attempts before successfully exiting the relationship. And a real risk undergirds these efforts: 75 percent of the homicides linked to domestic violence occur when the woman tries to end and/or leave an abusive relationship. And the authorities—instead of understanding the women’s lives and the ways trauma leads to substance abuse and criminal activity—frequently criminalize survivors of domestic violence.6
In criminalizing these women, what so many fail to understand is how Clara and others like her face ongoing pressure—economic, social, and psychological—all at the same time. The pressure is constant, and it comes from every direction. Leaving the shelter, trying to make a life on her own, Clara felt overwhelmed. Eduardo was familiar, he was what she knew. “He was the father of my children, and he was there for me,” she tells me, “but the abuse still continued.” Eduardo was using drugs, only now Clara refused to use with him. She was no longer self-medicating, yet her dependence on Eduardo was another form of addiction and she knew she had to get away. She would take hold of whatever might be offered to her if she could just get away.
Her sister Maria was living in Arizona and urged her to come and start a new life. Listening to her sister talk about the warmth and affordability of Arizona, Clara saw the way to finally leave Eduardo. She couldn’t let him know her plans; instead she told him she was going back to the shelter.
When she arrived in Arizona, she found an apartment, happily discovering that rents were much cheaper than in Los Angeles. But her happiness was leavened with loneliness and economic need. “I’m alone in a state, in a place where I don’t know anyone, I don’t know anything. So, I started selling drugs again, because that’s what I knew.”
Clara’s sister introduced her to a drug connection. Only this time, it wasn’t just nickel and dime bags of marijuana, she says. “This time it was bundles.” Inexperienced at dealing with larger quantities of drugs, Clara got caught. She was convicted of transporting drugs across state lines and sentenced to six months in federal prison. Still, there was a sliver of light in the darkness. Because she was a new resident, children’s services never showed up. “The judge on my case said because I was clean and didn’t have a record in Arizona, he would let me out for two weeks . . . to get things in order.” Clara scrambled to find someone to take care of her daughters. She reached out so the girls could stay with family, then her sister turned her down. In the end, she split the girls up. Theresa was fifteen and stayed with a friend in Arizona. Veronica, still a toddler, went to join Aracely with Eduardo’s parents.
In the lonely months of incarceration, no one came to see her. Clara didn’t want Theresa to visit, and Veronica was settled in LA with the Lopezes along with Aracely. She felt despair, but her daughters were all that mattered; she’d endure prison. Clara’s experience lines up with research that shows how incarcerated parents struggle more adapting to prison as they face separation from their children; women are particularly hard hit when they lose their identity as mothers.7 However, there’s another, more positive side to this struggle. Research has also shown that women who are able to see themselves as good mothers, even while incarcerated, actually use this belief as a coping mechanism. This process helps women to look beyond their status as inmates and to concentrate on what they need to achieve once they leave jail or prison. It also helps ease women into reentry after incarceration.8
Thinking about her children, planning for their futures, turned out to be the healthiest, most positive thing Clara could do. It was the only thing she could do. She also knew, once she was released, she had to change. The only question was how. She had to rebuild her life and her family. This meant dealing with her trauma, loss, and substance abuse, which had all led her into prison. She never wanted anything to do with drugs again, whether selling them or using them. But she also knew she needed help. It wasn’t a matter of simply promising herself or her children that things would change. Where was the place that would help her to change? Where could she go?
Clara was not the only one asking these questions. A world away, Denise continued to endure the cycle of arrest, lockup, and release, using drugs to ease the pain. Where would this all end for her? Would there ever be any help?
Rosa, Anika, Vonnie, and other women all faced the same struggle: Was there a place anywhere that could help them to heal? Was there a place that understood what they had gone through when they were incarcerated? A place that offered support and shelter to build on their strengths and make sure they never used, they never relapsed, they never were incarcerated again?