Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - How I Survived Prison at 21 Years OLD... (FULL PODCAST)

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Andrea talks about how she navigated prison at 21 years old.

It sounds like a fucking animal shelter. You know, it was like, it sounded like a jungle in there. And I just remember thinking, oh, my God, this is going to be hard as fuck. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and we're doing a video on or a podcast on Andrea Carswell's story. I say it right, Andrea? Andrea? Andrea, okay. Andrea Carswell.

Okay. So, and yeah, so that's it. so I'm sorry I mean I just don't know much about the story so I know you were on doc you were on I always say I'm gonna tell you this too I don't know if I mentioned this the other day I always say doc TV a lot of people I think read it that way he always he always says DOC and I was like bro why do you say DOC is like department of the corrections like why are you saying doc and I was like because I thought like maybe that was your nickname he is like what are you nuts and I was like I really genuinely felt have felt this whole time like probably in prison

his nickname was Doc. A lot of people I think read it Doc, but yeah, it's DOC. So anyway, Department of, yeah, Florida Department of Corrections. So it's D-O-C-TV 813. Yep. And so anyway, you were interviewed on there. And so, yeah, we're going to do an interview. And we're just going to talk about you've been in prison twice.

Twice. Twice. 22 felonies? 22 convictions, yeah, felony convictions by the age of 22. I'm almost 32 now, but yeah. So where were you born? So I was born in Pontiac, Michigan, and then my family decided to move down here to Florida when I was about 11, like right before Detroit really started to fall. My family decided to move out of there and come down here.

We lived with my grandmother for a little while, and then my parents built a house in our neighborhood. And so I started going to school. I ended up having to go to summer school after fifth grade because I was behind a little bit, which is weird or whatever to go to summer school that young. And I met one of my first friends. summer school I even I even failed like the second grade oh really yeah yeah so I met one of my first friends in Florida and she actually her and her family lived two houses down from where my parents were building their house and she had a huge family seven seven brothers and sisters total and uh we got really close so but there was a lot of older you know their brothers and sisters were older so that's

where um I kind of started hanging out there and we all started doing drugs together and stuff like that when I met them I was 11 I really probably so we probably started dabbling in drugs and stuff when we turned like 13, 14, started smoking weed and doing that stuff. But then we, we ended up trying pain pills, you know, when I was growing up, when I was in like the age where you're trying new drugs, experimenting, having fun partying, it was like the pain pill epidemic. And so, unfortunately, which are super addictive, you know, so that's what I got hooked on at the age of about 15. I was addicted to pain pills. So like through almost all my high school years. Yeah. Okay.

I don't know if people know about the like a painful addiction and stuff but the withdrawals from it are severe you won't do almost anything to get them so that's where I was at I was in high school still barely struggling to like make it through you know trying to hide it from my parents because my family doesn't

use drugs my mom doesn't my brother doesn't my dad didn't I was kind of like the black sheep of that and so I made it through high school barely did they figure out like were you caught several or you have to have been caught yeah yeah I mean of course my mom could see it you know I was Obviously, skinny, you know, drawn out, tired, staying away from home all the time. You know, I would miss school.

So they figured it out. And then I ended up, like, she always knew, but I would never tell her, never tell her, never tell her, you know. So then finally, I wanted to get clean. When I think I was about 17, I might have been home, or maybe just turned 18. I was like, I'm done. I want to get clean. So I told my dad. And my dad was like, well, we knew something was going on, you know, whatever.

So then when my mom got home, I told her. And my mom actually worked for pain management. has her whole life. She does medical billing, but she's worked for pain management doctors. So when I told my mom what pills I was using, she immediately knew, immediately knew the problem and immediately knew how serious it was. And I tried to use, she took me to one of her doctors and I tried to get off of pain pills with suboxin. Right. And. Suboxone, that's like huge in prison. Like what? Then guys get out. Like they'll, then they'll get addicted to suboxone. Yeah. So when I started taking it, it was still in like a pill. They didn't have like, they

have strips now. They didn't have those. it was still a dissolvable pill, and it was super expensive. They were like, I think they were like $14 a pill in the pharmacy, which is at that, at the time oxycodone roxies were a dollar in the pharmacy, 80 cents. So, you know, like that's like one of those things with society. It's like, what the fuck? Who's going to get off pain pills if their pain pills are only 80 cents if they have to pay $14 for a pill that's not going to get them high?

I never got high on Suboxins. What I would do is actually I would sell them. I ended up selling them to get pills because I didn't want to, you know, I was, I thought I was ready, but I wasn't. And you were 17? I was 17, maybe 18, you know, I was right on, it was right there, right getting ready to graduate high school, all that. So I did that.

That didn't work. I continued to use. And eventually I started to be an IV user. I started to inject pain pills. Oh, pain pills? Yeah. A lot of, because a lot of people will move from like oxies to like heroin because it's cheaper. So heroin always freaked me out.

always scared me um i don't know what it is i guess i i guess it's just because i i felt like pain pills i knew what they were you know it's a pill that came from the pharmacy i know what's in it i know it could still kill me and if i you know overdose and all that but heroin and stuff like that always freaked me out because you know i always always been told about rat poison and shit like that and in heroin so i think also it's like to me it's it's got less of a of a stigma to it to me like I don't ever think I feel I don't feel like I've ever really taken drugs but I was but yeah but you did take pharmaceutical drugs and I'm thinking well yeah but I had a prescription it doesn't matter like you're what are you doing like what's the difference between that if you

didn't have a so the difference is I have a script the doctor said it was okay yeah so it's just stupid but in my mind it made it okay yeah yeah they were they were just legal drug dealers back then yeah so Oh, yeah. So I forgot where it was at. Sorry. You were the Suboxin and then you were switched to oxycodone. You were actually Oh yeah. So I ended up not getting clean with Suboxin. Yeah. So I started shooting oxycodone because just snorting oxycodone and Roxis wasn't enough anymore. So I had started shooting it, which was I was one of like the first in like my friend group, like our, you know, whatever to start shooting. So it was weird. How do you even figure that out?

What to shoot? Yeah. I mean it's a pill. So I, how I did it, I would. Yeah, I was hanging out with this kid who, actually the first thing I ever had shot in my life was cocaine, to be honest. I was hanging out with this kid and we were, you know, snort pills, whatever, and he was shooting pills. Well, I didn't want to shoot pills, but I was like, he's like, well, try cocaine, so I shot cocaine. Well, then after that, I was like, you know what, now I want to try shooting pills. And then, yeah, you just dissolve it. But somebody teaches you, you know, you just find out how. It's scary at first, especially injecting yourself.

You're like, oh, my God, what if I blow my vein up? But the need to use the drug overrides. all that fear. Yeah. Yeah. So it overrides it. So that's, I just,

I went there. And I started dating a guy who is 17 years older than me at that time. I was 19, probably at this time. Um, I had done like a, I had gone to jail for like six months for some misdemeanors for petty thefts. And I did like six months for that.

And I got out and started dating this guy who was 17 years older than me. He did pills, went to the doctor, all that. And, um, he would write fake prescriptions. So I was within.

and we would he would buy the blank prescription paper and we would he would take them to somebody to print them out well I was with and he would pay them for it was this is before they had the the federal that or the system way before yeah yeah this is when doctor shop you could doctor shop this is when I and I specifically remember this it was in 2011 I remember reading an article that Rick Scott said that we could not afford that system in Florida to link the pharmacies but we were one of the only states who did not not have it right which is absolutely insane right absolutely insane how what do you mean we can't afford it this was after he got his entire health care system got indicted and paid that massive fine and then he becomes the the governor of florida and yeah and says that we can't afford a pharmaceutical company to stop doctor shopping and fucking right and i actually knew a guy who bought one of the hospitals that they owned oh wow and they continue to just do business the same way and then uh two years later They got indicted. Oh, wow.

And he ended up going to prison for like five years or something. I seen a lot of, when I was in jail waiting to go to prison my first time, or no, my second time, I seen them they were bringing a lot of doctors and a lot of girls in and to tell on doctors and pharmacies and everything and bring them all down. So the guy that owns it, never. He doesn't get, it's always, they pay a fine and run for governor. That's crazy. So, anyway, I'm sorry, go ahead.

So, yeah, so we. I started dating him, and I went with him one time when he was getting those scripts printed. And when I seen the girl doing it, I was like, I can fucking do that. I don't need to pay her $50 a script to do this. So at the time, you could buy prescription paper online and have it delivered right to your house. A hundred sheets, or 100 sheets, four scripts per sheet, 50 bucks. Nothing. Right.

You know, you can make, that's what, 400, 400 scripts or whatever, you know? So we did that, and so I started printing on myself. When we started printing on myself, at the same time, my boyfriend was also doctor shopping. So he was seeing eight doctors a month, plus we were writing faith prescription in his name, my name, and then other people. So he's making a, that's a bunch of money. There's a bunch of money, but we're also using. Right.

You know, he's doing nine and ten pills in a shot. You know what I mean? And I'm doing four or five, you know, whatever. So it's a lot. Like, believe it or not, like, it's crazy. I want to be like, yeah, it's a lot of money. We made a lot of money. We had a lot of shit, but we are barely paying our fucking rent.

Right. Right, right. You know what I mean? Barely paying rent. Rent at that time was $8.50 for a three-bedroom house. You know what I mean? And we're barely making that because of our habits. So we did that for a long time.

And we had, you know, we had the whole setup. I had a fucking calendar at the house. And it would say this doctor and we only use this pharmacy. So then, you know what I mean? So every month we were doing that. Well, then eventually you meet pharmacists who are. For real, you know, like the expo boards and shit. So eventually you meet pharmacists and stuff like that who are dirty.

and then you just start buying scripts from them straight out without without any prescription. I met a pharmacist and really you just approach them, you know, and they can either say yes or no, you know? And so we approached them. We asked them if we could just start buying bottles, which a bottle would be 100, you know, pharmacy bottles is a bottle of 100 pills. And he was like, yeah, so he would sell them to us for cheaper,

but he would only let us have a certain amount of month. Yeah, but it's also monitors. So like what's he doing? Just shorting somebody a pill or two here? I have no idea. He would tell us, I can only sell you. I can only sell you nine bottles a month. That was it.

Because that's probably what he figured out. That's the most I can get away with. Because they were so, when you were filling your scripts, they were getting, you know, like a dollar a pill. But if he sold them to me, we'd pay him $3 a pill. Right. And then we'd go sell them at that time for $10 and 12. And, you know, what's funny is like,

honestly, like if that's what they're doing, like I was thinking, like if you get 30 pills in a bottle or something, like you never break it out and count the pills. Nope. You never break them out and count them. And most people don't take every single pill, especially when it comes to pain pillers. painkillers, unless you're an addict, of course.

But like if my father was to get a prescription for painkillers, he would have them left for years because he would literally only take them when he needed them. So I don't know what they were doing, but... Yeah, I guess you know what? He could be like if you had a script and you hardly ever came in, but the script was on file, he could just start filling those. And the insurance company or the person wouldn't know that their script had just been filled. And, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, you're right.

If he didn't run it through their insurance, because, like, I had a girl who walked prescriptions for me, so, and she had, she had Medicaid. So I'd take her to CVS. She'd use her Medicaid. It would cover the Roxy's Oxi's and Zanix fully. And then I'd take her to a mom and pop pharmacy because the pharmacies were not linked, and she wouldn't use her insurance. So she could run two scripts like that.

And she could use her insurance once and not use one. How much money would that be if you didn't have a habit? I mean, that would be. I would have to write it down to figure it out. it's so much money if you so at that time they were writing scripts for rocks you got to think oxycodones were they were writing them for like 240 a month and then they would couple them with like 90 oxycott and 80s and then you'd have like 90s annex so that a month if you're paying a dollar in the pharmacy a pill selling them for 10 and 12 at that time right millions yeah i i i wrote um well i wrote a story called

uh generation oxy uh for these kids i went to school with them you know the book I have it at home. I didn't realize that that was. And now that you're saying, now that you're saying Cox, I'm like, okay, obviously I've seen Matthew B Cox on my, on my, um, I have it right on my, my table. Doug Dodd. Yeah, I went to school with them. I'm a year behind them.

Oh, okay. I went to Hudson High with them. Yeah. What a, what a, like I met all of them except for Lance and I traded emails. The wildest one. Yeah, yeah. The wildest one. Traded emails with Lance through Dodd, through Doug.

So I was like, Doug, ask him this, do that. So we were going back and forth. But yeah, I wrote that. And I also wrote another story called Payne, which is a guy, there's a guy named Derek Nolan, and he was, do you know who the George brothers were? No. Okay, they owned the largest pain, the largest, whatever you want to say, franchise or whatever you want to call it, of pain management clinics in the country. I mean, 60, was it, was it, it was it, it was 60 million pills that they, they put out. They made like $60 or $70 million, and there were two twins.

Wow. And the guy that actually ran the clinics for him, his name was Derek Nolan. They've actually written a book about him. There's been a documentary about him. I wrote a story about him, which was like the only version of the story from him. But he was talking about just like, he was almost like a, he was a manager, but he was like the bouncer. He was like, you'd walk out into the, he was into the, like, the waiting area. He is, I mean.

people are sleeping on the floor people are dozing off because they just drove 12 hours from out of state right well and they're also on on pills i remember he had this one thing i'll just tell you this one thing we keep because it's just always cracked me up he said literally he had a doctor come to him one time and say so he uh he said like the food trucks would show up oh yeah and they'd show up to feed everybody and leave and he said so he said i he said one of the doctors came to him and said listen Derek i've got like Like, I've had multiple people, like the last, like, I've had like four or five people in the last, you know, two or three hours that have come in to get their scripts. And they've got like brown spots on them. It's not bruising. It's like dirt or something. I don't know what it is. Like I didn't want to say to it, but it's like three of them, three or four of them. And he goes, really?

He goes, well, he goes, what is it? And he's like, I have no idea. He goes, I'll check. So he goes into the visitation room and people are eating ice cream. And falling asleep. And they're falling asleep and hitting the ice cream. He goes, and they would wake up, they'd like, and they'd walk in with a big, a big brows. I could totally see it.

I totally see it. I've seen shit like that before. Yeah. He used to call them zombies. They were, yeah, because at that time, you know, they were calling them pill mills, obviously, because they were, they were seeing groups of people. Instead of, you know, you wouldn't just go in and have a conversation like with this to the doctor. They're seeing, they're seeing 10 at one time.

Is everybody okay? Okay, here's everybody's scripts because they were just trying to get as many in and out. No insurance accepted. Only cash. Only cash. No checks. No this. Dang. And then he said the cops.

First visit, $500. He said, and then the cops would sit, he said the cops would sit out outside. He said, and if you drove off and you had like an Alabama plate or whatever, an out-of-state plate and you were leaving, he said, boom, woo. They'd pull you right over, search your car. He said, and they'd always find something. Something. We, meth, crack, whatever. They'd always find something because, you know, if you're driving from Ohio down to Florida to get pain pills, it's probably not your only problem, you know, so.

Well, and, you know, he said he was explaining, like, how. He said, then it got to the point where we would test them to make sure they were taking them. So they would know to take one before they got there. I know people that would just drop it in their pee too. Oh, okay. Which I didn't even know something like that would work, but. Plus the MRIs. Like he would, he said they had a mobile MRI issue where they would say go.

It's a tractor trailer. No good. You got to go back over there. Go get one comeback. It's 1100 bucks. And they, I mean, it's just, it's such a fucking racket. It was crazy. But they met all the guidelines.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. all the guidelines. Oh yeah, totally. They totally do. It was just, it was just how, like the guidelines were so, it was at that time where the, I think, like, law enforcement and all that hadn't caught up with what was happening yet. Because they, yeah, of course, they were meeting the guidelines, but you can only put so many guidelines out there. All you have to do is get over it. If you just get around it. So I have to do this one thing. Yes. Okay, well, I did it. Great. Give me my pills.

And then when they stopped letting, you couldn't be out of state anymore, then they started getting out of state or in-state IDs. Like, I was letting people use, I would take people and let them, use my address to get a Florida ID to go to the doctor down here because that you know what I mean because they were like okay no more out of state you got to go you know whatever we don't take out of state patients people started losing their fucking mind

so it's it's terrible but yeah I went to school with Doug Dodd and them they were a little bit older than me but I definitely read the book my mom's read the book seriously that's awesome that's pretty cool bro Tommy the Generation Oxy I know I have it at home but I didn't know I didn't realized it was, I didn't realize Matt Cox was Matt Cox, I guess. You know, I didn't put it

together. You know what I mean? That's, that's super cool. I didn't put it together that he was the one who had read the book. I'm excited about that. That's like the first time. It was awesome. It was an awesome book. I think it was great. It's funny because some people, like the way that some people are described in the book, I know exactly who they are without their names being named. Like a friend of mine, I'm not even going to say her name. But yeah, I knew exactly who she was, they were talking about, Doug, how he described her. It was perfect. It was an awesome book. Yeah, it was, it was, Wow, what a pain in the ass Doug was to deal with.

This kid was just the... First of all, you know, he followed me around for like a week because I'd written another book from a guy named Ephraim Devereoli. And Ephraim Devereoli is Jonah Hill. He's played by Jonah Hill in the movie War Dogs. So I'd written his memoir. And so Doug had read parts of it

because he was like, they were... Their cells were close to each other. So then Doug came to him and was like, bro, you got to write my book. I was like, well, he don't even have a book. a fucking story. And I kept like brushing him off. And he was like, well, you told me. You don't even know my story. I'm like, well, you're, you're doctor shopping. Like, if I want a doctor shopper, I'm like, I could throw a rock and hit bounce off 10 guys, right? A hundred guys. You know,

because Coleman had a huge turnover too. So you're not talking about the same 1800 guys. You're talking about 3,000 new guys every year coming through. So I was like, it's not that big of a deal. I was like, well, you don't even know what it is. And I was like, and I remember thinking, you know, you're right. You know, opportunity knocks very softly sometimes. So don't be a dick, listen to him. So I listened to him, tell the story. And as he was telling the story, I thought, that's really not bad. It's a bad story.

Like, there were some great, like, there were some pretty cute things that I thought, you know, you're not gangsters. You think you're a bunch of a soft white kid that think they're tough guys. But you're not. You're really just a bunch of white trash guys that were grown in trailer parks and this and that. What's so funny is I said, look, okay, here's what I'll do. I'll write a synopsis. And if I can get some reporters interested in your story and get you into a magazine, like, I don't know, I said, like Rolling Stone or something like that, I said, then I'll write the book. And he's like, bro, you think you can do that?

I'm like, I don't know what I can do, bro. I'm in fucking federal prison. I got 20 years to go. I got plenty of time to see what I can do. Yeah. So I wrote a bunch of letters. I got a reporter involved and he put it, he put the story in Rolling Stone magazine. And we sold the book and optioned the film rights to it.

And I wrote, I wrote his whole book. But this kid, when he first came to me, he was begging me to write it. And at one point, he goes, bro, I'll give you half of everything, bro. And I went, I go, that was always going to happen. Yeah. You're not giving me something that was going to, wasn't, like, you're not offering me something. It's like, wow. Yeah.

Thinking. I'm writing it. Right. And he went, he's like, no, bro, come on. So I said, okay, well, write it like this, write it like that. And it was funny about that is when he started reading what I was writing. Because I'm taking an outline and I'm writing. I'm writing it in first person, so it's a memoir.

It sounds like he's writing it because he can't write his own book. Yeah. So I'm writing it. And as we're going through it, I'm writing it, he's like, bro, that, you know, honestly, you got to change some of this shit. And I'm like, like, what? It's like, like, you basically say that like I'm, we're a bunch of like, you know, trailer park trash guys or, you know, white trash.

Like you, I even named a, I even named one of the chapters, um, upper class white trash. I mean, and he was like pissed off. And so I said, and I went, he was like, you make you sound like I grew up in a trailer park and I went but he did but you did I said we grew up in Hudson right I went I mean Hudson's almost all trailer parks it's a lot and he's like no no and I'm okay you know this one story I told where did that happen well well yeah that was my buddy's my buddy's house like it was it a house he's a no it was a double wide trailer I said it was a double wide what about this story where did that happen well me that was a that was a single that was a single

white okay what about this one where did that guy live well he lived in a in a trail it was a trailer Park, he was trailer. What about this? So I named like six stories. And I said, Doug, where were you raised at this time? He's like, well, that was I was living there with my mom and I go, was it a house? He's like, well, no, no, it was a, it was a trailer. I go, okay. But I haven't always lived in trailers. And I get that. But let's face it. Yeah, it's beginning where it began though. Right. But see, people can't see themselves as themselves. Yeah, they have hard time accepting themselves. By the end of the book, by the end of the book, when he's read it, he's literally, guys would be like, Bro, so what's up with your story?

I mean, Cox is walking around. He's writing your story. Like, what's so great about your story? And Doug turns to the guy and goes, I mean, nothing, bro. I mean, we're just a bunch of, he goes, we're just a bunch of trailer park kids, you know, growing up and selling pills, man. And I looked at him and he was like, and he was like that, like, I was like, nice, it's perfect. Good. Reading that book, if you were not from there, reading that book, it describes it perfectly.

You get the picture perfectly. He owned it, though. It's so much better to own it. Mm-hmm. And he did. By the end of it, he owned it. He was, and listen, he was great. And that's what made the...

It is his story. It is. It's a great, and it's a great story. There's nothing embarrassing about where you came from. So what? It doesn't matter. And like Lance and Landon and them, they were like the kings anyway over there anyway. Right.

They were, they had more money than that. And they grew up at a trailer. Mm-hmm. And they were like big dogs. They, yeah. Their parents caught them out of everything. Listen, they were... Huh?

They owned a homeless shelter. Yeah. Yeah. But not just that. You know, like, listen. Um, was it Landon? Landon's older. Um, so what, okay, no, no, the, the middle one, um, not the, so Lance, Lance, who's the oldest?

I think Landon's the oldest. Lance is the youngest, I think. No, the oldest guy I met him. I'm talking about the, um, yeah, it was, it was Landon. No, there's a, there's a third brother. But the one that I met in, uh, he was an amazing athlete. The black guys, like they had like a relay, they had races. They did, this, he was killing every.

And I mean, the black guys were calling them the white knight. They were like, that fucking white boy. Like, he was. Was it Richard? Yeah. Was it Richard Sullivan? No, no, no. It wasn't Richard.

Richard was the one that went to California to try and be like a porn star, right? So it wasn't, yeah. Yeah, that's Richard. Yeah. You gotta love that. Yeah, he's back now, but yeah, yes. I forgot about that. Yeah.

This was one of the brothers. Yeah. But he was, he was like a great, he got his tooth knocked out. Remember he got his tooth knocked out? I'm trying to see I didn't know landing because he was older so Lance went to school with me and I'm trying to believe their older brother was it was definitely it was land and they have an older brother but he he was barely even in the story yeah I can't I don't know I'm sorry I got off track because I'm excited because it's about me yeah so anyway so anyway you were saying it's a good

story it is a great story it really and you grew up there that's great I don't know I don't know I'd have to ask Amanda in them I have the book around here somewhere um yeah definitely So, okay, so you're, well, wait, how old were you when you're actually writing the scripts at this point? So I had to have been like 19, I guess, because I would have went to jail, did my little six months and got out. So I had to be about 19, maybe turning 20. And going to jail for six months, that's the, that's for the petty thefts. Just, but I was, you know, stealing to use pills and stuff, you know, my boyfriend at that time before my boyfriend with the scripts had gone to jail. And so I was like, oh, how am I going to support my addiction now?

You know, I'm not working because who works when they're, you know, that far. a new an addiction. It's almost impossible. Right. So I wasn't working. You know, I didn't have anybody that was providing me pills anymore. So I started stealing all the time. And that's what I started doing. And we didn't go to jail the first time. Didn't go to jail the second time. And then the third time, of course, they went to jail. Yeah, they get tired of it. Yeah. So then they gave me, it was like, I would been in there for like a month. And they offered to give me like, I don't, can't remember. It was like two and a half years probation. And I was just like, what? And my lawyer was like, you could get, I could get you

six months in here. So I was like, let's just do it. And I was a trustee. I was out in like four or whatever so that was easy so you don't want to do two and a half because you'll you can't you basically have to take piss test yeah yeah and misdemeanor probation was really easy but i had already been on it and violated it for this for with another petty theft so i was like i don't want to do it i'll just i've already been in i got two months in i only got to do like two and a half more months whatever so i just did it and you know of course it wasn't enough it wasn't anything it was a joke i was a trustee i did laundry got special treatment all that shit so it was nothing I got out, started dating the kid or the dude

that was 17 years older than me and then we were writing the fake scripts so eventually how that came to an end was we were like down on our ass by this time we had moved out of our home we weren't you know we hadn't paid our rent our electric a guy shut off whatever and I was staying with a friend of mine Stephanie

and she was a pain pill addict as well and she had an infant son and we all were living together whatever we would give her pills and you know whatever we all took care of each other well one day we all woke up and she was really dope sick we were all dope sick but we only had enough pills for me and my boyfriend and we were going to a doctor's appointment so I told her I was like I'll take the baby with me you just stay here relax we'll be back it's a it's a you know it's just a follow-up visit in and out we'll be right back come down we drive down to Pinellas County go back by the time we get back when I have her son with me okay my house appears to have looked like it was robbed but it wasn't the only thing missing was my laptop with my script formats on it that she turned into the pawn shop right so when she sold it to the pawn shop they because she sold it to them she didn't pawn

it so when she sold it to them they immediately went in there to clean it out and seen script formats on there and called the cops so then the cops were looking for her for a few weeks and they eventually caught up to her and she told on us and that's how it all came down that's how that came down yeah that's how that came down so we found out how much time did you where they they come they came in they arrested you they they they call you nicely on the phone and say we please come by the so i had seen that she had got i had seen that she had got busted so i already knew i was like oh fuck you know so you know so they didn't knock on the door say hey listen no no so they um so she i had knew she got busted or whatever and arrested i was like great she's probably gonna

fucking telling us whatever but we didn't really know for sure that she told on us we didn't At this time, I didn't even know. I already, in the moment you said she got busted, she's on drugs, she got, you're telling. Like, I got to get out of this. So at this time, I didn't even know yet about the pawn shop yet, though. Like, I didn't know they were the ones who had called the cops. I thought she had just somehow got caught.

Did you realize, like, when you came home, did you realize, like, did you know immediately? Like, she's telling you the store and you're like, oh, okay, okay. But you're really thinking, oh, I knew immediately was her. Oh, yeah, because I knew it was immediately it was her, because if somebody robbed my house, I had plenty of other things to rob. Right. My printer was sitting right next to it. Right.

She didn't take that. They didn't take that. I had a, you know, just like a fire safe that you would keep your paperwork in in my room. Right. Full of jewelry. You literally could drop it on the ground and it's going to bust open. Anybody who's robbing a house is going to check. I don't care if you think it's paperwork or not.

You're checking that little safe. So I know what I mean? There's TVs there. There's just, it's just, it's just, she just dumped drawers and shit to make it look like something to throw it. But the only thing missing is some cheap-ass laptop. Bullshit. Right. You know, bullshit.

So I knew it was her immediately. so she took her son she left we ended up going different ways whatever she gets busted goes to jail so at this time I still didn't know that the pawn shop was the one who had called the police and all that and that's how they found her I thought that maybe they had investigated a pharmacy

seen that her scripts that she had been walking for me were fake or whatever so she tells on us me and my boyfriend at the time we're going to one of his doctor's appointments it's in Tampa we get there I'm sitting out in the waiting room he goes in he comes back out and he's like we got to go now

And I'm like, what? He's like, we got to go now. We get in the car, we leave. He tells me that they had him in the back. He was sitting in the back, waiting for the doctor for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then one of the nurses or whatever comes in and says, hey, look, Pascoe Sheriff's office was here inquiring about you. They told us when you came back for your visit to call them to come,

because they need to see you. They need to come get you. We called them. We've been waiting. If you want to go, go. That's what they told him. So he went. They're investigating you for trafficking, is what they said.

We can't see you. You have to leave. Trafficking pills? Pills, yeah. Like distribution? Yeah. Like, yeah, like traffic. Drug trafficking.

Because at that time, the law in trafficking was just how many pills you had. You know, like if you had, I can't remember the count. Wait. Yeah, it was by weight. So if you had so much weight in pills, it was considered trafficking, whether you were making a deal or not. Right. It was just if you had that much weight on you, it's trafficking. It's just the term, I mean, the term trafficking to me.

Look, look, like in the feds, like they have certain terms they use in the state. Like, for instance, you would never get charged. with running a boiler room or conspiracy to run a boiler room in the feds like they don't have that's not a charge it would be you know they have like it would be wire fraud or it would be mail fraud or it would be or it'd be a financial institution fraud like they have different names for it even though you're running a boiler room but then in the state if they charge you they actually have a charge called you know like conspiracy to commit you know or to run a boiler room yeah and so the same thing with trafficking like you're saying trafficking trafficking in the feds is

is distribution yeah it is it that's what i mean by state too they just like so it'll be her his would have been trafficking and controlled substance okay and then you know if and then they would put the amount if it would have been cocaine trafficking cocaine right you know what i'm saying so but it is distribution how i was gonna say that how bad is that how bad like how it used to so when at what what year was that like 2011 and this is him this is just him that's just they don't know you're there so it's probably maybe the same thing for you? I wasn't seeing doctors. Right. I didn't have an MRI. But is it the same thing? Like, is that what happened later? They were also looking for you? Yeah, they were also looking for me.

So, um, so they tell him he's being investigated for trafficking, so we leave. So how did he even get arrested? Oh, at another doctor. Wait, no. How did Michael even get arrested? Court. Okay. So then we're on, okay, so now we know that the cops are looking for us for trafficking. So we're like, whatever, we're not going to call them and say, let's come talk to you. Because obviously, Obviously, we know they have some type of evidence. They were at one of his doctors. They were at one of his doctors, so they have some type of evidence. They know what he's been up to.

So we're just- What's the evidence? They've got the girl, and they do have the laptop. The laptop's yours. But the laptop was mine, but it has all these scripts on them, which are fake scripts, but they all mimic real doctor prescriptions, which I was copying from his real doctor visits. So they're going there, and they go there, they check with them. But also, she, I believe when she told, she told them.

Like, you know, Andrea Carswell and Michael Nolan. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. It's who I've been living with. I know that. So. But that's still just her word. Yeah, so then, but if they're going to investigate and see, you know what I mean? And then they look at CBS and see that Michael Nolan, Andrea Cariswell, and Stephanie were running these scripts.

They're all fake. Right. And the doctor didn't write them. We talked to him. Yeah. The doctor didn't write them. She's got the stuff on her software. She puts it together.

Okay. Yeah, it's pretty, it's, you have an issue. But the laptop, mind you, the laptop didn't have anything to prove it was mine either. Right. So they couldn't prove that the laptop was mine. it just, they just informed them to go find her. Yeah. Which all worked out for them.

Yeah. You're still done. Yeah. So we're, you know, just me and Michael continue to do our same thing. We're living the same. We're just, you know, one less doctor now because they won't see us. You know what I mean? It's how we think it's going.

So he is at the time going to court for a misdemeanor. Like driving on suspended, something really stupid. He's been to prison before and it was something, it was really dumb, but he was going to court for it. And he ended up taking a 60 day. plea, which now looking back why the F will we ever go and take a 60 day plea? Why would you go to court?

Knowing they're looking. Did you not have that discussion? Like, do you think maybe there's a warrant out, they're looking for us, and they're going to know we're going to be at court? This is like 11 years, 12 years ago now. I'm trying to remember like the series of events of how it went down.

I remember though he went to court. He took a 60 day plea because then after he was in jail for a week is when they came and charged him with trafficking, talked to him and asked him where I was. Right. so I'm yeah I was gonna say I just can't remember what the fuck because I remember going to the doctor them telling them looking for him for trafficking then he went to court for the misdemeanor he took 60 days in yeah that's how it went he took 60 days in and then after he was there a week they came and hit him with three counts of trafficking a few counts of obtaining controlled substance by fraud that's you know getting fake scripts using fake scripts and then he had called me from jail and was like hey you know they're looking for you asking where you're at I was staying at some house that somebody was letting me stay there

with fucking rats in it and shit you know that thing because I had nowhere else to go I couldn't be at my parents' house with cops looking for me I was so strung out on the needle it was ridiculous I was barely making it

and that's where the cops ended up finding me in the house in that house they ended up raining me at like 7 o'clock in a fucking morning I was 90 pounds

they threw me on the floor face down I saved your life yeah yeah I always love these guys yeah you can definitely look at it like that

yeah so they came in at like 7.30 in the morning, you know, of course, guns and masks and, you know, the whole. I know, like you're, I don't understand. You're a terrorist that they were, like they're checking down a terrorist organization. And I mean, they, you know, it's, they said that they had been tapping my phone and I guess they heard me say something about having a gun at the house and stuff like that, but ridiculous. So when they, anyway, when they busted in and raided me, they had, I had no pills. Not, not any pills on me. I was actually dope sick at the time. All they found was a bag of, like, used needles.

you know, and my empty prescription paper that I was technically allowed to have at that time. It wasn't illegal to have, so they took me to jail and it was just like, they charged me with three counts of trafficking, they charged me with obtaining controlled substance by fraud, and then I had some, like, deal and stolen properties that was just

like pawned and stolen shit. And it was crazy because I was like, how are you charging me? She says, you know, like if I had a dime for every time I fucking... Deal of sole property. Everybody, everybody, you guys, You know what that is.

Okay, so, yeah, so, I went to fucking jail. I remember being like, how am I being charged with trafficking? Like, first of all, you didn't even catch me with a pill on me. You've never caught me with a sale, hand-to-hand sale. How am I being charged with trafficking? And I was told that because of the amount of pills I obtained by fraud, that it was no way I could be using all those pills. Right.

But, I mean, I absolutely could have been. If I wanted to, I mean, who's to say? You don't know, you know, whatever. you'd have to have a massive tolerance you'd have to be but if you think about like the scripts that are in my name you know like the scripts that are in my name i could have easily used those i want to be on your side i want to there's it's not happening it's like it's like when they come and they say you know we we found five gallons of blood and we can't find jimmy and we have it's his blood and they're like we're going to charge you with murder how you don't have a body

Because he can't live without this much blood. So, you know, I hear you. But yeah, sorry. Yeah, so they charged me to trafficking, which I still didn't get because I was like, I didn't, you know, whatever. And I ended up beating the trafficking. They ended up dropping them. Or they administrative count closed them, whatever the hell that means. They like pretty much told me.

So that you pled. So in order to get you like it's a plea, right? No, they, no, it wasn't a plea. You went to trial? No, no, they, they, administrative count closed is this is what they told me. They said they close it, but they can really. Reopen it at any other end in time if they ever found new evidence to support the trafficking charge, which I'm like, well, you're never going to do that. So of course I accepted that. I took my, I had like, I want to say like aid of training controlled substance by fraud and four dealing and stolen property. So I had never been on felony probation in Florida anywhere in my life. These are my first felonies I ever got. I was 19 years old when I was arrested, 20 when I was getting sentenced. And my first offer was five years in state prison. And I was like, what?

You know, I've only done six months in the county jail before that for Ms. Meanor, never been on felony probation, never been to a drug rehab, never, never done drug court, never done any of these things. What do you mean five years in prison? I'm 20 years old, you know, like what? I was so scared. And, you know, my public defender at the time was like,

you're not going to get five years. The first offer's always crazy, da-da-da-da-da. So I ended up getting it down. I sat in jail for like six or seven months, and I ended up getting what's called like a split sentence. And so they gave me 18 months in, followed by 24 months probation. So I did the 18 months in. Well, you've already done.

Six months. Okay, so you already did six months. Six months. Plus you get gain time. Plus you get gain time, yeah. You went in for six months? That's not even worth unpacking. The gains have no count when it goes to state.

Yeah, when it goes to state. So the six months, you don't get gain time off the six months from county. Oh, you see what I'm saying? It starts from the day I get in prison from DOC. So the longer in county, the longer you're fucking. Fucked. Especially when you get a short sentence. Like six months on an 18-month sentence is pretty average.

People sit in jail for six months before they get sentenced. You know, that's pretty average. Yeah, and the feds is like a year, yeah. Yeah, so that's just drags. That was fine. I did that. But when I went to, when I got to prison, my first day, when I walk into reception, I'm informed that I'm a youthful offender.

How old are you? I was 20. I was 21. No, it's 21 when I made it to DOC. I was 21, but youthful offender in the state of Florida is 24. and under. Really? After the age of 18, the state can decide if they want to put you in general population

or if they want to keep you in YO status till your 24, till your 24th birthday. So you have 24. So what does that mean? Boot camp. It's boot camp. And it's like, fucking. So you're in prison with the regular, with the general population. I already don't want to be here.

Do I have to really march and get screened out constantly? So now I have to be with 15, 16, 16, 17 year olds who are doing life. who are absolutely fucking wild. For pills? No, just for murder or whatever. You know, they're just in prison. But because they're minors, they have to be in the Y.O program. And since I was 12.

And you weigh, you're what, 5-2, 5-3? Yeah, probably 5-3. And you weigh 115? 150. Probably by that time, yeah, 115, 120 pounds. So I'm like great. So I'm like, great, you know. I'm like walking up, I can hear, I'm like walking through the compound to the prison

and like the Y-O dorms back here and the windows are open because you don't have AC in state. and it sounds like a fucking animal shelter you know it sounded like a jungle in there and I just remember thinking oh my God this is going to be hard as fuck because I knew people in prison already I'd been in jail and on the streets with people

who were in state prison but not in a YO so I get to this YO I have to wear this yellow shirt with these crazy color train conductor hats which is like signifies your level in the program and your privilege we march we chant everything is done together

it's it was hard it was rough so after that you were like you were probably thinking like you know what the military is for me no i'm going in the military no i was like no exact opposite after that she was probably thinking you know what the military life is for me yeah i need to yeah right

i actually do well in like environments like that believe it or not but which i think it's from prison now at that time i didn't i do now but oh yeah like i'm i'm much better if i'm on a some kind of a super like a schedule and I'm more something more regiment I plan everything like I plan what I'm going to do I was just thinking I was only once the only because it relates to you this is funny we were going to after I'd been locked up I was transferred one time to go back to court and when I was we went through a transfer center now I've already been locked up like seven years so all the fright

and the scariness and everything a prison is just like whatever bro yeah like it's over so we were transferred and then they transfer you know they'll take you from a bus here drive you for six hours put you here for two days get you on another bus to go here so we get off and I remember there are these guys do they give us our our blanket and our no pillow just a blanket and your other bullshit and your stuff and you walk into your cell and it's like 1130 at night and there are guys so there's like eight of us and as we're walking through the on the second tier and the guards are saying like okay this is your cell this is their the guys are on the windows bang, and like, bam, put them in here, put them in here. And guys are fucking terrified. And I'm sitting there, like, laughing. I'm like, like, I'm watching the guys

and I'm thinking like, like, I've been in seven years. Yeah. Like, this guy, you're good. Matter of fact, put me in with him. Because he's funny. Like, for you to be pulling this shit at 11.30 at night.

Like, I get it. These guys are, guys are literally almost pissing their pants. Like, oh my God, oh my God. I go, bro, you're in a, this is a low holdover. These aren't pin guys. You're fine.

You're fine. And they're like, oh, bro, I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. They're fucking with you. Yeah. It'll be fine. Yeah, they're absolutely fucking with you.

But it's terrifying. Like you at this initially, it's literally just uncontrollable shaking like, what's going to happen? That's how I felt. It wasn't like, like, I wasn't scared. Like I didn't think, oh my God, I'm going to die. Right. Like I was just like, great.

This is going to be hard. I'm going to have to fight. I'm going to be in confinement because I've heard about YOs. I've already heard about them. Like I said, you know. They're worth some adult prisons. Because they haven't, well, they don't have anything to lose and they haven't fully matured.

Yeah. So they don't, you know, there's still children in an environment where they have, you know, authority and all that. It's like being a 19 year old. Like at 19, I would drive 130 miles an hour in my Ford, in my Ford 5.0 GT. You know what I would do that. Like now if you said, here Matt, get in this car and drive 120, I'd be like, are you your fucking mind?

Yeah, because you just, you know better now. Anything goes wrong. I'm dead. You're smarter. Right. So I was just, it was more like fear of like, how hard this is going to be. I'm going to constantly in confinement. I'm never going to be able to talk to my mom. She's going to be upset, yada, yada, yada. So I get there, and it ends up not being

that bad. I mean, it was wild. I kind of just stayed in my own lane, though. Like I said, I was 21. I didn't know anybody in the program, and a lot of them had to go to school still and stuff. You know, they went to school all day. I didn't do that. So I stayed in the dorm and worked because I didn't have to go to school. And eventually, I did get into a fight with a why oh girl because she stole my my ID tag and in state prison your ID tag is your money right that's how you go to the store and she could absolutely have used it and spent my money because all she has to do is pay the canteen worker to let her use my card I knew it was her because I had seen her I had kept it under my mattress when I slept and she slept next to me and for some reason I seen her next to my bed and

I was like what are you doing she's like oh tuck in your blanket over here that's so sweet of you yeah I mean all inmates are taking yeah I'm like don't tuck my bed I don't need you tuck my bed got my own bed you know so I knew it was her and she was like I ain't got your tag I don't have your tag and it was this whole thing and I was like if you don't give me my shit back by pine we get back from chow from breakfast we're gonna have to fight you know all these yos see what's going on I can't can't be punked like this yeah yeah you know what I'm saying fuck that they'll be eating out of my locker after this yeah so I ended up so we get back she still wants to deny that we don't have the tag so she went to swing on me first I ducked it and hit her and we fought

and then you know they said one time so here comes the cops we jumped off each other the cops had already seen it. They could see it through the bubble. That's why they were coming, but I didn't want to get pepper sprayed. Right. So we jumped off each other. They asked us what happened. I was like, you know, it's just a disagreement. She tells them, she tells them, she thinks I stole her ID tag. Well, dumbass, we already got into a fight. They're already going to take both of us to confinement. They're going to search both of our stuff. Right. They're going to find my tag in her shit, but we still both went to confinement, which I was fine with. I didn't give a shit. So I went to confinement. The only thing that sucked about it was it was my first

Thanksgiving and Christmas away from home. I had never been away from my family for Thanksgiving and Christmas and I was in confinement. So I couldn't even speak to them, couldn't even do nothing, didn't even have a fucking pen to write them a letter. You know? You know, it's so funny. It's like, it's all this

like drugs and stealing and doing this and doing that and doing this. But the thing is, you know, you're still just a 20 year old girl. Yeah. And I still, no matter how many. I got to talk to my mom. It's like, what do you? You know, it's like these guys are like robbing banks and getting into car chases and then being concerned if they can see their mother. Their mothers, yeah. What's like the disconnect there is just insane.

So I couldn't write them or nothing, but then I get out of confinement. You know, you don't get it. Most of the time you don't get any extra time. Sometimes you lose gain time, but not really for fights because they happen so much. Yeah, confines the shoe, right? Yeah, yeah, confinement's a shoe.

Yeah, they just call it confinement in state, though. So I did that. And in confinement in state, since I was a YO, I could only have a YO, bunky. So for part of the time, I didn't have a bunkey at all in confinement, which some people say they like, but I'll lose my fucking mind if I don't have somebody to talk to, you know? So I had somebody, a girl came in with me and we made like a little Christmas tree out of like paper and hung it on the wall and it was fine. I got out and the first day I'm out of confinement, I'm back

in my dorm and my sergeant calls me to the window and says, pack your stuff, you've been classified, you're going to general population. I have no idea why. He had no idea why. I still have no idea why. Probably because, well, clearly she's willing to fight. So, but yeah, I don't know. So, and when they said that, I was like, holy shit. So I start packing my shit. I'm all excited.

So you were excited because you figured that's better than this. I need to be with the adults. I need to be with adults. Well, keep mind, the whole time I was locked, like when I was in the U.S. Marshall's holdover, like, I'm thinking I'm better off here than I am in a prison. But everybody, guys that had been in before, like, they're literally saying, but I can't wait to get to prison. Like, what?

Like, what do you want to go to prison? Like, to me, that's Shawshank, you know. But they're like, no, bro, it's so much better. You can get ice cream. You can watch movies. You can do, you can get a job. You can do, it's like. You live life.

Yeah, you can kind of have a little life in there. Sense of normalcy. But in, yeah. In county, you don't have shit. No. And then YO, it's like I said, it's like boot camp, you know. Yio, it was, it was fine. Like, I could have got through it.

I would have got through it. But I was super excited to be declassified and go to general population and be with adults and be with people I knew. and when that happened all the other wiles were like how did you do it how did it happen i said i have no idea i didn't do anything you know what i mean they just did it so then i go over to the um the general or the other the annex of the prison which was another part of the prison where they keep you know general population i was there for one night and i was sent up to a private facility in the panhandle called gadsden which at that time was probably the best women's facility in florida had the most reentry

programs had the most vocational programs had a dog program it was it was good it was good to be there it was far from my family but it was like a breath of fresh air right um i ended up going to school um i graduated high school i have a high school diploma so in in state prison if you don't have a high school diploma they make you just go to school to get try to get your GED not everybody's successful but you at least have to go to school i know i taught gED yeah so some of those guys are just not getting their not getting it some of them We're not getting it. So I didn't want to work in the kitchen, though.

There is something about prison kitchen. I didn't want to do it. So I was like, you know what? I want to go to school. Well, in order to get into certain vocational classes, your tape tests have to be certain points, you know. So I would always pick like a vocation that my math was a little low on. So then I would have to go to GED class to bring my math grade up to get on the list for

vocational. And that's how I did it. I went to school all the time in prison. Both times I was in prison. I stayed in school. So you just kept picking things. I just kept going back to like high school pretty much in prison. Really?

Like I would pretty much go to the GED classes to try to get, I would need to get my math score up to get into, let's say, AutoCAD. And then what? Once you got there, you'd switch it? Yep. I'd go on to the, well, I'd go on the AutoCad waiting list, and you'd still stay in your regular class and wait for your, wait for your vocational. Okay.

Yeah, I mean, it's, let's just work in the system. Like, I kept entering the residential drug treatment, uh, program and Coleman so they would so they wouldn't ship me. I wanted to stay at the low because my mom could see me there and she was only an hour away but the closest camp was like Miami or fuck I don't even know it was that one was in like Georgia so that's like a four hour drive so I'll never see her so I kept entering the drug program and staying so they would keep me in the program they keep me there and then I would drop out and then three months later when they said okay you're going to be shipped like oh I can I got to

go back to the drug program. I already, you know, I'd go back in. I did that for like, I did it twice, but it really covered almost two years. It kept me at the prison. Just work in the system. Mm-hmm. I just didn't want to work in the kitchen, man. That was it. That was it. And I did want to do vocational classes. You know, I mean, I did graduate high school. I do have an education. I do have goals, but I wanted to do some vocation. But at that time, when I went to prison the first time, I own, like I said, I only had 18 months. Half my sentence was almost over. There's no vocational classes you can do. Plus some of the vocational, like, like to me, the vocational ones at Coleman, it's like, you go there and you learn how to be like,

you know, how to run a restaurant. Well, I'm never running a restaurant. Yeah. You know, or you go and you're horticulture. Like, okay, I'm not going to be a farmer. Yeah. See, I did horticulture. Right. See, but to me that, all that helps you to do is start a grow house. Yeah, if I wanted to do that, which I'm not, which I don't have, I don't have, there's nothing I'll use my horticulture certificate for. Right. I do have a friend, Jessica, who did AutoCad. She was actually on Josh's channel. She did AutoCad and she is a drafter now. See, that's awesome. That's awesome because most people don't use it for anything.

She has such a great career now from that. It's crazy. It's crazy. I couldn't even tell you how much money she makes. She was really good at it, and it was a really great opportunity for her. But AutoCAD was super hard to get into, and it takes a long time. And she had a seven-year sentence. So she was able to do that.

But most vocation, yeah, no. Because, you know, cosmetology is good for women. That's a good one. A lot of women want to do that in prison, but then a lot of them don't do it when they get out. they think they want to do it but then they don't well i was just going to say um some of the guys like like we did we taught uh g ed there was this kid is i only know his last name was smith a black guy named smith just sold drugs his whole life never had a real job just sold drugs but didn't even and it was g ed never he dropped out of high school like or whatever like eighth grade or

something and but he he was amazing at math like didn't even know it and then when he graduated. He then came back. Like my buddy, Zach and I were like, look, you got to have, the next guy you hire for math has to be Smith. Yeah. Like he's already teaching the other, she's already teaching the other kids. And he had no idea. Or the guys. Yeah. Came back. And I mean, that kid was him and there was another black guy there too who had dreads. They were both brilliant. And they loved it. And they actually had books sent from outside. And it was like, like to me, there's no way ever, ever. I'm going. going to be thrilled about math me either but they loved it and it's like it's like wow

these guys could like they could have been something you know what I'm saying if they hit but you know most people go to prison you know they go to the rec yard and come back and there there's almost no vocational training there's no way to try and rehabilitate themselves they get out they sell drugs they come back like it's just such a shitty system yeah because because like I said you know unfortunately for those vocational classes first of all they take most of them take at least you know even like cosmetology I think is like a six month vocational and that's short okay then it takes what a year or two to even get in to get into it so then most people aren't even spending that long in prison because if you get a three year prison

sentence and you spent six months in county and by the time you get to your main camp after being an r-and-o for two and a half months three months by the time you get to your main camp and can get on the waiting list it's too late yeah we used to say that all the time guys would come in with six months we'd be like that's not even worth unpacking no just chill you're just going to sit around you might start reading some books bro just just relax because it's not not so I um because they'll be putting you in halfway house in a month they're going to put you in for a halfway house a month after that you're going to be gone you've literally that you're down to two months oh yeah in the feds yeah because you go to i forget you go to halfway houses and stuff yeah and your split sentence is every single every federal sentence is a split sentence like i you know people are like oh you did this much time yeah i also have five more years paper when i get out it's not probation it's just paper that if you do anything wrong you go right back to prison but they don't consider it part of your incarceration you sentence. That's crazy. Ridiculous. That is ridiculous. Technically, my

sentence was 26 years and five years. I technically got a 31 year sentence. But I don't say that because then you have to explain it to everybody. Yeah. And then they're, oh, you're lying. Yeah. All right. I'm done. So, I'm on probation. But anyway, so yeah. So, okay, so I did that. I, you know, just stayed in school, whatever. Like we said, it was only,

I was only there a few months, I guess. And because I ended up sign up for work release, which work release in Florida is where when you still have a certain amount of time you can go to a program and you go out in the community and you get a regular job you wear regular clothes you have all those privileges and you go get a regular job and you get paid now how much do you get to keep about after all said and done

probably 30% and that's being nice but it's better than nothing right absolutely it's better than being in prison I would be in the halfway house and guys were bitched because they'd take 33 or 30, well, no, in the halfway house, they'd take like 30% or 35% of like everything you made, guys would be bitching and moaning. And I'd be, I mean, bro, as opposed to, like, I mean, they are feeding you. They are clothing you. They are keeping, well, not clothing you, but they're keeping a, like, look, like 30%.

That should be paying an apartment. So, yeah, the work release, when I was in work release, they took, the work release program itself took 55% off the top. And then they made you, they took 10% that they distributed to. court costs, fines, whatever. So now you're at 65%. If you have child support, it automatically gets taken out

because obviously you're working. If you don't have child support but have children, the work release center makes you send money to the caregiver of your children, regardless if you have to pay child support or not. So if you have kids and don't have child support, now you're looking at like 75% they've taken.

But like we just discussed, you wouldn't have shit if you were in prison. Right. It also sets you up for after prison. it gives you you know goals stuff to work for stuff to stay doing good for so i mean it was it was fine i did that i went there i did that for six months i think i did maybe four months something like that and i got out of prison nothing nothing happened to while i was there i didn't lose anybody you know it was kind i don't want to say it was like a joke because it wasn't a joke i didn't think it was a joke i didn't

take it that way i knew it was serious but it wasn't enough for me to be done with what i was doing when I got out it was the same the boyfriend that I went to jail or prison with for the fake prescriptions he picked me up

with my parents we immediately started using again yeah we immediately started using again and I was re-arrested 67 days later 67 days yeah and I went back for five years

holy what was that what was that arrest so just get caught with a bunch of pills or no so when we got out we started using again and my and he had

now he had been to prison three times prior or two times prior two times prior at that time so when we got out we what he wanted what he used to do and had been to prison before is he would drive around neighborhoods look for open garages

and steal generators pressure washers anything that you could grab and get quickly for money right yeah and it was like a whole thing so that's what we were doing and obviously you know going to the doctor and stuff like that but I believe you couldn't doctor shop anymore by the time I got out of prison

in the first time. Where were you selling them? You're taking these and sell them? To pawn shops. Oh, okay. So when I'm using, and like when I'm like in my active addiction and I'm using and shit, I don't care about the repercussions as long as they're not right then. Right, of course.

I could give a fuck about credit card fraud, get me on camera. I don't care as long as you catch me later. I could give a fuck about giving you my ID at the pawn shop. Catch me later. As long as I get this money right now and go get my pills. I don't care. Plus most drug addiction in general. Yeah, I don't care about.

The addiction is so overwhelming. That you just don't care. So, yeah, so we were doing that. We were selling them at the pawn shop. We were at a pawn shop. Selling something and the person we had stole it from pulled up at the pawn shop. Trying to buy a new generator. No, it was like looking for their shit, I guess, you know.

So we drove off out of there, hauled ass, because obviously the pawn dealer was like, I'm going to call the cops. So we hauled ass. I actually called Tommy and was like, what the fuck do I do? How do you know Tommy at this point? You're dating the other guy. So I grew up with Tommy's family. And his sisters, his younger sisters are my age. And they're the family that live two houses down from me.

Oh, the troublemakers. Well, they're not the troublemakers, but they were just a big family. Yeah. So, yeah, so they're the family. So I grew up with his brothers and sisters. So I had, his mom, I had been calling mom since I was 13 years old. You know, they were my family. So I called Tommy and I'm like, what do I do?

they're going to go to my mom's house. I just got out of prison. They're going to go to my mom's house. And Tommy was like, well, you either can run and they're going to go to your mom's house or you can go back to the pawn shop. It's up to you. He's like, that's your two options.

I mean, what else do you want? He's like, come meet me right now. I'll take you back up there. So I went and met Tommy. I went back to the pawn shop, tried to give the cops some lie. You know, it didn't work. I end up going to jail.

So I'm going to jail. They're asking me where Michael is because he didn't go back with me. Right. And we also had a stolen vehicle that we'd been driving around for a month. So Tommy takes me back. They take me to jail.

Yeah. Just a little grand theft auto. I'm worried about a little GTA. Whatever. Yeah. Everybody's done that. All these felonies, she just keeps. Yeah.

You know, and, you know. Well, I wasn't my grand theft auto. You're driving around in it. So I get, okay, so I get arrested. They're taking me to jail for dealing and stolen property. Tommy goes to leave the pawn shop They're looking for Michael

I'm telling him I don't know where he is I jumped out of the car Got with Tommy whatever Tommy goes to leave They follow Tommy Tommy meets Michael And they bust in Michael Right

So because Tommy is going to get Michael He's on foot So Tommy's going to pick Michael up To take him So they pull the car over So Michael calls me I tell Michael Andrew's going to jail bro

I'm on my way out of the pawn shop now I got a pocket full of pills But I go to the doctor So I'm good Right. And your leg was broke at that time. And my legs broke at the time. So he's like, boy, you got to come pick me up. They found a blazer when I was trying to watch you guys at the pawn shop.

This, that the other day. I said, well, listen, I don't think it's a good idea for me to come get you right now. Give me like 30 minutes. Let me shake these cops because I know they're following me. They think I'm going to come get you anyways. I guarantee it. No, bro. Bro, please don't leave me here.

I'm stuck. Tommy, please don't leave me. Please don't leave me. Right? I slide over to Home Depot, pick him up. Bam, detective. Oh, and down Scenic Drive over in Pasco. And I start seeing all these unmarked cars, Mark cars, all this.

I said, bro, the fit of pull us. You're going to jail. You want to get out and run and try? Well, they're not going to pull this, bro. They don't know. He was an idiot. Next thing you know, bro, cops are jumping medians, okay, to pull this over, turn it on the 19 off of Scenic Drive.

And Jasmine went Jasmine up to the... 19. And when I tell you there was 35 cops that surrounded us, I'm not bullshit. It was ridiculous. for dealing in stolen poverty. You're trying to get me out of the car and throw me on the ground. I said, man, you know who the fuck I am. You ain't after me. The fuck off me.

You ain't throwing me on the ground. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like one car with a light when you were to pull just, oh, look, we're pulling over. Like, I'm not getting to a high speed chase with you. For you, when it's not anything to do with me. Like, it had nothing to do with Tommy. Tommy was just taking me because I was so shook up and so scared.

Yeah. And it's crazy because I'm my boyfriend's with me. Instead of saying to him, what do I do? I called somebody. Obviously, I didn't. He can't trust this motherfucker. No, he's done her a lot, yeah. He can't make a good decision.

Obviously, he picks up and calls Tommy and says, come get me. The cops are behind me. They're around. We would have left state right then. Just come get me. All right, bro. I mean, the drugs are just completely fucking got you delusional. Yeah.

And of course I didn't want to go back to the pawn shop and turn myself in. But the thought of the cops swarming my parents' house after I had only been out of prison two months. Two months, I couldn't. Right. I couldn't. It just was too much for me. It really was. And I would have loved to say that, like, I didn't go back, but I did.

I went back. I turned myself in. He takes me to jail. I get arrested. I got another 12 felonies. Just for drugs? Well, one was a violation of probation because I was on probation for the first prison sentence. Right.

Then I had dealing and stolen properties and false information to pawnbrokers, but I had so many. So it was like another 10 or 12 felonies I got with a violation. So I'm in jail. and obviously I don't have a bond because I had a, in Florida you don't get a bond if you violate felony probation. Right. So I didn't have a bond,

so I knew I was going to go going away for a while. It'd already been in prison. They came and served me with a paperwork that's for PRR, which in Florida is a prison release reoffender. So it says that the first three years you're out of prison. There's certain crimes you cannot commit. In the feds, they call it,

they call it recency. Okay, yeah. So if within one year of getting off or within, I think it's three years of prison and like one year of probation, if you commit another felony, boom. Yeah, they'll match you. Well, yeah, they give you like another two, another two or three points. So you're, listen, now you're doing at least another few, but you may be another two years, it may be another eight years, depending on where you fall.

But yeah, it's the same thing. They served me with it because I got burglary. and burglary fell under the PRR list and I had only been out of prison two months and you... Why burglary? Like I thought it was the pawnchops. Yeah, I got well I got burglary charges for being... Okay, so yeah, okay, so I love that.

Go for gritting the stuff out of the garage. Which, and I never went into a garage, but since I was in the vehicle, it's the same. You might as well be. He went into the garage. I popped the head. It's like I'm driving the getaway car for a bank robbery. You just robbed the bank. I did get three burglaries plus the deal and stolen properties and then that. Well, burglaries fell on the PRR reoffender list. Right.

So they came and served me with paperwork saying that that, saying that could 15 years, you know, that they would serve, that they could pursue PRR, whatever. So I ended up going to court for a long time. I was in county jail this time for 15 months. My first, my offer from them was 15 years. So I opted to go to trial on my burglaries because 15 years to me, I mean, now, like, when I think about 15 years. You can't really prove that I went in there.

You can't really, like, there's just. Exactly. You can prove that I had this stuff and then I pawned. it in which you did that but you couldn't prove because but he robbed it brought it to me and then I brought it like I think if they're going to give you 15 years anyways you might as well try and I had already

gotten my discovery which you know explains all details of your case all evidence of your case so I knew that a witness had stated that it was my co-defendant and another man because I had a hood on and then another witness stated it was a green truck and it was a blue one right there's some serious inconsistence yeah there's some serious inconsistency so I was going to go to trial on my burglaries um so at jury selection i want to say it was like my first jury selection how terrifying is that yeah right so at my first time for jury selection

they um the state said they were not ready so we were like oh okay so then when i went back in for my second jury selection they had offered to what did they what did they ended up doing because i got convicted of burglary they dropped PR which took off the 15 mandatory and then I so my point system I had a high I want to say 154 points which scored me almost to nine years so I did still didn't want nine years yeah you know like most people were like oh you could have got 15 nine no I don't want nine years I'm a drug addict I need help somebody help me you know so I uh I didn't want to take the nine years and so what I ended up getting was a downward departure right um because the witness one of the witnesses said that

the other person stayed in the car so we could prove that I was a minimal participant in the activity. My co-defendant was already being sentenced for PRR, so he was already getting 15 years. He had taken that. He'd been to prison three times before. They hit him with habitual, violent career criminal. He took 15 years. So they gave me downward departure, and I got 60 months, five years DOC, followed by no probation is what I thought. It's what I thought I was taking. So I took five years, and I went to prison. I went back to the same prison up in the panhandle, Gadsden. It had gotten a little worse because, you know, of course, they cut prison. When they budget cut, they cut prisons and stuff first, obviously, always. But again, it was still a

private prison, so there was still a lot of good stuff for being there. That's when I did horticulture. And I took it a little bit differently. My brother got married, and I have, my brother is my only sibling. He's been with his wife now for like 16 years. He got married while I was there so that was pretty devastating for me like it sucked to miss that and then um my father also passed so while I was there it I kind of like looked at things differently I tried to listen to people older than me like their stories their advice and just see where I could change my life because I didn't want to be 40 50 60 year old woman in prison no because this isn't working and now and now like I wasn't the first time I was a kid and the second time I was still a kid but my mind

had changed differently and I was like this just isn't for me anymore like I became lonely I was sad you know and the first time I was lonely the first time but I don't remember it was a different sense of loneliness like I felt empty the second time I was in prison you know so I did horticulture I did that um and they the state of Florida wanted me to go to what's called pre-work release before regular work release this time pre-work release is basically a rehab in a state-run rehab So that's what I did. I went to Bradington, Florida, to the Bridges of America, which was owned by Department of Corrections,

and it was a rehab, and I was super successful, and I'm super thankful for that. It's obviously something you have to take it, and you have to take it, and you have to do it if you don't want to. And you're always going to have people that don't want to be there. They're just getting through the motion, getting out of prison, and that's fine. But I learned a lot of, I learned a lot about myself,

about the way to deal with life, myself, my coping mechanisms, mental illness and others and myself. You know, I learned a lot there, so it was good. And then I went to regular work release again. And I got a job at a restaurant, and I still work there to this day, six years later. So it was fantastic. I relocated to where I lived. I went to work release in St. Petersburg, and I relocated there, and that is where I

built my life in my family now. All right. Yeah. That's cool. I was going to say the art app. program that I told you I went into twice like like that's like like to me uh somebody asked me the other day like what would should you change like if you could change something about you know prison I was like every single member before you get out you have to pass that program so those are

they teach you all about your criminal thinking and what the errors are and like you're like doesn't everybody think like that no nope they don't and it also taught me to like what I it a lot of conflict revolution resolution like I always try to look at the other person's point of view now. Yeah. Always. I always try to. I may not agree with them or disagree with them, but I always try to look at their point of view and see it from their side before I react.

I also think they're great programs. The one I was at is now shut down because like we talk about, you know, they close work releases and pre-work releases first. So there is no more of that program, which is crazy because the success rate from that program, just the people I know alone. It's like, because my best friend now, she went through the same thing. We went through the same, pretty much the same prison sentence. We went to Bradenton, work release, Gadsden, horticulture.

She did five years, I did five years. And she is super successful, too. And she went home to her exact town, to the exact place she was from. And she's five years out and doing fantastic. Instead of them saying, you know what, should we, the programs that are set up that actually we can prove work to help reduce recidivism, we're going to cut the budget. Should we knock 25% off of everybody's sentence?

and put more money into these programs so that we don't have to keep locking these people up, or should we cut the program so that in the end we'll have to build more prisons, which one do we go for? Oh, shut those programs down. Like, I mean, do the basic fucking math. Yeah, it was so disheartening when I heard that.

It's the same thing with us like, okay, so we spend, you know, 21,000 in the state, and I think it's like 35,000 in the Fed, to put an inmate to per year to keep an inmate in prison or you know and then we spend like $3,500 to educate like a student so how about we double that for students and we just cut the fucking prison population like there's the money yeah no no let's let's go ahead and we'll spend less money on schools or like we talked about with like ridiculous vocational programs

And I'm not saying horticulture is ridiculous program. But how many people in prison really are going to get out and use horticulture in their life? They are. They're going to go open grow houses. You know, why would you spend, like the prison I was at had had a greenhouse. Right. So that means that this prison spent all this money to have a fucking real greenhouse. But we're getting rid of the rehabilitation centers that are actively working.

Like, they work. You know, I mean, no, they don't work for everybody. but I it's crazy I like I said me and my friend we still use terms to this day that we use there we still use thinking this way like when I'm super overwhelmed and super aggravated I'll call her and I'll say bro I'm about to shut the blinds I'm about to close the blinds right now because that's what we used to say you know the chick that I used to date we used to because she went through art app too and she would say I'd say something and she'd get she'd get a super optimism she'd say come on that's super optimism yeah I go say don't don't don't or she would she would say you know you know

that's a thinking error right and I go stop thinking error stop it yeah oh yeah we just constantly it's like throw them back and forth at each other's like don't don't don't do that yeah I mean it was a great program for me I was thankful for it I almost didn't go to it to be honest I didn't want to go to pre-work release when I was in prison talking about it I was like they're just going to end up sending me back it's just going to be some reason for me to get in trouble and my friend Stacy um well was actually one of my friends really good friends she referred to her as her mom in prison you know Stacy was like what's why not at least try if you get sent back back so fucking what you won't you'll be right where you are right now and i think i thank her every day

for having that conversation with me because she made me change the decision to go and if i wouldn't have gone i might not be where i am yeah i really might not you know it sounds so cliche to say something like that but it's the absolute truth because a lot of times they're just true yeah it's the absolute true if i wouldn't have if i wouldn't have gone i might have gone to gone made it to regular work release and used again or got out or not even that next time you just might just, you know, you got lucky you didn't overdue. How many people do you know that have fucking overdosed? Like, you may not have even got the third chance.

Yeah, exactly. So. But yeah. Okay. Is that, or, I mean, what are we doing? I mean, whatever. I don't know. Listen, I'm a talk or like, I'll talk another 45 minutes about nothing.

About nothing. Nothing. I mean, I did, what, I was on probation when I got out this time, which I didn't know about, but because when I got so, okay. So, do they end? Do they, do they, do they cut, like if you're good on, on state probation, do they, will they end it early? If you're sentenced that way. When you get sentenced, you have to be sentenced to four years probation with early term. So if you're good, if you're good and meet all your

conditions and it's usually half the time. Right. But sometimes they'll let you like, so when I was sentenced, I was sentenced to probation with early term as soon as I pay. So if I would have walked out of prison and paid every single dollar, I was off. Yeah. But unfortunately it was like $12,000 fucking dollars so that's the the issue with me is uh like everybody i know um is getting off on half half their probation boom done done done but if you owe restitution you're not eligible to get off at half at the halfway point so or they won't put you in you can't put it in whatever it's like okay well i owe six million so that's it's gonna be an issue like joe and they're like well i mean that's that's the way it is yeah but you're holding me to a higher standard yeah exactly so i've been good

for two and a half years. I have another two and a half years. Yeah, well, why can't I get off? Like, I still owe the money. I'll still make the payments. No, no, no, no, you're not eligible. It's just stupid. It is stupid. Whatever. But, yeah, okay, I was just wondering about that, because I know people that are getting off, like, left and right. So when I went to prison the first time and I got the 18 in, followed by 24 out, and then I violated with new charges. When I got, when I went to court, normally what they'll do since you're getting a five-year sentence is they'll terminate that probation. Right. But they just kept it up. He terminated all charges but one.

so I had so which you should have just kept them all then you you know what I mean so when I got out of prison from my second time from my five-year sentence I did have probation and it sucked but I did it and I got off in a year and I early termed it and I paid my money and yeah that's not really my option yeah um okay so a lot of things would have to go right um all right that's uh we're we're good yeah and now I've been clean nine years nice yeah so and you're you're dating Tommy yeah um you know I mean, not everything works out. I'm sorry about that. And we're getting ready to have, we're getting ready to have a grandkid.

Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. His oldest is having a baby. How old is you? I'll be 32. Tommy's 42. Well, he'll be 42.

Well, he'll be 42. All right. So are we done? What are we doing? I can't, I can't. I mean, I think this covered it. I did a better job than Josh did. So anyway, all right.

So Josh would be like, bro, what are you doing? doing. Hey, I appreciate you watching and do me a favor. If you like the video, subscribe, hit the like button, hit the bell, share it and leave a comment. And Andrea, you did a great job. And so, all right, that's it. See you.