The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How I Went From Criminal To Stand-Up Comedian | Ep 28

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Johnny describes what it's actually like being released from prison, the difficulties of navigating in the free world, and how he moved to Los Angeles after he was released to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Until that moment, I was so selfish that I still felt like a victim. Like, I felt like somebody had done this to me. But as I stood there with my father crying into my shoulder, I realized I wasn't the only one who had done time. My parents emotionally were locked up in there with me. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it.

I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls us. out a burner, shank, it's like six inches, and he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. Here's the reason I made it out of that place alive. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to The Connect. My name is Johnny Mitchell. You know what to do. Follow us on all socials. Turn on alert so you get notified whenever we drop new content. And Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect show. We got amazing bonus content. And it's the best way

to support us. All right. Let's get into the episode. It's been said. that you only do two days in prison. The first day you go in and the last day. Well, that is true. The hardest part about being incarcerated is going in. That absolutely is the worst part about prison, kind of obviously, right? It's the first day that you go in. It's the intake, the humiliation of going through the bureaucracy and being shackled and brought to court, getting sentenced, getting put on the gray goose, getting shipped off to an unknown facility with a bunch of dangerous men, not knowing if you're going to make it out alive. But the second hardest day is the day that you get released.

The reason that it's so hard is the anxiety and the fear that a criminal has when he gets released and has to find his way in the free world. Especially for a guy like me who was addicted to the life. I was addicted to the street game. Getting out of prison meant I was forced to go back to square one. And because I was determined to not go back to a life of crime, it made it even more difficult because that meant I had to find out a way to make a living as well as pursue my dreams.

And I had no idea how to do that because I had never worked at real job. The reason that it's so hard getting released from prison, especially guys who are just coming off 20, 30, 40 year prison stretches is that they're institutionalized. And what we mean by that is they've become accustomed to the routine of prison. I talked to a lot of guys in prison who would tell me about how much fun they would have at times, especially when they were in a prison with a bunch of their buddies and they had access to drugs and they had the guards in their pocket. They referred to it as a fun experience, which was like crazy to me. That really like gave me the chills. But it was true. Many men really lived

wretched existences before they got into prison. So, you know, if they're running the yard or they're moving with a car that has drugs and money and all the food they want, you know, they're not living too much worse off than they were when they were out on the streets. And many of these guys have actually lived longer inside of prison than they have in the free world. So prison is their world. And going out into freedom is like being transported through time. Prison is a time capsule more or less. Sure, now inmates have iPhones and people stay up on what's happening with the changes in society in the free world.

But when you're on the inside, it is a time capsule. You're frozen in a different era when you first went in. In prison, your life is scheduled for you. You wake up at the same time every day. You go to bed at the same time every day. You have your meals at the exact same hour down to the minute every single day. You go to yard. You go to your job.

It is like the military in the way that it is structured for you. So when you hit the bricks after so many decades of all of your physical needs being provided for you besides sex or something like that, it can be very, very intimidating because it's on you in the free world to figure out a way to survive. You have to get yourself up every day. You have to make sure you're staying healthy on and on and on. For people that really have no practice in doing that, it is a terrifying thing. I saw it with the people that I was locked up with two rivers. I was in there with hardened criminals, lifers, and people doing half a day. I remember this guy Rodney, this big, burly black dude. He was from California, ex-gangbanger. He had spent

well over half of his life institutionalized. The day before he was set to be released, he walked up to a CEO, a lieutenant on the yard and started whooping his ass, like punching him, kicking him, and they beat the shit out of this guy, basically. They took him off to the hole and get this, They didn't even charge him with assaulting an officer. They knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to get re-arrested so he would not have to leave prison. And they said, nope, we're not falling for it, big fella. You got to go.

So for a guy like Rodney, somebody who's institutionalized who doesn't know anything but prison, he was trying to keep himself inside. But most of the time, it's the other inmates that are trying to keep you from getting out when your release date approaches. That's why in the feds and other high security violent prisons, when you have 60 days, two months to the gate, it's very common for inmates to put themselves into solitary confinement in order to protect themselves from being killed by other inmates who were jealous that they're about to go home. So for instance, I knew people who had done Fed time, even inmates at two rivers who had about two months to the gate and they would walk up to a CEO and be like, hey, guard, I'm 60 days out. and they'd be like, oh shit, okay, and they would actually escort you to solitary confinement to the hole

because they knew what time it was. They were doing that to protect the inmate because people are haters, you know, it's human nature, right? The other inmates see you getting ready to go home and they're mad. They want to go home. They don't want to be locked up. Even people that are super institutionalized, like, you know, they feel the pangs of jealousy and wish it was them. It's very normal. So, especially for a guy doing life or who's on drugs, he might have a beef with the person who's getting out and come at him with a knife. He's got nothing else to lose.

Our friend Unique, who we've been filming with these last couple of episodes, the Kingpin from Harlem, he had a life sentence, and he told us that when his friends found out that he was getting released, he could see the sadness and the disappointment in their faces. You know, but when I'm walking out of tear, the sad part is,

all the dudes that was supposed to be my friend was looking sad that I was leaving. They weren't happy for him. They were sad for themselves and a little jealous that he was getting out. Now, in my case, it was kind of the opposite. I got released from Two Rivers Correctional Facility in July of 2011 and was sent to a minimum security prison where I ended up finishing out my stretch. And when I was releasing from Two Rivers, a lot of the dudes that I had beef with or who wanted to fight me,

start shit with me because, you know, I hung out with the black guys or that I wouldn't gang bang. Whatever it was, whatever problems that they had with me, they kind of changed when they found out I was getting out. It was almost like they were happy for me. I remember a few of them, these skinhead dudes, as I was leaving with, you know, my sack of goods on my shoulder, they go, hey, Dirk, put us in your movie script when you get down to Hollywood. I was Johnny Hollywood at this point. I was going to go down to Los Angeles to pursue my dreams of being in show business. And I knew I had done something right when the lifers and the gangbangers were giving me props and love and, you know, wishing me farewell. That made me feel good. It may be, uh, it made me think that

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Let's get back into the episode. All right. So when you're locked up, there's your earliest possible release date if you have good time. And then there's your max date. A max date means the maximum amount of time that they're allowed to hold you in prison. So if you get sentenced to 10 years, okay, and you might have the possibility of getting some good time, your earliest release date might be eight and a half years after you went in. Your max date is going to be the date that the full 10 years that you've served is up.

And good time varies state to state. In Oregon, it was pretty brutal. There wasn't a lot of good time offered. I think it was only about 20% if you got in no trouble, which is almost like federal prisons. You've got to do 85% of your time. So you're really only eligible for a 15% time cut. In places like California, especially if it's not a violent crime, if you're in California prisons for a drug crime, you could get out in like half the time that you were originally

sentenced in, sometimes even more. But that's changing all the time, especially if the particular state that you might be serving time in has a budget crunch and they need to save money from the legislature, they'll actually give a mandate to increase the amount of good time that inmates are eligible for in order to get people out of there as fast as possible to open up bed space and to save the state money. So I remember that happening in Oregon. It didn't happen while I was down, but every now and then there would be budget crises in the state of Oregon. And so the legislature would say, okay, all of the inmates that were eligible for a 25% time cut are now eligible for a 40% time cut.

So overnight, you'd have hundreds, sometimes even thousands of inmates that became eligible for immediate release. So dudes would be sleeping in their cell in the middle of the night and they would just hear a bang on the door and it would be the guard and the guard would say, hey, you've got to give me an address. It's time to roll up. And they'd be like, what? Like, I'm not getting out for eight months. He'd be like, no, no, you've got to go now. crazy shit like that would happen. I mean, talk about feeling like it's Christmas day as a kid. I mean, nothing compares to, you know, getting eight months of your life back.

Also, the laws will change. Marijuana is a prime example of that. So probably a lot of dudes in California, Oregon, states where pot just became legal. Guys who are sitting in there for pot crimes probably got a knock on their door saying, hey, pot's legal now. Everybody's getting out or everybody's getting early. release, roll up, get your shit. So while I was locked up at two rivers, which was the maximum security prison that I served the hardest amount of my time in, I fully expected to do day for day.

I had no expectations of good time at that point. I had lost all faith in the system. I had seen that dude get killed our first day after getting off the bus. Guys like Jimmy and other lifers told me to not get my hopes up, that there really is no good When you're serving it in a maximum security prison, something's going to happen. You're going to get in trouble and you're going to lose, you know, any hope of early release. My whole goal was just to survive and not catch another charge. But about a month and a half before I actually became eligible to be classed down from a maximum security to a minimum, my counselor called me in and said, look, you're scheduled to be released, so I'd be on your best behavior.

You're doing a pretty good job, Mitchell. So there's your earliest overall release date, right? I had missed that date by a couple of months because of all the fighting that I was doing early on in my stretch. But then there's the transfer date, the earliest possible date that I could have been transferred out of a maximum security prison and been moved into a minimum security. But still, I didn't put too much stock in that. I tried not to get my hopes up.

And from that point on, I told Jimmy and Jimmy always sent a bodyguard with me anywhere I would go on the main line, so I didn't have to carry a shank on me. I would not have to get in a fight. He really looked out for me because he knew how important it was that whatever happened, I got out of that place and got to a minimum security facility where I would be safe and I would be on my way to getting out as soon as possible. So a month before my earliest transfer date, a big riot happened on my yard, on my cell block. Jimmy and a bunch of other shock callers all got sent to the hole. I mean, half of the cell block, it seemed like, was wiped out. When I got back, all those dudes were gone, and I was alone in Jimmy and I's old cell. The day I got transferred

out of two rivers, it was first thing in the morning when the cop came to my cell door, knocked on it and told me, Mitchell, roll up. And everybody on the cell block heard it, too. So all the other inmates started chirping that, hey, Dirk's getting released or Dirk's getting shipped out. I didn't know where I was going, though. They don't tell you for security reasons right there. there where you're headed to. You get on the gray goose shackled up again, put in the jumpsuit, strip naked, strip search, all of that, right? Just like how you arrived. Same process when you get back on the bus. Then they show you your paperwork, your new transfer mandate. And okay, I see I'm going to a little place called Shutter Creek Correctional Facility. And it's a minimum security prison

way down on the central Oregon coast. It's like a 15-hour drive from two rivers. And it took about two days to get there. It was really hellish. It was just as hard physically and mentally as the drive to two rivers was. It was a long prison ride, but everybody on there was excited

because it was inmates like me who were heading to minimum security facilities. And it took a full two days, one because of the distance, but also we had to start at other maximum security prisons throughout Eastern Oregon to pick people up, put them on the bus, and continue on our way. It was like a, you know, it was like a city bus or something like that. It was making stops. Then we spent the night at this prison called Saniam, which is in Salem,

and it's another minimum security facility, but it still sucks. The reason that being transported by the prison system is so brutal is that anytime you enter a new facility, You have to go through the same awful intake process. You have to strip down. You have to get strip searched by strange cops. You have to do your fingerprint and, you know, x-ray scans to make sure you're not hiding weapons anywhere. And then, you know, you got to go fraternize and get mixed in with a bunch of strange dudes who you don't know who they are. They put us in a dorm room at San Diego.

There were no cells anymore, right? We're at a minimum security now. And everybody was alive. Everybody was buzzing talking about where they had been, where they were going. It felt like being at an airport and we all kind of were going in different directions. It was ships in the night. I actually remember running into a few dudes from two rivers that I had known who had been classed down and were serving time at Saniam. So it was like a little reunion.

So the next day, they wake us up. They roll us up. Put on the jumpsuits, chain us up, put us back on the gray goose. another six-hour drive from Salem to this little town called Coosbe, Oregon on the central Oregon coast. And now finally we're at my new home, Shutter Creek. They let us off the bus, same intake process.

But it's so much chiller. The environment I notice, it's like eerily calm. And you got to remember, I'm coming from a place where I saw dudes killed, stabbed, constant people at the ready, people strapped with weapons. I was immediately ready to fight. I actually asked somebody, another inmate,

who I needed to fade with. Because I was so used to that from being in county jail, from going to Coffee Creek to then arriving at two rivers, the Max prison, I assumed that I was there. I had to fight somebody, right?

And they told me, no, no, no, no, Mitchell, just, you're safe here. Settle down, relax, you know, enjoy the rest of your time. Stay clean. No more drugs. No cell phones. No dirt.

No nothing. you'll be out of here in time for Christmas, which is what I was hoping for. That was a big transition for me mentally, was going from like such a high stress, high danger situation to a prison with, you know, basically no danger. Also just starting over in a new facility is hard, no matter where you are. But people knew that I came from two rivers, a hard-ass prison. I told them that I was sold up with Jimmy and everybody in Oregon prison system knows who my cellmate Jimmy is.

So instantly, that earned me a level of respect, and, you know, I was smooth sailing, didn't have a scratch or a problem the entire time that I was at Shutter Creek. It was two days after Thanksgiving, 2011, when I was finally released from prison. It's kind of like getting transferred, except when the cop came to my door that morning,

he told me, hey, Mitchell, roll up, you're going home. And I had had the date in front of me on my paperwork. I suspected that that was the day I was going to be released. But again, with anything in the prison system, you just cannot trust what they say until it actually happens. That's the nature of the American prison system, the beast. It is wickedly disorganized and unjust. So I got up, I went to the pay phone, and I called my mom,

and I told her, hey, it's happening. Meet me in Eugene around noon. And my mother, the sweetheart, she was so excited. I've never heard her giddy like that before. So she said, great, baby. I will see you around 1230 in Eugene. I'll be there to pick you up. So I go down to chow.

I have breakfast for the final time with my buddies. I go over to the yard to get a final workout in. Went up to my cell, put all my things in a plastic sack, and then I went and saw my counselor, and they gave me a little debit card with my gate money on it. Gate money is the money that is left over from your books. They put it onto a little card for you. and they gave me a bus ticket.

And by 11 a.m., I was on a Greyhound bus, taking me away from the prison and up to Eugene, where I was going to get picked up by my parents. And as I was on the bus headed north, I felt like I was falling. It was for the first time of my life. I didn't have any money. I had no direction.

All I had was a dream, and that dream was to get to California. It was to get to L.A. So the bus drops me off at the Eugene public bus stop, and there are my parents. Right on time, as always, waiting for me. So before we headed back to Portland, we decided to go get pizza at my favorite pizza place in Eugene.

So my parents are driving us through the neighborhoods, and I'm looking around, and these are the same blocks where years ago, I had my pockets, my backpack stuffed with coke and weed, and I was running around like a maniac selling dope. And, you know, it was like, it was surreal because this was the turf, this was the soil. This is where the dream really started to take shape.

And it's also where the nightmare ended. So we parked and we were heading up to this pizza place, Pegasus Pizza and Eugene shout out. And my father, you know, if you listen to the podcast, you kind of know that my father was a real stoic, not a very emotionally available man. He was an old Catholic guy from the Midwest. He was strict. He never told me he loved. I don't recall at all as a child. He never believed in me, never really liked me, to be honest with you.

He was always kind of disapproving of who I was and the way that I moved. You know, many times I thought that he just didn't give a fuck about me, which is probably the reason that I acted up the way I did. But as we're walking to this restaurant, I kind of patted him on the back and I said, how are you, Pop, you all right? And he turned to me and he just started bawling. I'd never seen him cry before, and he was just letting it spill, and he put his arm around me, and he just gave me a gigantic hug and was weeping into my shoulder, like he was my son.

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Oh, right. Hold on. And it was at that moment that it hit me how bad I had fucked up. Until that moment, I was so selfish that I still felt like a victim. Like I felt like somebody had done this to me. But as I stood there with my father crying into my shoulder, I realized I wasn't the only one who had done time. My parents emotionally were locked up in there with me.

And I'm sure that's how parents of all incarcerated people feel. They are in there doing time with their children. I was disappointed in myself. I couldn't believe how self-absorbed I had been all those years running with no regard for what my actions could do to other people and how it could affect the people who love me. So I knew right then, I'm like, I got to change. You know, since the moment that I got locked up, a part of me always wanted to go back to the game. I would sit for hours and think about ways when I got out that I could go back to hustling, but do it differently, be smarter, invest my money earlier, clean it up, launder it,

get out of the game without a scratch. I think most people that are big-time criminals, they think about how they can just do it different. But when I saw my dad break down like that, I knew that I could never go back to a life of crime. Okay, so now I'm home and I'm getting reacclimated to being in society. And the hardest part for any criminal, but especially for big-time drug dealers like myself, when we get out of prison, we have to become normal people.

And it's one of the worst come-downs you could possibly imagine. I've said this before, and people will disagree, but I really think that drug dealing and drug money are even more addictive than drugs themselves. Because when you're a junkie or a drug addict, yes, it's hard to get clean. but once you stay sober, that's many times all that a person really needs. They feel like they're free. When they become free of drugs, it's like getting out of prison in a way. But for a drug dealer, that drug money, it's more than just a high.

It's a lifestyle. It's an identity. It is literally freedom. There's a freedom into having so much money and being autonomous and working for yourself. And, you know, everything that comes, with being an outlaw. My greatest fear had always been being ordinary. Malcolm X has this great quote in his autobiography. He goes, back in the day, the only thing I was more scared of than jail was a job. And that sums up perfectly the way I think. I never wanted to get a job. I never wanted

to work for anybody. I never wanted to be anybody's lackey. It's the very reason that I started selling drugs in the first place. So for me to have to go get a minimum wage job when I first got out, I was working at like this plastic factory making plastics and I was driving a forklift. I wasn't even doing that. I didn't even have a forklifting license. I was stacking things, pallets of plastic onto forklifts forklifts for $12 an hour. It was humiliating. It actually felt like I was back in prison.

I had to wake up at the same time every day. I had to take orders from a guy who I didn't like. I was told when I could eat and when I couldn't, when I could go to the bathroom. I had to be in the house by a certain time. every night because I was on parole. You know, it didn't feel a lot different than being incarcerated. So I understand why so many people who get out of prison just go right the fuck back because they can't take it. The street is so brutal in many ways. The relationships I had with my oldest friends was different now, too. You know, when I first got out, they kind of thought it was a big joke.

We all had a good laugh. You know, they bought me a hooker, which is, I got to say, a great friend thing to do. But they kind of thought what I went through was, you know, a game. They had no idea what had really gone on. They didn't even know what I had been through while I was out in the street selling dope. And I felt disrespected, quite honestly, because nothing was funny about what I had been through. And I felt like I had nobody to talk to about it. Their attitude was kind of like, all right, John, you're out. Let's move on.

Act like it never happened. But it was like, no, no, no, no, no. I was not locked up for that long, you know, comparatively, but I witnessed and took part in some traumatic shit. And, you know, the stuff that I saw haunted me and will always be with me. It will stick with me forever. And it was just a very, it was a very weird time. It felt like how soldiers probably feel getting back from war. They don't know how to relate to anybody.

PTSD is absolutely what I had. In fact, most of my friends, until I started doing this show, had no idea the shit that happened to me while I was locked up. They call me after every episode, and they're like, dude, why didn't you tell us about this stuff? And it's like, because I don't want to come out to my friends that are lawyers and business people and be like, oh yeah, I saw a guy get killed. It's just not something you share, you know? I felt completely isolated and alone, and I knew that I had to get out. I saw my friends falling into the same traps of middle-class doldrums and normalcy that I never wanted a part of in the first place.

Being in Portland, being in those dreary winter months in Portland, I felt that anxiety that I had when I was at two rivers. I was like, I got to go. I got to go. And that determination is what set my mind on a goal, and it's what helped me survive those first six months after getting out of prison. It was July of 2012 when I finally moved to Los Angeles. I'd saved up some money working at this dead-end job and living at home with my parents.

And I thought, okay, if I'm going to do it, it's got to be now. It's now or never. By this time, my parole was mail-in, we called it. So for drug crimes like myself in places like Oregon, they're so common that pretty soon after you get out, as long as you piss clean and keep a job, your parole officer will tell you, hey, you don't have to come in and see me anymore. Just mail us in this form every month and send us a check and don't get in trouble again. And that made it easy for me to move out of state. So I packed up my Chevy and Paula, one of my cars that the cops didn't seize from me before I went into prison.

And I kissed my mother on the cheek and she couldn't believe it. She was like, you're actually going to go to L.A. to do comedy. Like, are you funny? I was like, I don't know, to be honest with you, but I have to go. And I jumped in the car and 16 hours later, I was in Hollywood. And if you don't know, Hollywood is the city of broken dreams. It's full of grifters and want to be artists and people who just want to be famous. And you have thousands and thousands of people who move here every month to try to make it in show business. And it's brutal.

I struggled for years, sleeping on couches, moving from place to place, working really shit jobs just to make ends me. And when I first got there, I rented a room. in a house in West Hollywood. It's just this dumpy little house with like four other guys who were also in L.A. to be actors or writers or whatever. And one of my roommates who I hit it off with

was a guy from New Jersey. And he had also moved to L.A. to be an actor. But he very quickly was like, yo, fuck this. I'm going home. This is not for me. And at the time, I really needed money. I was down to my last thousand bucks. And so, you know, in the course of talking to him,

I realized that he was involved in the weed game. And I didn't tell him what I had been locked up for. Actually, nobody knew what I had been through. Nobody knew that I'd been to prison. Nobody knew that I was this big-time weed dealer. But I told him, hey, what would you pay for a pound of weed? And he gave me the ticket. And I told him, I did some math.

And I said, okay. And I actually had a connect down there, some guys who were growing for dispensaries. Because by this time, 2012, the dispensary game is, dominating Los Angeles. I mean, we were just one step away from full legalization at this point. So I told the kid, okay, as soon as you get back to Jersey, hit me up, and I'll start shipping you pounds. And I know this sounds stupid. It is, but I was desperate at the time. And to me, the only thing that scared me more than going back to prison was having to go back to Portland and live with my parents again. I was so fearful of that back in the day. So I ended up sending this guy

two packages, one pound in each. And after that, I was like, hey, I can't do this. Because every time he would send the money back, I would be so afraid when I went down to the postal place to pick it up, I would start shaking. Like, it felt like I had just been, I don't know, witnessed my mother being murdered. I was like, you know, I had this flashback to being on the chain, on the gray goose, getting sent upstate to two rivers that I just couldn't do it. I physically would break down with anxiety. So I told him, hey, you know what, fuck this. I can't play with my freedom like this.

You know, I got to stop. But that is a very common story, I'm sure, for drug dealers who go back to the game. It's not something that most people want to do. It was just something I felt like I had to do at the time. But I persevered. I worked shitty jobs. in restaurants for years. I slept on a buddy's couch so I didn't have to pay rent. And I just went after my dreams as hard as I went after my street dreams of making a million bucks. My goal

was to become a professional comedian. And it took a decade, but here I stand and sit, rather, and deliver you this content. And now I'm working on getting back to prison. But this time, I'm doing it with comedy. I'm talking to the Oregon prison system right now. now and I believe with some luck that they're going to allow me to bring a camera crew in there and actually do shows for the inmates and film that as a comedy special. That would be very special for me to take it back to the place where my dream of stand-up comedy originally started. Remember, I would do talent shows at Two Rivers where I would roast the inmates in the audience. That was the genesis of everything that I'm living now.

And, you know, I hope to maybe inspire some of the inmates to look at my life as an example of what's possible if you just believe in yourself. Because the thing that I'm most proud about, this decade of being out of prison, is the fact that I never went back to the life, that I gave myself fully and completely to this new path, to this new dream. And, you know, I want them to know that, you know, I've been there and, you know, they can do it too. All right, you guys, that's been today's episode. Make sure to listen to us as well on Spotify. Subscribe to the Patreon so you get all our bonus content. We will see you next week. Take care.