The new “high” in prison — synthetic cannabinoids — is easier to smuggle, nearly undetectable by standard drug testing, cheaper and produces more psychotic effects than any drug ever seen before in the penitentiary.
As the saying goes, “Idle hands are the devil’s playground,” and the worst things that happen generally stem from the overwhelming boredom in prison that comes with it.
After two decades in prison, I’ve seen a lot: beatings, shankings, murders, gang violence, and rapes. In my very first hour in prison, I witnessed an attempted murder. The visage of the unconscious teen in a pool of blood — beaten to permanent brain damage because he cheated at a hand of cards — stuck with me.
I’m in a relatively calm prison today, and I like it that way. Still, “relatively calm” includes daily fights and assaults, multiple drug overdoses a week, and the occasional padlock in a sock or razor blade to someone’s face.
Gambling, drinking disgusting homemade wine, sexual predation, threats, and violence to degrade others or to establish dominance — these are quite regular products of the devil’s playground within the confines of prison.
Unfortunately, I’m used to these things. Then I journeyed to “Drug Row,” and what I saw was like nothing I had seen before.
This is the new reality of prison.
Synthetic cannabinoids, known generically by the name of the former top-selling brand, K-2, have flooded prisons across the country. Liquid ounces of the drug can be purchased on the dark web for under $100 and can soak 5-10 sheets of paper.
A piece of this paper (the drug’s slang names in prison are Paper, Paperweed, or in reference to K2, Twoski or Deuce) the size of your pinky nail costs about $10 in prison and is enough to get most people high up to four times. A dose this size produces euphoria, as well as paranoia and racing thoughts. Users walk around, eyes darting left and right, often twitching from the effects. Higher doses produce vivid hallucinations, complete dissociation, and surges of adrenaline — effects similar to PCP. Those under the influence of a large amount often become both incoherent and hyper-aggressive.
It’s rude to bother people on the phones in prison, or anywhere, and prison etiquette calls for not interrupting a conversation that people are having. So I was waiting for a phone to open up when, down the cellblock hall, a large man opened his door and, with a glazed look in his eye, started throwing up his hands and talking gibberish, a clear sign of “Paper” use.
He steadily started getting louder and louder as the drug took effect, throwing up his arms aggressively at no one. Looking at the men on the phones, he snarled and screamed, “I told y’all I’m bulletproof! I TOLD Y’ALL I’M BULLETPROOF!!!” He then ran at them and sucker punched one after the other in the face, continually swinging and landing blow after blow. The phones knocked out of their hands, they ran to get a gauge of the situation away from the onslaught.
“I’m a beast! Aaaaargh!” he yelled as the cellblock officer came over, and then he attacked the officer. The officer, a giant of a man, managed to wrestle him down, but only after tazing him. Hours later, coming down from his high, he yelled out the window of his solitary confinement cell and asked those walking by to tell everyone he was sorry and didn’t know why he did what he did.
This is the new norm in prison. But it’s not just about riled-up convicts being violent within the secure confines of the nation’s prisons, which is nothing new. People are getting hurt, prisoners as well as civilians. And the drug epidemic in prison is representative of the underlying currents beneath the surface of society.
What happens in prison influences other areas of society. Ninety-five percent of the incarcerated get out of prison. Any addiction, particularly in relation to seriously hardcore substances, has the ability to affect many others, from themselves to those they may commit crimes against, to those they may influence.
The lower tier of A-block had such a large concentration of heavy drug users that other prisoners referred to it as “Drug Row.” Officers knew this as well, constantly coming across inmates acting strangely, incoherently, or psychotically, and they would search the cells of users to no avail. Any piece of paper in a cell may be just a piece of paper. But it could also contain a thousand hits of a clear, odorless drug that has been soaked in Paper and allowed to dry. What do you look for?
JJ, a middle-aged lifer, got caught the first time he tried the drug because of the smell of burning paper that had a side note of singed plastic. Officers rushed into the communal bathroom as he inhaled through a paper tube he held between his lips; they confiscated from him an AA battery and a wire from a bread tie twisted into a coil. The bit of Paper is placed in the coil, which heats up when the ends touch the ends of the battery. The Paper already incinerated, they were only able to write him a ticket for an incendiary device, which sounds bad but is far less serious than a substance abuse misconduct.
The second time JJ got caught, it was because he started screaming at the top of his lungs at the insects crawling on him. When officers arrived, he had gouged deep gashes into his face to try to get rid of them.
JJ got his supply from Dee, a young member of the Bloods, in prison for four years for credit card fraud. Dee had invested his entire COVID-era federal stimulus check in purchasing Paperweed from his connections in his gang, and was incrementally dealing it. Then he started smoking it.
The other users on Drug Row were angry at Dee for smoking what they had imagined as their supply. The Bloods cut ties with Dee over it. Then a user fought Dee over it, and Dee was on his own in the fight, the first fight he’d ever fought alone. He got beat up pretty good, but had no serious injuries, and salved his wounds by smoking more K-2.
Juevos and Prado offered me some. “Last night, I got to speak with Jesus. He told me that my father is okay in heaven. Or at least that’s what I think he said. He was speaking another language, probably Hebrew,” said one. “I never have seen Jesus, but I’ve been in an alien spaceship before,” said the other. I respectfully turned them both down.
Over the course of a week, two other men were taken to the hospital in an ambulance that had to come inside the prison because of the drug, and three more were wheeled in wheelchairs by officers to the prison’s infirmary, twitching, heads darting around. My previous cellmate was found unconscious on the floor off of the stuff while I was gone at work.
Potency varies. When a drug is mixed by hand, or hand-soaked into paper and dried, the strength of the product can vary dramatically. Ray had taken over as the primary supplier in the cellblock, and his product was apparently much stronger.
Everything was for sale. The clear 13″ TVs available in most prisons across the country are resold on the “streets” of prison for money for dope. Religious necklaces, the only jewelry we can possess, representing the ephemeral, sold for the most physical of reasons. Self-respect was for sale, hearing grown men calling wives and mothers to ask for money, lying about the reason they wanted it. Make sure your cell is locked when you leave, because stolen goods are a desirable source of currency for drugs.
Dee had smoked up all his Paper, $1,000 worth, in a handful of weeks. He sold his belongings. He tried to steal for awhile, but everyone had learned to secure their stuff. He comically tried to extort the smallest guy in the unit, but Dee had lost so much weight between smoking, lack of exercise, and selling so many meals that the other man just laughed at him.
At one point, Ray and some friends, all Bloods like Dee used to be, called Dee into the communal bathroom to talk to him about an opportunity. Chatter echoing off the walls into the common area where I sat started off quiet, then turned to gasps and laughter. They patted Dee on the back in a mocking way as they all walked out.
He had licked the urinal for $10 worth of Paper.
The environment of prison, and the entire criminal justice system, is changing, in large part due to the introduction and availability of a mind-altering drug that is almost impossible to detect. No longer a place where addicts can dry out, it has become a place where new addictions are molded into behaviors that will follow the prisoner outside of prison.
“Hey, if you need anything sewed, or your shoes washed, let me know,” Dee informed me about two months after I got away from Drug Row.
“Okay, I’ll keep you in mind,” I said. (There was no way I was going to ever let him touch anything of mine.)
“I need to make some money. Gotta hustle.”
“What about licking urinals?” I asked.
“No, no. I don’t do that anymore.”
Note: The names of all the men in this story have been changed to protect their identities. Nothing else has. They represent a small example of the new reality of prison in America. All of the individuals mentioned will be released from prison in under five years.
Chris Dankovich #595904
Thumb Corr Facility
3225 John Conley Drive
Lapeer, MI 48446
