Rabid Sharks
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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

Stafford Creek Correctional 1/13/20

I don’t write about X because it’s too painful to remember them. Especially the times when we were younger. The experiences we had together with DMT. When you share something so profound like that, it’s unbearable to accept that person who shared death and rebirth with has changed and become something bad. You’ll do almost anything to avoid admitting the loss of that limb. But ultimately, you have to let go before the infection spreads to your head.

I remember one day X was trying to shoot up. Using a milligram scale and a 100 micron syringe. Only, it took them over 10 minutes to load that rig. It’s not that hard. They were using one had to pull back the plunger and the other to hold the rig. This was disturbing to me because X used to be able to do it easily in less than 5 minutes like a normal person: not shoot up, but cook and load, easily. Takes me a minute max.

- You’ve been doing that for 10 minutes. Can I help you? It’s starting to bother me.

- No! I have to do this myself!

There was no reason, in the first place, they should have had a problem. But X had HPPD [Hallucination Persisting Perception Disorder -ed.] and basically was somehow permanently fucked from drugs. The thing is, it was clearly getting worse because X used to be able to do certain things more easily. Their behavior was becoming more erratic, their thoughts more convoluted. For weeks at a time, they would act crazy, especially the time X started working through a half grown of 2,5,-dimethoxy chloroamphetamine. Not a particularly harmful substance, but not safe to use every single day.

I’m sad because I shared something with a beautiful person who is essentially dead now. Unrecognizable; that person is “irretrievably lost”.

I still believe in the power of the plant teachers, but I’ve also seen the grim reality that the mind exposed to so much chemicals shows itself to be a random number generator. The power of psychedelics must be respected. though some are more forgiving than others.

Was it X’s fault? Or were they doomed from the start to become the vitriolic shell of their former self they are today? I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t the drugs. I don’t know what happened, but it’s sad. Maybe someday I’ll have the strength to write honestly about some of the happy times that we had.

Elisa Carlson