By Jason Renard Walker 

It’s day eight and Powledge unit prisoner, Raymond Walls is slowly coming back to orbit after intravenously injecting, what he suggests was, “too much” meth into his arm. A bruise illuminating the launch site can be seen. Red marks all over his face, primarily from beating himself with his fists, is getting its natural color back. He has asked for food for the first time. Several prisoners that spent a few days egging on and taunting him have lost interest and are waiting for a new overdose subject to toy with. 

Walls is simply the latest victim of a mystery drug that has circulated around the unit in floral, paper, crystal, powder and liquid form. It has proven to destroy users from the inside out with an anticipated wave of ‘bad trips’ and gives them more than what they bargained for. From my observation this mystery drug sounds like a meth looking item called basalt. Which doesn’t show up in urine analysis tests, is very cheap, legal to buy, causes mad hallucinations and can be mixed with other drugs and liquids. 

On New Years day prison staff handcuffed Walls, who was in general population, after he’d been up for several days acting delusional. Their plan was to place him in a restricted housing cell for detoxing, but there was one problem — restricted housing was full. Not knowing what to do, staff placed Walls in a holding cage until they could come up with a plan. 

After several hours of contemplating, the only plan seemed rational to them was the irrational: swapping Walls out with another prisoner that was detoxing in restricted housing after smoking the mystery dope weeks ago. 

Walls was eventually housed in an empty cell and put on security observation status, meaning guards would take shifts watching him until he’s cleared by the psych department. Keep in mind, mental health staff aren’t qualified to be drug counselors, yet a bulk of their caseload concerns prisoners suspected of and caught abusing drugs, not those having typical mental health issues. This means the remedy for curing prisoners that abuse drugs and have a bad trip, is leaving them in an empty cell for days, falsely diagnosing or clearing them, or putting them on more drugs without acknowledging what triggered their need for care in the first place.

In hour long spurts: Walls attacked himself, pranced around naked, screamed absurdities, and rammed himself into the cell walls as the guard monitoring him either slept the entire shift, or participated in the entertainment value childish prisoners drew from the ordeal. 

Walls became an instant celebrity. Like a gorilla in a cage, he drew viewer ship from a ranking guard that jokingly explained to others what Walls was going through, how long it would last and the actual drug he injected, which the ranking guard claimed was basalt. 

What the final frontier for Walls will be remains unknown. If history keeps repeating itself another prisoner shooting for the moon will get sucked into the vacuum of his own drug addiction and will need a place to detox until his mind returns from a voyage, I’ve seen many men die trying to make. 

If it’s easier for a human to stay sober in society than it is in a prison clad with steel doors, barbed wire fence, handcuffs, strip searches, guards and people isolated from society in locked cages. where does the notion of a prison being rehabilitating rise above the lawlessness, corruption and sadism that Philip Zimbardo used the Stanford Prison Experiment to prove was a byproduct of a prisons existence. If Zimbardo was wrong about anything it was the level of evil that resides herein that even his own experiment wasn’t violent enough to simulate. Many guards are drawn to prisons because they themselves are evil, not because prisons make them that way. 

Jason Renard Walker 1532092 

Powledge unit 

1400 FM 3452 

Palestine, TX 758