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When I was growing up, teachers told me I was bright and had "a
lot of potential". I decided that I had had enough education and
dropped out in the eleventh grade. One of my buddies whose mother
was an alcoholic also dropped out so we left home and lived together.
I remember we would take amphetamines that I was stealing from my
mom and stayed up most of the nights wired and playing ping-pong.
Loyalty didn't have a high priority with me. I stole my friend's girl
friend and got her pregnant. I was fifteen years old at the time. It’s
funny how some people react to responsibility. I ran and hid, or at
least I tried. As I look back now it is clear to me that the reason I
began burglarizing homes was all about getting caught. For a very
scared fifteen-year-old boy, it was the easy way to avoid the
responsibility of caring for a pregnant girlfriend, not to mention a
baby! I must have burglarized some sixty-plus homes before I finally
got caught.

I soon got arrested again, this time for the mere possession of a very
small amount of pot--one roach! I was still on probation from my last
episode with the law and the PO assigned to my case was a counselor
who previously worked at the camp I had just left. He didn’t like me
and I didn’t care for him much either. He told me that I had two
choices, either go to jail for a year or join the military. Since I hadn't
completed high school the Marine Corps was my only choice and they
required a four-year enlistment.

It was early 1969, during the Viet Nam war. After about a year in the
states I received orders for Vietnam. While in the military I still
managed to carry on in my old life style and could not put my past
behind me. While stationed in Okinawa, I was court marshaled for a
combination of offenses, including possession of pot. They took all my
stripes, fined me and restricted me to the base for several months.
However, I still had two and a half years remaining on my enlistment
and that gave me an opportunity to get back the stripes, a high school
GED and an honorable discharge. It seemed my life had finally taken a
turn in the right direction.

After leaving the military I began to fall back into my old behavior
habits. I ran into some old friends whose drug use had escalated from