Building from Zero After Addiction, Prison, and a Felony
AuthorsNameGavin RayTwitter@GavinRayDev<br>Building from Zero After Addiction, Prison, and a Felony<br>I spent ages 14–16 in a maximum-security juvenile prison, became a felon at 19, lost almost everything to addiction, and later rebuilt my life through software, open source, and a few people who took a chance on me.<br>I've wanted to write this for a while, but kept finding reasons not to. It felt too personal, too risky, and too easy to misread.<br>Recently, I decided on two things:<br>After seeing Preston Thorpe speak publicly about his own background, I wondered how many others like us were silently lurking in tech<br>I'm far enough in my career with enough contributions to OSS and community involvement, that I think I'll probably be alright<br>I wrote this for anyone quietly wondering whether they have no chance at a future.<br>Below is the much-condensed life story of my struggles with addiction, poverty, and incarceration + life after being a felon. My hope is that it serves as encouragement to others who are in similar circumstances that things CAN get better.<br>Amphetamine Addict and Prison at 14<br>I was a model student up until around puberty and middle school. Then, I think a combination of being bullied for being overweight and teenage hormones, led me to be just the wrong combination of resentful, angry, unhappy, and rebellious.<br>I started getting in fistfights with people that made fun of me, being a huge asshole to teachers, stopped doing schoolwork, and started experimenting with drugs.<br>The beginning of the end: The day I bought an Adderall from a classmate. When that amphetamine feeling kicked-in, it was as if life was perfect for the first time. I was happy, confident, felt I could do anything. I wanted to feel this way every waking moment for the rest of my life.<br>Being 14, I had no job, and I do not come from money. So, logically, I did the thing one must do if one wishes to sustain a drug habit: Devise a way to make money.<br>The easiest way to make money at 14 turned out to be dealing drugs, so I started selling various prescription medications on a "buy-low-sell-high" basis from other students at school.<br>This was short-lived, as I had the huge mouth of a rebellious "I'm invincible" 14-year old boy, and I was shortly arrested and charged with 17 counts of Possession with Intent to Manufacture or Distribute a Scheduled II Controlled Substance.<br>I wound up spending 2 years, from 14-16 at a maximum security juvenile prison (Lookout Mountain YSC, Golden CO).<br>Freedom - Shortly Lived<br>In prison, I got my GED, and after release briefly enrolled in community college. I was working as a landscaper doing manual labor for $8/hr and then riding a bus 1hr each way to night classes. Not to say this sort of thing can't be done (people do it all the time), but I didn't have the tenacity or motivation to keep it up, so I dropped out.<br>I stayed sober for a brief period between 16-17. Not having learned my lesson, I again started selling drugs. I had learned about The Silk Road and the Darknet and was ordering (what was then) a legal "Research Chemical" with effects similar to MDMA (Methylone/bk-MDMA) shipped to my parents house. Eventually, my dad got home early from work and intercepted a package. Asking me what it was before I left for work, I told him "I don't know, never heard of the return address name". My father was not an idiot; he told me he was going to open it while I was at work, so I confessed "it's drugs."<br>Cue huge argument, him insisting he was going to remove everything from my room except my clothes and bed (most of which I paid for myself) and I would not be allowed to leave except for work. This was not an agreeable circumstance to me, so I refused -- at which point my dad said "then you won't be living here anymore!".<br>It's important to note that in Colorado (at the time, at least), emancipation of a minor was not a status one could file for, but instead purely a court status to be recognized during legal proceedings. That meant there was technically no avenue for me to legally move out before 18 with proper legal status.<br>So this, to me, sounded like sweet freedom & release, rather than a punishment. "You really won't call the police if I leave?" "Nope." I packed my backpack with my laptop and cash savings, and a suitcase with my clothes, and left. I had no plan but that was a bridge to be crossed.<br>It turned out that the parents of a friend had an unused bedroom in their trailer they would rent to me under-the-table for $300/mo. I jumped at that and slept on the floor of a trailer for 6 months.<br>I worked as a landscaper, at a lumber mill, and as a cashier at Walgreens, continuing to sell drugs on the side.<br>Inevitably, I wound up being arrested again on drug-related charges, and spent 18-19 in county jail. It was then that I became a convicted felon with a low-class felony.<br>A Serendipitous News Article & a Software Job<br>While I was in county jail, one day the...