Prison || Puff Puff Pass
A Story About Smoking "Weed" in Prison
The tray slot on the door opened with a bang and I followed through with the ritual — back facing the door, hands behind my back, cuffs on. The cell door opened and 2 officers escorted me 50 feet down the hallway that was the hole and into the property room at the far side.
They took off the cuffs, I exchanged my orange jumpsuit-of-shame for green scrubs, and they returned my laundry bag to me which contained all my property.
“5A, 23 bottom. Go,” was the command given to me.
The officer in the booth pushed a button, the front door lock kicked open, and I walked out. I took my time walking down the boulevard — the main sidewalk that connects all the buildings — breathing in the fresh air as I made my way to building 5.
Each main housing unit was separated into two sides. I went through the door marked “A” and made my way to bunk 23 where I was greeted by a guy named Griffin who was sitting in a chair next to the adjacent bunk
Griffin was an old friend. We had met in jail more than a year ago where we bonded over a daily calisthenics routine. We would do 1 pushup, walk the length of the concrete pad that was the rec-yard, do 2 pushups, walk back, 3 pushups, and so on. When we got to 25 we would start counting down until we got back to 1.
“I wonder how many pushups this is,” Griffin would ask.
I didn’t know, but I was pretty confident I could figure out the formula with pen and paper and a few hours of time — something I had plenty of.
“650 pushups,” I told him the next time I saw him.
“No way it’s that much,” he said.
I tried showing him the proof, but I think that made things worse.
When I arrived in building 5, Griffin greeted me from his chair with a smile and introduced his friend Bill who was sitting up in his bed. The two of them were sharing Bill’s TV.
Bill was an older guy — maybe 60 — soft-spoken and frail. I came to find out that if given a choice, Bill would live his life under the influence of anything other than sobriety. If he wasn’t high on something then he was asleep from his trazodone prescription. Or maybe it was seroquel, I don’t know.
After exchanging pleasantries, Griffin gestured for me to come closer. He had Bill’s locker open and he was doing something inside. When I got near I saw he was rolling a joint.
“Look at this stuff, ain’t it weird?”
On the rolling paper I saw what looked like white confetti. Maybe 10-15 little flat squares inside the paper. The joint would be 99% paper and 1% whatever this stuff was.
Bill kept an expressionless face as he continued watching TV.
I went back to unpacking my stuff and got settled into the new location, while the 2 of them waited for the next opportunity to light this thing up.
Bill never really said much to me, but I had one exchange with him that was quite memorable a week or two later. I was coming down with a cold from the petri dish that was 90 inmates packed into a sardine can so I pulled out a bag of cough drops from my locker.
Bill perked up like a dog that just heard the crinkling sound made by a bag of treats. “Those cough drops?” he asked.
“Yea, you want one?" I held out the bag and he reached in to grab one.
“Thanks. I like to eat ‘em like candy,” he said. “Hey man, you like dragons?”
I followed his gaze to the tattoo on my forearm. “Yea, I like dragons.”
“Well how about dragon deez nuts across your face,” he said.
There’s a strange phenomenon when it comes to reputation in prison. If someone calls you a bitch and you don’t do anything about it, then everyone will call you a bitch. And if everyone knows you’re a bitch then you’ll be an easy target for theft and abuse.
On the other hand, beating up a frail old man is a lose-lose situation. If you lose the fight then you got beat up by an old man. If you win the fight… well you just beat up an old man. Some old men — like Bill — used this fact like armor so he could tell jokes.
I looked around to see if anybody else had heard, but it was just us. Bill had made sure I didn’t have any reason to defend my reputation.
“Damn Bill, it’s like that?!”
The ear-piercing screech of a whistle rang through the air, signaling count time. Everyone in the pod stood at the foot of their bunks while 2 COs walked through and counted everyone. When they finished counting us on A-side, they would go through the door to the adjacent pod on B-side of the building and count the inmates over there before returning to the booth to call it in. Each pod took 2-3 minutes to count.
One day after count, Griffin beckoned me as he walked briskly by my bunk on his way to the bathroom. “Hey, come on man. Hit this with me,” he said.
“Where’s Bill?” I responded.
“Fuck if I know. Probably fell asleep somewhere,” was his answer.
I hesitated hard because I knew how this stuff could fuck people up.
Griffin reassured me, “It’s good man, come on.”
But I didn’t trust him. “If it’s good, then why you tryin’ to give it away?”
“Just come on man, we only got a minute,” he whispered urgently before disappearing into the bathroom.
The pod officers knew people would go into the bathrooms and smoke after count, and they tried various things to stop it.
The Blitz Tactic
Immediately after finishing count on B-side they would rush back into A-side and try to catch people smoking in the bathroom. But whenever an officer would enter the pod various “whoops” and “tweet tweets” would be shouted out by the inmates who saw them first. An officer could never enter unnoticed — the first “whoop” would be followed by the sound of flushing toilets and the disappearance of all evidence.
“Why you sittin’ on the toilet with your pants on!” they’d shout over the saloon-style bathroom doors.
“Why you creepin’ on me?” would be the answer, also accompanied by a homophobic slur.
The Slow Play
It wasn’t hard to know who was actually smoking in the bathroom. What was hard was proving it. No better way to catch someone breaking the rules than to put them on the list of people who need to be “randomly” drug tested right?
Well that worked when weed was weed and delta-9-THC could be detected in pee for weeks after a single toke. But these drugs were evolving to avoid detection and delta-9-THC was no longer the primary psychoactive compound.
The Squeeze
When the first two tactics didn’t work, the whole facility was squeezed. Rec-yard time was limited. Shakedown frequency was increased. Evening count would be delayed till 11pm and morning count would be pushed up to 5:30am to make sure nobody got a good night’s sleep.
No better way to prevent people from using drugs than to make sure every other aspect of their lives is awful right? Maybe at least the snitches will crawl out of the woodwork to help.
The reality is that the facility had a drug problem and there was nothing they could do about it. Getting away with smoking in the bathroom was easy.
But the evolution of the drugs often came with unexpected consequences.
One quiet kid was found with his pants around his ankles on the bathroom floor begging for his mommy. Another kid was last seen running naked out of the shower and trying to hug a CO. A normally big and loud guy was heard screaming incoherent nonsense while his friends tried to get him to chill out so he didn’t get caught.
Oh and vomit. Unexpected vomit was pretty much everywhere.
I was chatting with my buddy Felix about it one time. “Man I feel sorry for these guys gettin’ so fucked up when they don’t expect it,” I said.
“You feel sorry for them? I envy them. Give me some of what they’re having!” he responded.
I didn’t understand. “So you wanna run around naked and screaming and puking everywhere?”
“Hell yea! You’ve never been high before have you?”
“I’ve smoked weed a few times in my life. Always enjoyed it, but never made it a priority.”
“Weed high ain’t high man. You’ve never been high before. You should try this shit. There’s no better feeling than the complete loss of control. Especially in here.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said — fully intending to never be so high that I lose control.
But Griffin had reassured me. “It’s good man,” he had said. And Griffin knew me. He knew I wasn’t the type to seek out a total loss of control. If he told me “it’s good” then he must mean this isn’t the crazy stuff that’ll have me stripping off my clothes and running around screaming.
Right?
I mean, I just came out of the hole. What’s the worst that could happen — they send me back? Can’t get any worse than that.
I was about halfway through my sentence. The last time I was free felt like forever ago, and the next time I would be free was too far away to comprehend.
Fuck it.
I walked into the bathroom and found Griffin crouching next to the low wall beside a urinal — a ritual I had seen him and Bill perform countless times. I crouched next to him and he pulled out the lighter. A playing card wrapped carefully around 2 AA batteries with a staple on top. The tip of his thumb was brown from being burned by this thing so often.
He had rolled up some toilet paper into a fluffy wick that would catch a spark quickly. He lit the wick and then held it up to the joint and took a drag.
It smelled kinda like weed. I think.
He took another drag and then passed it to me.
Puff puff pass was the cadence. A good pace to ensure everyone a fair share and also to ensure quick consumption of any lit evidence.
In 30 seconds it was gone.
Next thing I know the door to the rec-yard was open and I was walking towards it. A CO was standing there holding it open for me.
Fuck, he knows I’m high, I thought. Gotta keep walking — keep it together. He has to smell it on me at least. Fuck, he knows. Fuck. He Knows! Jesus why is the door so far away? Fuuuuuuck!!!
I held my breath. He was standing in the doorway and I had to pass just inches away from his nose to get through.
Why didn’t I just go to bed? Why am I going outside? Oh my god the sky is so blue.
“Damn, it’s a beautiful day,” I accidentally said out loud as I walked through the door.
“Yes,” the CO responded. “Today is a beautiful day.”
I had made it outside. I had my clothes on. I didn’t feel like I had to vomit. And the sky was a shade of blue that I had never seen before. Such a beautiful shade of blue.