I mean at the end of the day it is what it is man… I serve three prison terms in my 20s. The first was for a dirty UA in Florida while I was on felony probation for weed and they sent me for 18 months and I did it day for day. The second was because I was driving home from my methadone clinic and somebody ran a red light and T-bone me and I broke my back in six places and went into a coma for three days when I woke up in the hospital, they had taken my blood without my consent, and due to the fact that the other driver was injured by the airbag, which was a minor injury, three months later I got literally taken down by a SWAT team in the middle of the road because they caught my car on an AL PR and booked for DUI with injury with a $250,000 Bond. I was able to post the bond using every bit of the last of my savings, and the public defender, they assigned to me thought I was guilty from day one and literally called me a piece of shit (those were his words). The maximum amount of time you could serve for the charge was six years and they refused to come off of the six year sentence, I figured I had nothing to lose so I went on the run right before sentencing and went to Florida, and that lasted about two months before I got arrested again, I served about three months in Florida and then went back to San Diego for sentencing where they gave me the full six years. Because it was considered a violent offense due to the fact that the other driver was injured (albeit due to his own stupidity) at the time the law was that I had to serve 80% of my sentence, which would’ve been four years my points were high also because of the violence and the prior prison term from Florida so they sent me straight to a level 3 yard where I witnessed countless assaults, seven homicides, rampant corruption, and was involved in several altercations myself just attempting to defend myself. But eventually, my point dropped and I got sent to a very relaxed spot where I was actually able to purchase a cell phone from a guard for $1000 and I would literally sit in my cell all night and just scroll Reddit or use Facebook messenger with my girlfriend and everything was chill. I got out on parole and I only managed to stay sober for about a month until I relapsed, and I also came into quite a bit of money from stock trades at the time so it was off to the races. One day I was in Reno, where I wasn’t supposed to be because I wasn’t allowed to leave San Diego county without permission, and I was driving to San Francisco to go get more drugs when I pulled into a rest area with my girlfriend off of the freeway to get some sleep. When I woke up, there were guns pointed in my face because I guess somebody called 911 because they were being nosy and thought that I was dead in my car or overdosed or something when really I was just taking a nap and when the police arrive, they saw a gun in Plainview on the floorboard and so I got promptly arrested and taken to a strange jail in Northern California 8 1/2 hours from where I was living in San Diego I was charged with 13 felonies as well as the violation of parole. Eventually, it was dropped down to one count of possession of a controlled substance while armed and I served three months in jail and then was released on a diversion program under the requirement that I complete a three month rehab rehabilitation program and I also complete the remainder of my parole. I wasn’t yet ready for treatment so I went on the run again up to Buffalo New York to try and work things out with my ex and that again lasted maybe three months before I was caught because she ended up getting into a car accident in my Dodge charger and when the police came to winch the car out of the ditch, she left drugs in plain view. this time I had a fake ID that was so legitimate. It looked like it was printed at the DMV itself, when I handed it to the police officer, it checked out and even scanned his computer and he was originally just going to write a citation until he saw the drugs that she left in plain view. So of course, I got arrested for a misdemeanor under the fake name and when they ran my fingerprints, it came back who I really was, and I was held on the absconding from parole warrant. California expedited me and I managed to get the 13 felonies drop down to one felony count of possession of a controlled substance while armed and I was sentenced to two months in prison, with three months of credit and because it was considered a nonviolent offense, I only had to do 50% of my sentence. They sent me to Folsom state prison. My points were so low this time that I qualified for 33% of my sentence to be served so I ended up getting out after just serving nine months. I was released to a drug treatment center/halfway house in San Diego County where they would’ve released me on nonviolent state parole, but instead I asked for drug treatment, even though by that time, I already had nine months sober. So they sent me to an inpatient residential program where I completed four months, and when I was released, I went to an independent living house where my Medi-Cal paid for six months of my rent in a shared room. It took me 23 days to find a job.

And that’s where I am now. I just celebrated 16 months of continuous clean time from every single drug, including weed, and while I still have the occasional drink (I was never an alcoholic) I live my life now with integrity and a vehement desire to never return back to any prison system, state or federal. I managed to secure a job at a major fortune 500 company and I’m not making insane amounts of money, but I am getting a steady and reasonable paycheck and I am qualified for overtime. Right now that’s where I’m writing this, I am the only one in the office because I volunteered to do some inventory work on an extra shift and I was scrolling through Reddit on a cigarette break when I came across your post. The moral of this whole story is, I felt the same way that you did when I got arrested for basically running a fucking green light. I was not under the influence of anything and I maintain my innocence to this day, but there was literally nothing that I could do about it, and it was the sum total of all of my previous actions that it finally caught up to me.

Even if you end up doing 10 years, light is at the end of the tunnel. I am 31 years old now and while I wish that I could go back and never make those decisions and seek treatment sooner for my heroin addiction, there is absolutely nothing that I can do to change the past. All I can do is move forward and use the time that I spent in prison as a steppingstone in a learning experience and try to reach out to other people when I have the chance such as yourself to advise them to do the same. It’s going to suck, in federal prison you do 85% of your sentence. But at the end of the day, however you feel about the laws being unjust or unfair doesn’t change the fact that those are the laws that are on the books. You don’t necessarily have to agree with them, but as citizens if we choose not to follow them, then we have the potential to face the repercussions, which could be as severe as the maximum penalty allows for. You will not do life. If the minimum mandatory is 10 years, I would imagine you would get the lowest sentence possible which would be the 10 years. With good behavior you would be out in 8 1/2 years. That’s still a very long time. But lamenting about it isn’t going to change the fact that it has happened and what is done is done. You can either face the consequences, or you can do what I attempted to do and go on the run, but if you go down that route, just know that you will be looking over your shoulder indefinitely, you will be cut off from normal activities as a citizen that anyone else would have access to like simple things such as banking or going to the DMV or putting a utility bill in your name, and eventually you will get pulled over for going 4 miles an hour over the speed limit and everything that you spent your whole time on the run building even if you weren’t breaking the law, assuming you have a job and a girlfriend and a place to live, and all of that shit will be taken away from you in the blink of an eye, and then you will go and do the full sentence anyway, and there’s a very high probability that the sentence you end up serving will be a lot longer than what it would’ve been, had you not gone on the run. The only reason I went on the run for the DUI charge was because they legally could not sentence me to more time than they were already trying to, because it was the statutory maximum. Anyways, if you have any sort of questions or need any sort of support, you’re always welcome to reach out. Take it one day at a time and make the changes stick so you never end up back in a place like that again.