By June 2013, it felt like the wheels were falling off. I was using trazodone to keep myself in a near-permanent sleep to avoid migraines. Meanwhile, mom was feeling overwhelmed trying to keep the bills paid on our second floor apartment in Leeds.
Enter the white knight known simply as Simon. He and mom had known each other through through the internet for years, but mid-June 2013 was the first time they went out to meet one another. Simon courted my mother by presenting a false version of himself to her.
He promised her he could "alleviate our burdens" if we moved up with him to Cullman. Mom was completely stretched thin with the situation my father had left us in. And I felt utterly defeated in the shadow of Alessa's marriage. I didn't want to live near Birmingham anymore. So when mom decided to take him up on his offer, I had no argument. What was the worst that could happen?
Sometime in mid-August 2013, we left Leeds and took our belongings up to Cullman to live with Simon. But even early on, not everything seemed to fit the picture that Simon and his mother painted for himself.
Simon's ex had apparently left him without warning, and he was the victim in his scenario. But according to his 13-year-old son Jacob, who only visited on weekends, there was "another side of Simon" that we hadn't seen yet. I was willing to believe him, so I kept a sharp eye on Simon.
It only took four months for everything to fall apart.
A few days after Christmas, I was programming on the computer in my room when I heard a knock on my door. I heard my mom nervously say "Dylan, the police are here".
That was the phrase I had been trying to avoid my whole life. It came with a life of smoking cannabis for my Crohn's disease, in a place where it's illegal to even possess. I knew if they made it into the house, we were done. Simon had stupidly opened the door for these people, rather than tell them they needed a warrant.
I entered the living room and quickly took a seat on the couch between mom and Simon's stepdaughter, as police came barreling in through the front door. From the moment they entered, they had their guns out. I remember mom begging them not to shoot the dogs.
We all spent about an hour in the living room with a team of cops pointing guns in our faces, as we waited for them to secure a search warrant for Simon's house. Their guns all had cameras attached to them, recording this nightmare.
At first, all they found was a lot of weed, but that was alone was enough to take us to jail. At the time, if you had more than 2.2 oz of weed in Alabama, you were automatically charged with trafficking rather than possession.
For those who are unfamiliar with cannabis, I could easily smoke 2.2 oz in a month while nursing my chronic pain. Especially if it was the dirt weed that Simon got for us. I was smoking about half an ounce a week at the time. For someone with chronic pain, it's not a lot of weed.
But the situation got a lot worse once they started going through Simon's stepdaughter's bag. This was when we all learned that she had a heroin problem, as she had a bit of heroin and some needles in her bag. This sent the police into a euphoric frenzy, and they began chastising us all condescendingly.
"They always say they're just smoking weed, then you find the heroin."
"It's never just weed."
They began taunting us with phrases to that effect. We were all junkies now in their eyes, thanks to Simon's stepdaughter. It was awful.
Throughout the police raid, the guns never left our face. Simon sat in his chair looking mortified. His stepdaughter sat to the right of me, inconsolable. And my mother sat to the left of me, as we wondered what the hell we were doing here.
As the police invasion was winding down, the cast of characters switched from the raiders to the arresting police. I pleaded with one of them to not put me in jail and explained that I would not be able to eat because of my Crohn's disease. I knew if I went into general population, I would immediately enter into an involuntary hunger strike. I was not forceful but I was honest, and I never broke eye contact with him.
The seriousness of my situation seemed to cut through to this one arresting officer. None of the officers left were filled with the fervor of the raiding officers. So they agreed that I alone would be ROR'd, which means "released on recognizance". Basically I was still in trouble, but I would be let out of jail on the knowledge that I wasn't going anywhere.
It was a miracle, looking back. If I hadn't been a blue-eyed white kid, I wouldn't have survived that situation. Not in that part of Alabama. Not in the "sundown town" that is Cullman. I would have starved and seized up from benzo withdrawals in jail. My life would have ended right there.
By the time they were taking us out to the police cars to ride to the jail, it had begun raining heavily and the sun was setting. I don't even remember if I was wearing handcuffs, though I'm sure we all were.
We were taken to Cullman County Jail, strip searched, and thoroughly humiliated in the process. I remember the guards making sexual comments toward my mom and Simon's stepdaughter. I was livid, but I couldn't do anything. We were in Alabama's jail system now, and we all felt helpless.
They took mugshots of all four of us. Then at some point we were separated. The others went into general population, while the officers inside the jail decided to keep me in a cell for a mandatory 12 hours for "intoxication". They still had to ROR me in the morning, as that decision had been made by the arresting officers. The officers inside Cullman County Jail were just being petty.
By the morning I was out, and the only thing on my mind was figuring out how to get mom out of jail. Each of us had $1,000,000 bond, which seemed insurmountable. For the next two weeks, I laid the pressure on Simon's family as much as possible to pull some strings and get her out.
I also secured more weed to get me through this debacle. I was not going to let a police raid stand between me and my medicine. Within 24 hours of the police raid, I had more weed.
This book, this account of my life, is my protest against the illegality of cannabis. The current laws are an abomination. People should be able to grow and possess cannabis like any other plant. People like me suffer and die from being denied this medicine.
I remember when Colorado legalized recreational cannabis during all of this, on January 1st, 2014. The news showed people standing outside of dispensaries in Colorado, able to legally use cannabis for the first time in their lives.
My mom was watching the news from inside Cullman County Jail, feeling like she was in another world entirely. I was alone at Simon's house, listening to fireworks that only heightened my anger, as I tried to formulate a plan to get her out. The jail was denying my mom her own prescription to Xanax, which made me feel like I didn't have much time.
Simon's family had connections because his uncle Gerald had worked for The Cullman Times for many years, and he knew many powerful people in the area. I couldn't reach him directly, and Simon's mother held out until she realized I was too much for her to take care of. No matter how much food she cooked, I would decimate it and ask for seconds. I became furious with her for not acting sooner.
The old woman got tired quickly, and finally called on her brother Gerald for help. So on the second Friday of January 2014, my mom was finally let out on $1,000,000 bond. She had gone two weeks without any Xanax in jail. I think if she had gone much longer, she would have had a fatal seizure from the withdrawals.
I don't know how any jail in America can justify taking someone off of their meds, especially when they haven't been proven guilty in a court of law. This was an absolute atrocity.
Mom and I would visit court every two or three months for the next four years, trying to sort out a deal where we didn't have to go to trial. Every time, the courtroom was overflowing with people, who filled the courtroom and then formed a line outside as they waited for their names to be called. It was a chaotic scene. The smell of Lysol was everpresent.
Simon was absent throughout all this because his parents had bought him his own attorney. For us, this meant he wasn't around while we went through this mildly traumatic cycle of court visits, which was a relief.
At first, mom and I were mistakenly assigned the same court-appointed attorney, an older man who was either incompetent at or overwhelmed with his job. We were supposed to be represented separately, so I asked the judge for my own attorney.
During these visits I had my eye on one man in particular named Corcoran, who showed up regularly to speak to the judge, shake hands with fellow attorneys, and crack jokes with the clerks. He was younger and seemed far more cognizant of the courtroom's hectic activity than mom's attorney.
It was to our great fortune that the judge reappointed Corcoran as my attorney, as he was also a judge who worked on the floor above. Once he was on our team, I felt like we had a way out. Unlike mom's attorney, he was able to listen to us and clearly understand the nuances of the case.
No one wanted this going to trial, because the raiding officers had violated our fourth amendment rights by breaking in without a warrant. However, we certainly didn't want to take the risk of losing in court either.
Ultimately, it was mom who worked out and presented a rather ingenious deal to Corcoran, then the judge. On paper, we would say we were leaving Cullman for a year, in exchange for them dropping the charges. She knew what they wanted. They needed some kind of win, but we needed a reasonable compromise.
We ended up signing the final documents in Corcoran's office, then we were effectively free from the justice system. On paper, we would be "living in Pulaski, Tennessee" for the next year. But in reality we simply kept living with Simon on the outskirts of town. It took almost five years to get Cullman off of our backs.
By then it was 2018, and the new problem in our life was Simon's temper.
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