Free Criminal That I Am by Jennifer Ridha

even then, I don’t bother mentioning Fat Fuck and Mean Fuck. By that time, their misconduct constitutes a drop in the bucket of transgressions that surround Cameron’s case. Thisincludes, I suppose, my own. When it’s time for me to answer for my misdeeds, no solace can be had in pointing to those of others. When my reckoning arrives, it is for me and me alone.
    N ot long after our beef begins with the Two Fucks, I tell Cameron, “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
    He enthusiastically agrees.
    It’s after the Christmas holiday, January 2010, and we’re preparing to make a motion for Cameron’s bail. The government opposes the motion based on the not altogether unreasonable premise that Cameron was already awarded bail but violated the terms. We are nonetheless trying again, based on the argument that Cameron’s bail violation was not really his fault.
    As specious as this may sound, as a medical matter it is true. When DEA agents arrested Cameron, they recognized that his heroin addiction was of some medical concern. They took him to a nearby hospital, where the on-call physician advised that he take a detoxification medicine to avoid severe withdrawal. Cameron had this medicine in his possession when he left the hospital. DEA agents then took him to MCC, where he spent the night.
    The day after his arrest, he was granted bail in the form of house arrest, which he served at his mother’s house under the supervision of a private security company. But when he arrived, the detoxification medicine was nowhere to be found. When I join the case months later, it’s still not clear where the medicine ended up, whether it was lost in the shuffle between MCC and his mother’s house, or whether the security company confiscated it. All that’s clear is that no one seemed to know what to do next.
    Thus, against medical advice, Cameron was left to undergo severe heroin withdrawal without medical supervision. The psychiatrist, out of the country when all of this happened, later explains to us that this situation is physically untenable, that opiate withdrawal causes the brain to turn against itself. The withdrawing addict, believing he is about to die without using, becomes suicidal.
    Cameron did not attempt suicide. What he did was call one of theprominent ladies in his gaggle—Mother Goose, if you will—to put him out of his misery. Mother Goose was also a heroin addict and so had some handy to place in a glassine envelope and stuff into the battery cartridge of an electric toothbrush. The toothbrush was delivered along with some other toiletries to the security guards at Cameron’s mother’s house.
    It probably would have worked but for Cameron’s desperate need for the drugs. The symptoms of heroin withdrawal do not allow for subtlety, and so when he berated the security detail about the imminent arrival of his toothbrush, suspicions were raised. No one really needs a toothbrush with that much urgency, and so when the toiletries arrived, the security guards examined the battery cartridge and contacted the government.
    Cameron was sent to MCC that same day. Upon processing, MCC assigned him to a detoxification protocol. Two weeks later, he was clean.
    When I hear Cameron tell the story of how he ended up at MCC, I marvel at how avoidable it all seems. I’m also dumbfounded by his decision to have someone smuggle him heroin while he was under house arrest.
    â€œI mean, if anything, why not just have her smuggle the medication? You were supposed to have it anyway.”
    â€œShe didn’t have my medication.”
    â€œI know, but she could probably get her own. It just seems less egregious to bring you what was prescribed to you rather than a street drug.”
    He thinks about my logic for a moment. “Yeah, I guess that makes better sense.”
    T hough it won’t be easy to win bail the second time around, we don’t consider it