Eugene Milton
Eugene Milton was born in L.A. and raised in Hollywood. After being arrested, he spent his time in prison focused on getting sober and graduated with two college degrees, an associate of science in business and an associate of arts in American studies. He also learned four different trades and received 11 certificates from various self-help and recovery groups. Eugene is now focusing on his recovery and spending time with his family.
The Requisite for My Success was Sobriety
INTERVIEW BY JOHANA MARTINEZ AND NICOLLE PEDRAZA
Can you please start with your name, your age, and where you were born?
My name is Eugene Milton. I am 32 years old, and I was born in Los Angeles County.
How do you identify, whether that’s by generation, race, ethnicity, gender, or preferred pronouns?
I’m a male. I am addressed as he or him. I am white and Latino, specifically Irish and Guatemalan.
Where is your hometown?
I was born in Los Angeles at the county hospital and raised in Hollywood. I lived on two different streets for about 20 years.
What was your childhood like?
My stepdad raised me; he’s the one I call Dad. He raised me since I was 2 years old. I don’t really know my biological father. I’ve met him three different times. My stepdad and mom have been together for about 30 years, so they’ve been together as long as I’ve been around. My stepdad had a bout with addiction himself. He was addicted to crystal meth, and because of the problems in the home — domestic violence, verbal abuse, and physical abuse that my mom and I suffered — there were three different times my parents split up. There was a time when I was in elementary school when they split up, and my mom took me and my little brother to go live with one of her friends a couple of blocks away. Then she took him back, and everything was good again. Then, in middle school, right when I [transitioned] from elementary school to middle school, they broke up again. The same thing happened, and we moved to a different place.
That was harder because I had been in one school, and my grandma worked there as a yard attendant. So my cousin, who went there, and I were really popular because of that, and everybody liked us. I had to move schools during the semester of that year and make new friends at another school. I got through the whole year and started the following year, and then we moved back into the old place. When I came back, it was like a whole new class at the other school I used to attend, so it was difficult to fit in, and it just didn’t feel right.
The drug addiction [in the house] continued as I got older, and then they split up again in my freshman year of high school. Instead of moving in with one of her friends, this time, my mom took my little brother to a shelter, and she sent me to live with my uncle. At that time, I was about 15, turning 16, and I started acting up because I was left unsupervised. I went to juvenile hall. I got poor grades and started ditching high school. I decided to start using marijuana, and I was exposed to my uncle’s alcoholism. He taught me a few valuable traits, like ironing, being presentable, exhibiting confidence, and being able to talk to people and sell yourself. Those things helped me later on in life. At the same time, he let me hang around with his poker buddies. I used to bartend for them as a minor, so in a way, he contributed to my delinquency. But ultimately, it was my decision to start drinking at that age.
After a couple of months of living with my uncle, my mom finally got out of the shelter and moved into an apartment close to where the uncle I was living with was staying. We moved into that apartment with another uncle of mine and his wife, so the four of us lived in a pretty ghetto area.
My mom worked a morning job, and I got a graveyard job. It was my first job. I worked for the L.A. Times. I would go in on the weekends — on Fridays and Saturdays — to work this graveyard job, assembling the papers and putting them together section by section. It was pretty cool because I was making money, going to school when I wanted, and partying a little bit. My life was beginning to become exciting in unhealthy ways, and I was happy with that. I eventually noticed that the people who were working there were outperforming me. You had to make a quota to get paid — 1000 papers. It’s a big, maybe 4-foot-tall and 4-foot-wide cart that you had to fill up with papers stacked really high. I would barely make one the whole night. I would wonder, These guys are drinking and smoking weed all night with me, and they’re still making three times as many papers as I am. What’s going on? Eventually, I observed them going to the back room, and it was always kind of suspicious. Why are they so secretive about going there and closing the door? And so when they became comfortable with me, they invited me, and that’s when I first tried crystal meth at 15, about to be 16 years old.
They were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s — a mixed group. I tried it and realized how much work I could do, so I used that as an excuse. Because my mom worked mornings and I worked nights, we were like two ships passing in the night. I was never held accountable for delving into drug addiction, and there was nothing — no father figure — to stop me, so I continued to get worse.
That was [when I was] about 16. Then, I started getting into trouble. I went to juvenile hall. Then, when I got out of juvenile hall, I was placed in a behavior modification facility in the [San Fernando] Valley. I had to stay there for nine months. I was supposed to be in for a year, but I did nine months. What ended up happening was that I got diagnosed with depression by the counselor who was there, and they put me on Wellbutrin. Wellbutrin is an antidepressant. And then I did well in school. I gained a lot of weight. I ended up going to a special adult school to get my GED diploma. It was before the year I was supposed to graduate, so that was good after dropping out for a year. I graduated with honors. But then, after I finished school, I was just unmotivated and lost sight of what I wanted to do. I didn’t make any official plans or have any serious goals.
What was your first experience with substances like?
My first real drink was given to me by my uncle. It was a pale ale; it was a Rolling Rock, and he poured it into a little Styrofoam cup and gave it to me, and I liked it. It was just like a cold, bitter taste, and it made my throat warm, and I felt it go warm all the way down. And because, you know, that’s my uncle, and that felt good, I thought it was a good thing. I saw that he would do it [drink alcohol] often, and it made it glorified in a way. It made it look like, Oh, that’s the cool thing to do. So I enjoyed it.
What were your experiences with other drugs besides alcohol and crystal meth?
Those are the ones that I started on, and once I got out of high school, I started using heroin and I started taking prescription medications that weren’t mine — painkillers. I went through this whole phase where I would go to music festivals that everybody knows as raves. And I went through my whole “Kandi Kid” phase, and I thought that was like the coolest thing in the world — to go party all night and take ecstasy and acid and mushrooms and ketamine and designer psychedelics and just go out of my mind. It wasn’t good because I was vulnerable, and at times, I would lose my personal possessions and come back with bruises or end up in the hospital.
I’ve mixed all kinds of drugs, and the main ones that I liked were ecstasy and mushrooms. When I wasn’t raving and partying, I was using heroin. At first, I was smoking it, and I always secretly judged people who used needles. I always tried to avoid it, so I stayed smoking it and snorting it for about a year and a half until I met this girl. I was pretty naive at that time, so I just went along with it, and I let her shoot me up with a needle with heroin. And it was just bad because I liked it. It was scary because I liked it too much. And once you do it for more than two days straight, you get sick — and when I say “you,” it’s anybody who does it. You get sick, and it’s just terrible. There’s this general feeling that nothing’s all right unless you have it, and once you get into that state of mind, it’s just like, you want it, you need it, and nothing will get in the way of you getting it. That’s when I started getting into crime and was arrested for possession, theft, burglary, and robbery. Then I started going to jail, and my sentences started getting longer, and it was bad.
Why did you judge people who used intravenously?
My biological father was born addicted to opioids, and his parents were intravenous heroin users. They both passed away because of overdoses. I knew that because my mom told me at a young age and because I always wondered, Where are my grandparents? Why don’t I have grandparents? It’s not normal for a kid not to have grandparents, and I had some on the other side of my family, and that was cool. But I was wondering what the deal was with that. That was weird. So she told me, and I always had that in the back of my head, and I would see people passing through these neighborhoods — MacArthur Park, Downtown Skid Row — and I would wonder why some people would do that. Why would they do that to themselves? And it didn’t make sense to me. It was the stigma behind it. I didn’t understand them and judged them because I thought it was repulsive. It wasn’t right. Don’t they love themselves? And not only that, but you turn into something you’re not, so I secretly judged them, and I would see people that would do it, and I would just be like, What’s the point?
Did you feel like you were, in a way, safer because you were smoking instead of injecting it?
Yeah, I felt that that was [safer] by not shooting it and choosing to smoke it, snort it, or eat it. I thought that was better than that. I thought that I was safer and that nothing bad could happen to me. I thought that everything was still in control, but that was a lie. I was lying to myself.
What happened to the girl you met?
Unfortunately for her, she continued to use drugs intravenously. She used a lot of different kinds, mostly heroin and meth, and she started prostituting to support her habit. I saw her a few years later, and she looked in bad shape. She lost 40 to 50 pounds; her face was all sunken in, and she was up to the same exact thing. I couldn’t believe it. I was just like, What happened to you? You used to be beautiful. You used to be with me. And all of a sudden, it’s just like she looked like Gollum from “The Lord of the Rings” series.
Why did you resort to using these substances at such a young age?
I asked myself that a lot, and when I was in prison, I had the chance to go to a lot of self-help groups. I had a chance to work on the trauma that I endured as a child and gain more self-awareness. Part of it was my stubbornness; part of it was the D.A.R.E. program. They came to my elementary school, and they had this Drug Abuse Resistance Education, this whole seminar where they taught us about what drugs are and why you shouldn’t do them, and I was one of the people who it had the opposite effect on. It intrigued me. We’re not supposed to do that? Why? I wondered why, and it just always piqued my interest. Why is everybody saying it’s bad? I always had that in my mind. It was partly boredom and partly stress, and most of it was because I wanted to experiment. Everybody always told me, ‘No, you can’t do this. No, you can’t do that.’ But I was the type of person who had a rebellious personality. If somebody said [not to do] something, I’d look them straight in the eyes and do it anyway. I would act up, and I didn’t have anybody to check on me, so I got away with it for a long time.
How did you feel while you were using?
The first time I used crystal meth, I had already been drinking brandy and smoking kush [marijuana]. I was kind of crossfaded, feeling good and invulnerable. I was scared to try my first line. I’m not going to lie, I had butterflies. My heart was pounding, and then they were all looking at me. I was like, “Oh, what is that?” And then they were like, ‘Do you want it or not? Just stop asking questions,’ so I took it. Part of me wanted not to be judged. I wanted to save face. I wanted to be cool and fit in with them because that’s what they were doing. It wasn’t as much peer pressure as wanting to fit in. I had an identity crisis behind it. I wasn’t Brown enough to hang out with the Latinos, I wasn’t white enough to hang out with the white kids, and I didn’t skate good enough to [hang out] with the skaters. It just always kind of felt like I’d never fit in anywhere. When I was in this ghetto, I had to act hard so I could fit in with them. And so I decided to use it. And when I did, it burned my nose. Then I just felt like I was moonwalking all of a sudden. I just couldn’t stop talking, working, and laughing when I came out of that room. I had enough energy for 10 people. I felt the best and didn’t remember any problems. I wasn’t thinking about my dad, mom, or brother — nothing. It just made me feel numb and happy. But it wasn’t real.
When did you first realize you had a substance use problem?
That’s a good question. I think when I got arrested, they told me that I was facing five years in prison for grand theft. It was sobering because I was already high and under the influence — drinking and all kinds of other drugs — and I got arrested for grand theft. I had to go through the booking process. What that’s like is that you get arrested, you get put in the back of the cop car, you get taken to the police station, they fingerprint you, and they search you — strip search if you have drugs, which I did. Then you’re waiting and waiting and waiting. You talk to the watch sergeant, who asks if you know what you’re being charged with. Then, you get processed into the city jail. Once you get processed into the city jail, you wait for an arraignment. Once you wait for an arraignment and see what charges are brought against you, you make your plea, and then you’re transported to the county jail. That usually takes maybe three to four days. If you get arrested on a Friday, it will take five days.
I made it to the county jail, and I’m sitting there. I’m try- ing to call my mom on the phone to let her know I’m in jail, I need some money to go to the store, and I don’t know how long I’m going to be there. She answered my phone call but said she wouldn’t help me. At that moment, I realized that I had gotten myself into something and would have to take care of it on my own.
I was thinking to myself, Why did I do this? What was the reason? What could I possibly have gained? And I came up with nothing. The answer was that I put myself in there because my drug addiction led me there. I wouldn’t have been in the state of mind that I was in to make those impulsive, poor decisions that I made to get put into handcuffs in the first place.
Before that, did any adults offer you support? Had you ever sought out recovery?
Once I realized I had a problem, I was about 18 years old, but I didn’t care. I thought that if my dad could function as an addict, why couldn’t I? I thought nobody needed to know, and I was hiding it from everybody. I thought I was so slick. But you can’t hide; it’s impossible to hide. You can tell when somebody’s tired by just looking at their eyes, you know? That’s the first thing you do. You look at their eyes; if they are all black, they’ve been up all night. If their [eyes] are little pinpoints and they’re nodding off and falling asleep, they’re on heroin. If they’re falling over, they’re drunk, you know?
Can you tell us about your experience while you were incarcerated?
I was arrested for robbery and stayed in the county jail for about 13 months, fighting my case. My original deal was for four years, but because I had a strike and lost, my sentence got doubled up, and I got a five-year enhancement. Instead of taking a four-year deal with halftime, I ended up getting 11 years with 85%, so it’s three years doubled up, plus the five-year enhancement.
After about 13 months in county jail here at MCJ (Men’s Central Jail), I got sent to state prison. So they sent me to a reception center called Wasco, and because I got sentenced to 11 years, there’s a point system. You get two points for every year you have to be [incarcerated], and the point system dictates your security level on top of whatever charges you have. I had 22 points, so I was level two.
[I was in the] Wasco State Prison-Reception Center (WSP) from the time I was 16 until I was 27. When I got arrested on this charge, I was active. That means you have to participate in prison politics and geopolitics. It’s not nice; a lot of it is racially motivated and very violent, and I had to deal with that. Because of my age, how much time I had, and where I was from, I had to do violent things in there and be okay with it and facilitate them. And so I got in trouble for battery against a prisoner, and my points got jacked up. Then I went to level three, and the difference between levels one and two, and levels three and four is that at levels one and two, the violence is mostly done with hands and feet, while at levels three and four, it’s usually with weapons. So when I got to level three out of reception, I made it to an actual prison yard, and it was very violent, and when I was there, I had to be vigilant. I had to wake up early in the morning, sit with a certain race of people, show my loyalty to them, and walk a very thin, narrow line. And because I was young, I had to work out and basically be there to show my loyalty by making my presence known. Whenever they needed things done, they asked me to participate in them. If it was within the race, it was usually hands-on, but if it was outside the race, it was usually with weapons.
So I lasted there a few months, and then it came time for me to put in some real work, and I wasn’t down with that. In my head, if I were going to attack somebody like that, I wanted to get away with it, but because of how the rules were set up, they want you to get caught so that the facility doesn’t go on lockdown. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life for something as false as that, and I ended up leaving that yard and going to another yard, which had less politics and was the best decision I made in there. After I got away from that violent yard and went to a better yard, my time started becoming so easy. I started working out. I lost a bunch of weight. I got two college degrees. I got an Associate of Science in business. I got an Associate of Arts in American studies. I learned four different trades — commercial painting, office services, building maintenance, and welding. I’m pretty good at entry-level things. Then, I got 11 certificates from self-help groups like Criminals & Gang Members Anonymous, Self Awareness and Recovery, and Creating Awareness Together. I also participated in a lot of extracurricular activities. They had walkathons, tournaments, and stuff like that. I had a win in ping pong and a second place in horseshoes. It was cool.
I had a really good workout partner who encouraged me to work out and get into shape. When I was in the county jail, I was stressed out, so I started developing really poor eating habits. I went in at 163 pounds, unhealthy, and then over those 13 months, I had gained so much weight — I was 283 pounds. I hated the way I looked, and I hated the way I felt about how I looked, so I started losing weight in prison. I lost about 100 pounds and went all the way down to 174.
I got into decent shape. I started hitting the punching bag. I got closer to God and learned how to be a friend. I learned what it takes to have a friend because all the friends I thought I ever had in my life — they weren’t friends, and they did stuff to be disloyal and betray me. And even if some didn’t necessarily do those things, they weren’t good influences on me. I learned that you need to be a friend to have a friend. And it’s about communication, respect, and loyalty. Those are the little things I learned in there.
How did you handle withdrawals when you first went to prison?
Man, I remember my first withdrawal when I was using heroin — when I was in the county jail — was terrible. Okay, so when you do heroin and your high comes down, you start to withdraw immediately. You feel like you’re literally sick, like you have the worst cold you can possibly have. You’re cold, and it’s about 100 degrees outside. You’re wearing two sweaters under a blanket, and you’re still cold; you can’t get warm. You feel itchy. You feel itchy all over, and it’s not just like an itch that you can take a shower to make go away; it’s going to itch still, and you feel like something’s wrong. You feel depressed, and then your stomach hurts, you’re constipated, and you can’t use the bathroom. It’s hard to eat anything that isn’t sugary; you crave sugar, and you just want to eat candy bars, so if you don’t have money on your books, aren’t getting packages, or if you just got to jail in the first place, you’re not going to have anybody giving you anything. You’re just stuck in the corner feeling this way, and then it gets worse, and you start having these really bad cramps. Then you feel like you want to sleep, so you go into the fetal position because that’s the only way to get comfortable. You can only lie there for two minutes before you feel like you have to roll over, and once you roll over the other way, you can’t get comfortable. It’s like you’re wrestling an alligator. You’re just cold, and there are no beds [or] pillows in there. There are sheets, but that doesn’t do anything for the cold, and it’s cold in there, naturally. And you've got to be awake and watch out so you don’t get hurt by other people, or make sure that you’re not offending people. And C.O.s (corrections officers) don’t have empathy, so they’re not going to be like, ‘Oh, poor baby, do you need a Snickers bar?’ They’re just going to be like, ‘Get up! Move around!’ and treat you badly.
When I started getting to the point where I started rolling around and couldn’t get warm, I felt like I needed to vomit, and I needed to use the bathroom. At one point, I was trying to vomit, then turning around and trying to use a bathroom, and then trying to vomit, but nothing came out. I just felt bad. It was terrible. Finally, when I got something into my stomach, they had these frozen little juices in the morning — a little four-ounce thing, and it was all frozen. I was trying to smash it and drink it. And finally, when that soothed my stomach, I immediately threw it up.
Was there a stigma around trying to seek recovery in prison?
In the first prison, they didn’t have a lot of programs like that, and if you [wanted to go to a recovery program], you had to go to another yard. There was definitely a stigma. It was considered or viewed as a weakness to participate in that. If you did, you’re essentially a snitch since you’re in a room with the C.O. To get into a program like that, you have to go to another yard, and then it can be good. I went into another yard, and even though it wasn’t necessarily like that in the first yard, there were still people with that same mentality, so they judged those people. But at the same time, it was accessible, and if you have thick skin and can just ignore people and not care about what other people think, you can participate in the programs there.
How were you introduced to the medication-assisted treatment program?
There was a medication-assisted treatment program that had these little suboxone strips (a medication strip placed under the tongue to treat opioid dependency) that they’d administer to people who were in the program. But because of my criminal thinking and my addiction, I thought I could just get some and buy some from somebody else. For a long time, that’s how it went. My cellie would get them and share them with me, and I would help him pay or give him some store [credits]. Eventually, I was like, How can I get into the program? I went through the process of signing up for it, and I got it on my own. They increased my dosage to the maximum, and I was taking that for about a year. Then I started tapering down to stop taking it, and once I did go all the way down and stopped cold turkey, it was hard. For about 9 or 10 days, I didn’t get rest. I didn’t sleep for 10 days, and my nervous system was so shocked that I could feel the fan on the wall hook vibrating and sending the vibrations through the bunk and into my knees. It was just really bad, and it took about a month to start sleeping.
What motivated you through that difficult time?
I was on it for a while, and I knew that I was going to get out in 2023 — I just got out on Christmas — and I told myself that I wanted to be clean and sober. I didn’t want any type of feeling that what I have in my life is part of my addiction. I noticed that when I would use, I would be in the mood to do things, like it would give me energy to work out and cope and deal with my environment and do my homework because I was doing four or five classes at a time and working out and going to groups. It would have been kind of stressful if I hadn’t done self-care. I told myself that I needed to be able to do this without the aid of medication. The new year was coming up — 2023. And so that was the end of 2022. I told myself, I’m going to quit on the last day [of the year]. I’m not going to take it anymore. That was my motivation. And I had told people on the outside that I was sober. They didn’t know I was in the medication treatment program, and I didn’t want to be a liar. I didn’t want to have that feeling on the inside of being fake or dishonest because that’s all I’ve been like since I was 15 to 27. For 12 years, I was just manipulative and dishonest. I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I didn’t want to feel that way about myself. I just wanted to love myself the way I felt was right, and I learned to love myself.
What was the most encouraging thing that made you want to continue the recovery process?
All of 2023, from January 1 to December 25, I was clean. I got straight As in school. I put on a good amount of muscle. I lost a lot of fat. My relationship with my parents drastically improved. I felt blessed and didn’t want to lose that feeling. I realized that it was my sobriety that allowed me and set me up to succeed, finish, and follow through with anything I set out to do. I wanted that to continue. I wanted to see how far I could get. One thing about me is that, yeah, I functioned even though I was using, but I would always self-sabotage. I would get two jobs and be working, saving money, and doing good, and then I would mess it up. I realized that behavior I used to have, and I told myself that I wasn’t going to do that anymore and that the requisite for my success was sobriety — not only just being sober, but being clean. I wanted that to be the foundation of my success. I was reminding myself that I needed to stay sober so I could succeed. I need to have a car. I need to get my stuff together. I need to get a place. I need to be there for my kids. I need to be a father. That was what motivated me.
Did you try to make amends with any relationships when you were recovering?
Yeah, that was hard. My mom came around and told me — because I’m a mama’s boy, I love my mom — she told me, ‘I forgive you.’ It was not as easy with my dad because he and I relate to the jail and drug experience, so he knows. But, when I admitted where I was wrong and showed him a good chunk of sobriety, he started looking at me like, ‘All right, you got that. I forgive you.’ But my brother’s another story. My little brother went through the same trauma I went through when we were kids, and apparently, I contributed to some of that trauma that he endured because I wasn’t a good big brother. It wasn’t something I did on purpose. It was just because we were kids; we were dumb young kids, and he happened to be smaller, so it was worse [for] him. And because we have different dads, his complexion is much darker than mine, so he always felt like he was ‘subhuman,’ to quote him. He thought that I had bullied him. I never felt that way about him. But it was partly that and partly just how we got along as adolescents. He is still stuck on that. The times that I’ve been over at my mom’s house because I’m not living there with them anymore — I’m in a sober living program — he will literally run, like he’ll get up and leave and take a walk, or he’ll leave before I get there. The times when he didn’t leave, he went to the other room.
I’ve extended gestures, and he told me he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. I talked to my counselor, and it bothered me for about two weeks. Then, my counselor told me something that made sense. He said, ‘Why don’t you be the brother that he needs?’ That just resonated with me. I talked to my other counselor about it, and he’s like, ‘Yeah, you know, just be what he needs, and he’ll come around.’ So, as hard as it is, I’m not going around there to give him the space he seems to need.
What type of recovery programs and counseling did you attend after you were released?
I’m doing anger management and drug education; those are actually at a place called Bold Recovery down on 6th Street. I’m going to go there when I’m done here [today]. I’ve done meetings like AA and NA. I do counseling sessions, just regular therapy, where I get a chance to vent and talk about if I have any issues with anger. I have a little anger log, and I can write down how much my brother pisses me off, how that made me feel, and how I reacted to it. Yeah, so anger management, counseling, drug education, and exercising — those are my main outlets.
Is there a message you would like to spread about recovery?
It doesn’t matter how far down you go, what rock bottom is, or what kind of issues you go through in your house or family. You could get infected with AIDS, or you could be ashamed of prostituting yourself, or something like that. You could be an intravenous user or get Hep C. It doesn’t matter. You can always come back. You can always try again, and you can always pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again. There are places and people that will help you, and God will help you through it. For me, that was one of the things I did that I could get through. I prayed, and I had to go through rehab like four or five different times, detox once, and [go to] jail and prison for me to realize that I needed to be done. I didn’t stop until I needed to be done. Sometimes, people want you to stop and try to intervene, but the point is that you have to want it for yourself. A person who’s in their addiction needs to feel it inside them. And once they feel it, they can ask God to help them or whatever higher power they choose to acknowledge. They can find something to focus on and learn how to love themselves.
Why did you choose to participate in this interview project with us?
A person in one of the groups I attend at Bold Recovery Center shared an opportunity with me to give back to the community. I just felt like, if I can share a story or spend a little time motivating or — even if no good comes out of it — if I try, I feel like it’s a way that I can give back to my community, to all the people that I’ve harmed or wronged in the past. I would like to make amends with them, so this is a gesture that I can provide.