Fighting Back: Part 4b

ROAD TO NOWHERE

Drug Abusers Have Lives Of Loss, Pain

GULFPORT - A drug dealer may promise to be your friend. But when your money
runs out, he doesn't care if you live or die.

That's just the way it is, say two Gulfport men, who believe they would be
dead by now if they hadn't ended up in jail because of cocaine arrests.

Joe Rand Hoye and David Scott Walker, both longtime drug users, are serving
time at the Harrison County Sheriff's Work Center on Lorraine Road. They're
locked in at night, but spend their days performing community-service work.
Although it's still more like jail than a comfortable home, the men agree
that it's a better life than a dangerous, drug-using lifestyle.

About 27 percent of people who are serving prison time in Mississippi were
convicted on drug charges. National statistics, however, show that at least
70 percent of all crime is drug-related.

Hoye, 64, has first-hand experience in how a lifestyle of drug abuse goes
hand-in-hand with crime and danger. He has been shot five times and injured
in fights many times during his 40 years of using drugs. He has a broken
tooth from a gun that a drug dealer once shoved down his throat while
threatening to kill him.

He stretches out his arms, showing his "$75,000 trademark" from 40 years of
shooting up heroin and cocaine. Long scars from needle tracks have left
gouges up and down his arms and changed the color of his skin.

Hoye said he started smoking marijuana in 1959 while serving in the U.S.
Navy. Then he graduated to cocaine and heroin and used his job as a
hairstylist for drug connections.

"I started shooting up every hour on the hour," Hoye said. "I sold drugs to
keep from committing other types of crimes just to have money for my own
drugs. It wasn't anything for my habit to cost $300 a day."

The drug lifestyle, he said, is "a maggot-infested jungle of a life that
keeps you in danger. After a while, you get tired of people dropping at
your feet."

He was in and out of jail on misdemeanor charges. But in December, he got a
10-year prison sentence over a $20 rock of cocaine and a chance meeting
with an undercover officer.

"I did this to myself," Hoye said. "I had a choice in the matter."

But cocaine and heroin are like a disease, Hoye said. "Once it gets ahold
of you, it's hard to stay away."

Blessed to be alive

Walker, 36, hopes he can stay away from drugs when he finishes serving his
time.

"I've disgraced my family, but I'm really blessed to still be alive,"
Walker said, recalling periods of homelessness, stealing and pawning items
for cash, and hiding out from users and dealers who wanted to hurt him over
bad drug deals.

"I would take people's money to go buy drugs for them, but I'd never go
back," Walker said. "I'd buy drugs for myself. I had a $400-a-day habit but
I didn't have $400 a day. I was constantly looking over my shoulder."

His parents thought it was a passing stage when he started getting into
trouble while hanging out with older neighborhood kids, Walker said.

When he was 11, he got drunk for the first time by breaking into a
neighbor's home with friends and stealing vodka and gin.

He was 12 or 13 when he tried marijuana. At 16, he tried cocaine.

"I was part of the popular crowd, the party people," Walker said. "My
classmates voted me the 'wittiest' person in the class. Look at me now."

Walker wanted to be a forest ranger. He thought he could juggle using drugs
with attending junior college or serving in the U.S. Army. Instead, he gave
up on both career possibilities and became self-employed, blowing his
paychecks on alcohol and cocaine.

In 1998, he had a chance for a fresh start. Police found him with cocaine,
but a judge agreed to put him on probation instead of sending him to prison
for seven years.

"I couldn't stay clean, so I failed a drug test," Walker said.

Walker began serving his time in July.

"One thing I know," said Walker. "If you abuse drugs, you're going to end
up in jail or dead. It's just a matter of time."