Adjusting to Society After Prison by Wayne T. Dowdy
Adjusting to society after having served any prison sentence may be a struggle for many people, especially those who dealt with traumatic experiences and common prison drama. In the following answer that I wrote on Quora.com seven years ago, I share some of my struggles to let other men and women know that they are not alone if having difficulty adjusting to the changes in society since their departure and all of the changes that happened to them while on the Inside.
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One aspect of prison life I brought out the prison doors, is the psychological and emotional damage one cannot avoid after having spent decades of their life living in an unnatural environment; especially, when sixteen of the thirty-years I served was spent inside the more dangerous United States Penitentiaries.
I am doing well, though, but do not deny what I know: reintegrating is a day-by-day, step-by-step process. I am having to relearn social etiquette, such as being polite, which I did inside as well, because I refused to allow the prison experience to define me. I acted civilized around others but am having to learn to eat again with proper utensils (e.g., stainless steel knives, spoons, and forks, instead of using a plastic fork to eat cereal, or a plastic spoon to eat salad or spaghetti) and having to watch my foul mouth more often than I did inside.
Other forms of adjustment concerns making more decisions to govern my daily affairs; getting used to doing simple things again, like deciding what to eat, what I need to do each day, rather than being told what to do and where to go. In other words, in prison, I was given limited choices and a narrow set of options to choose from, like going to the chow hall to eat or to not eat what’s being served. If I didn’t want it … leave without eating, no other restaurants in town to choose from. For those of us fortunate to have food in our cells or living quarters, to leave and eat from our lockers.
Relationships with the opposite sex is another change I’m having to adjust to, because on the inside, I learned to repress sexual feelings and to avoid making any romantic gestures with women I found attractive. Even though I still haven’t gotten involved in a romantic relationship since my release, I brought that behavior out the door with me, too. And because I remained celibate for decades, and chose not to get involved in relationships, other than friendships with those I worked with or lived with, or stayed in contact with on the outside, I was affected in that regard as well. Read “Damage and Prison” by Wayne T. Dowdy for more on that issue.
To help myself prepare for the day of my possible release, a day I often wondered whether I would see, I went through therapy. Seven years into the sentence, I stopped using drugs and alcohol, then I got involved with twelve step programs and began preparing for the day I might have to again live in a civilized society.
I am back! Mentally and emotionally, though, a part of me remains captured inside the walls, bars and fences that kept me away from a civilized society. My body is free, my mind fights to break the chains that keep me confined inside.
Books by Wayne T. Dowdy
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