Running Away From Me - Softcover

David Allan Reeves

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1426909861 ISBN 13: 9781426909863

Publisher: Trafford Publishing, 2009

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From inside a prison cell, a young man takes an honest look back at his life and tries to figure out how he ended up locked up away from society and labeled a violent criminal. His story is engrossing, gripping and true. Take a dark journey through the author's real-life nightmare as he battles his self-destructive obsession with drugs, which leads him on a roller coaster ride through hell on earth. Witness the progression of his addiction, which takes him to death's door as he runs from drug dealers, cops, God and more tellingly, himself. In the face of every negative consequence, he continues using until he reaches the place where all hope is lost, and he still can't stop.

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From the Author

I started writing this book when I was thirty seven years old, had been in prison for seven years, and clean for barely three years. When I started writing, it wasn't my intention to publish a book. It didn't cross my mind until I started letting other people read what I had written and they encouraged me to continue writing. Once I started, I couldn't stop. It gave purpose to what felt like an otherwise meaningless existence.

I went back to the beginning of my life and wrote until I reached the present. By then, I had turned thirty nine and had close to five years of uninterrupted sobriety. I learned a lot about my addiction while writing this book, much more than I would have learned otherwise. The act of sitting down and writing for many hours each day made me think long and hard about my inexplicable behavior. After I finished writing my first rough draft, I continued to learn more about addiction by reading everything about the subject I could get my hands on. The urge to keep adding what I was continuing to learn was strong, but at that rate, I would never have finished. Life is a work in progress.

It may seem falsely conceited and egocentric to write a book about one's life and expect others to want to read it. But I feel like it is something I had to do. The alternative would have been to do nothing, and in prison, there is not a whole lot one can do anyway. If I'm expecting anything from the readers of this book, I'm expecting to scare the hell out of anyone who is using drugs or is even thinking of using. Not everyone who uses will go to the extremes I went to, but why take the chance? Why play Russian roulette.

My story is not unique. I've heard these same war stories over and over again in prison. Just different places and different faces. I just happened to put mine down on paper.

I've said all that to say this: most of what I've written, I wrote while blindly groping for answers to my problem. A lot of my opinions are just that - opinions. If I offend anyone, I apologize for not being wholly enlightened or politically correct. I once read that we do not see the world as it really is, but we see the world as we are. This book reflects how I was and what I thought of my past at this brief window in time.

Right now the thought of publishing this book feels similar to thinking of standing naked in front of a crowd. Here are all my flaws and imperfections on display. Ugly, but human. No excuses.

About the Author

David Allan Reeves was born on November 12, 1969 in Mobile, Alabama. David graduated from Jackson Academy high school in 1988. He studied psychology and art at the University of South Alabama and Troy State University-Montgomery.

He has completed an extensive Microsoft class giving him an additional avenue to make a living when he is released as an IT technician. He also works in payroll in the prison industry UNICOR, keeping up with the hours and pay for the other inmates.

He also completed twenty-eight days at the Bowling Green Institute for his drug addiction and graduated from the Substance Abuse Program in the Alabama Department of Corrections and the CODE and Challenge programs at the United States Penitentiary in Pollock, Louisiana.

He currently resides at the Federal Correctional Facility in Marianna, Florida, where he expects to be released in 2012. David has recently celebrated six years of sober living. He spends his free time reading, writing, running, praying and playing music.

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