How many times have we seen such a plot in movies – a person leaves the prison gates, then someone from their previous life or someone from their future life approaches – and a series of exciting adventures begins. Real life, unfortunately, is completely different from what we see on the screen…
When released from prison, some people unfortunately return to crime, but even for those who sincerely try to live a decent life again, this process is not at all smooth, simply because prison is a completely different world that leaves an imprint on everyone who has been there. And the redditors in this thread open up about the prison habits that invariably accompanied them or their acquaintances after their release.
More info: Reddit
#1
I did almost seven years. Been out two years. I’m 35. From Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a law called “Truth in Sentencing”, You do 100% of your time. There are multiple head counts where the guards make sure that all of the inmates are accounted for. Every morning at 5:00 a.m. I felt like I was doing something wrong if I slept past 5:00 a.m. It took me almost six months before I slept past 5:00. Even now, 6:00 a.m. is sleeping in for me. It has allowed me to never be late to work, and show up everyday. I was a drug dealer with no work ethic, and I slept until noon. Ironically, I am more successful than I ever thought I would be because of this habit. I actually just got poached by another company who offered me a 150% salary increase. Nice to see you, new tax bracket. In two years, I have become a model parolee. My life is great. I married my wife last September. I go to therapy for a multitude of conditions that manifested while I was a guest of the state. I was diagnosed with general and social anxiety disorder, and PTSD. I was out a few months and I had a panic attack. I had no idea what was happening to me. I was literally paralyzed and afraid. I thought prison ruined me. It made me a better person in general. I am not praising Wisconsin DOC by any means. The guards dehumananized the inmates and treated us like pure garbage with no hope. They always told people “You’ll be back”. I won’t be back. People that go back produce job security. They want people to come back so they do what they can to steal your dreams. I changed myself. Prison allowed me to step back and really look at my life. I saw who I hurt. I saw who was there for me. I saw who abandoned me. I became focused on change after my third year. I contemplated suicide because I wasn’t even half done with my sentence. After I seriously thought about hanging my life up I committed myself to being the best human being I could be. I revolted by behaving, teaching myself things, and being positive. My life is now amazing. I’m surrounded by people who love me and support me. All of the “ex cons” reading this, and people just interested in this thread, that label is b******t. We are human beings with feelings. We can change. Stay positive and stay hopeful. Never give up. All of my fellow Redditor’s, one love.
Image source: anon, Evgeniy Petkevich
#2
I didn’t use a fork for a few weeks. Ate everything with a spoon without thinking. It’s not the most interesting thing but I hadn’t noticed it posted here.
Image source: justinlarson, mike krzeszak
#3
staring at sharp things. Like theres no desire to use them innapropriatly but you are just kinda shocked they’re there and available for use. You might be suprised what qualifies as a sharp object. I remember whenever someone tried to hand me a knife or something to cut veggies Id be afraid to touch it. Glass was the biggest thing though, just mirrors in all the bathrooms. real ones. I could smash that s**t and have a big jagged weapon, i cant believe this italian restraunt has such a dangerous thing in their bathroom.
stopping thinking of objects as weapons is hard
Image source: Skishkitteh, Neeta Lind
#4
Doing laps. In prison, every time you get time on the yard, you do laps. Seriously, almost every single person does it too. When you get out, it’s hard to break that habit.
Image source: Official–Moderator, Vee
#5
I find myself hoarding toilet paper under my bed. Sometimes I do it without thinking and I’ll look under there and have 10 rolls of tp
Image source: tentosamo, Mike Mozart
#6
Hoard feminine hygiene products. We were super limited on the number of pads or tampons they gave us. They didn’t give any to the women in holding cells. There was dried and fresh menstrual blood on the floor and concrete benches, and a drain in the middle of the rooms like they intended to hose down the room, but if they did it was not often enough.
Image source: feiticeirarose, Brenna
#7
Taking as long as you want in the shower. For the longest time after I got out, I took less than 5 minute showers.
Image source: Dysphoric_Otter, Petras Gagilas
#8
I knew of a guy who got out after 15 years. He had to call a friend to come and let him out of his apartment. They’d go out, do some shopping or whatever and then his friend would “lock him up” for the night.
Dude could not work doors himself without irrational fear. He did get better after a few months, but I hear he still has trouble doing things independently.
Image source: VikingTeddy, Adam Campbell
#9
Constantly looking over my shoulder. By far the hardest conditioning to break, which I haven’t and doubt I ever will, is the constant pessimism and cautious optimism. You see, when you’re waiting to work your way through court, get a deal, and get sentenced, you will have your dates changed 50 times, hope for certain things only to be disappointed, and any time you are told something hopeful it doesn’t work out.
As a result, I never get excited for something until it actually happens. When my wife told me we were pregnant (I already knew from her symptoms that she was but still, you never know for sure till you take the test), I was obviously happy, but because I’m always cautiously optimistic and rarely show emotion, I couldn’t feel comfortable or excited until I knew that my developing daughter was healthy. Even then, it didn’t really hit me till she was born.
You can apply this to anything especially big events. Getting engaged, planning the wedding, buying a house, ANYTHING. I still hear from my wife how i wasn’t crazy surprised or excited to be having a kid. I was, I actually was the half of the relationship who was dead set on a kid when my wife supposedly could’ve gone either way.
You just can’t get your hopes up or look forward to anything until it is here or has happened. I’ve been home over 7 years now and with my wife for 6.5. She’s truly the catalyst that motivated me to truly change my life and to not give any more of my life to the system, but she’ll never know how happy she makes me because she misinterprets my cautious optimism/realism for pessimism or indifference.
Image source: Elrond_the_Ent, cottonbro studio
#10
I don’t smoke, but every time someone offered me a cig I would pocket it. on the inside thats a bartering chip, took me about a month or two to break
Image source: interchangeable-bot, Fred Dough
#11
Sounds like there’s a major epidemic of ex-prisoners with PTSD that society doesn’t talk about.
Image source: ButternutSasquatch, Inzmam Khan
#12
Making prison commissary-only food. Everyone around me thinks it is gross as hell to throw summer sausages, pickles, cheese, doritos, cheetos, and such into my ramen noodles, but good lord, I can’t stop, and I have been out for five years.
Image source: peanutjesus, Joy
#13
A somewhat-friend of mine did a few years and the one habit he couldn’t shake was distrusting people.
He said that people in prison are never nice, if they’re nice it’s because of a hidden motive. Up to this day he still doesn’t trust people who act nice / generous / helpful / .. towards him.
Image source: ehamo, Wayne Fotografias
#14
A couple guys I know-after being out for 5-10 yrs- wrap their arms around their plates and shovel food in their mouths at the speed of light. They are also super defensive of their food. When I first got to know them I jokingly swiped a chip off one of their plates and he flipped his fork up and demanded I give it back, freaked me out a lil
Image source: 917starlette, Raul
#15
Realising I could just get up and go somewhere. That I could make plans tomorrow from a thousand different choices.
Hard to break the habit of checking everyone who enters your vicinity. It feels like you’ve gotta mark everyone off as a non threat
Edit: I don’t care if you do that and you’ve never been to prison
#16
Definitely sleeping habits. Still haven’t broke them. Haven’t slept a full night in over a decade. Any noise and my eyes are open and I’m wide awake. I can hear really well. A raccoon comes nightly to eat scraps and cat food and I can hear him crunching outside on the porch from bed on the opposite side of the house (roughly 60feet away). Wide awake.
Image source: themanicmechanic3, Stephanie Red
#17
All of this sounds eerily similar to be being deployed ….
Image source: anon, Mike Cofrancesco
#18
My ex would sleep a certain way all the time. To me it seemed like he was sleeping as if he was in a coffin,his arms crossed and wouldn’t move the entire night for a couple months. He eventually broke that habit.
Edit: a word
Image source: myjobbetternotfindme, Timothy Krause
#19
My uncle was in prison for a while and we’ve talked a bit about his experience and how it effected him:
-He has a hard time not being violent. You’d never guess since he mainly just sits in a corner and smokes but he’s been out for nearly ten years and still always struggles with using his words
-The guy cannot stand authority. He tells me that its hard to listen to bosses when you know you’re probably smarter and tougher than them. He knows most people feel this way, but he just can’t ignore it. He’s taken up professional carving so he can be his boss.
-He’s really in touch with our native roots now, on account of joining a first nations gang in prison.
-Doesn’t talk much, I don’t know if that’s because of prison but he really only speaks if he wants to. Not the type of guy who likes to talk just to talk.
-Doesn’t have a lot. He has some sort of abandonment issue or something so he doesn’t want a lot of things to miss if he goes back to prison.
-For all the time he doesn’t spend with people, he’s out with nature or doing something in the wilderness. I think it helps keep him calm and feel connected.
Nice enough guy, but prison kind of f****d him up I think and he’s going to live his life being slightly disconnected with people
Image source: hippynoize, LawPrieR
#20
Not me personally but I know a guy that said after he got out he just wanted McDonald’s. When he got there he spent 20 minutes staring at the menu trying to decide what to order because he wasn’t used to having choices.
Image source: Anynamethatworks, Mike Mozart
#21
The hardest thing has been to talk without using the words f**k, f*****g or a*****e in every sentence.
Image source: james0martin, Kindel Media
#22
I had to completely change my sense of time. I agree with all the people who said they ate super fast, but then we would slow walk back from the chow hall- any excuse for a few minutes more outside.
I made sure I never consolidated enjoyable things. If I had a snack- I ate it and concentrated on it. If there was something good on TV, I watched it. Now, I’ll snack while I watch a movie because there aren’t enough hours in the day- but on the inside I was trying to make hours and days go away.
I’ve got a good job now, and nice respectable friends, but I still react to confrontational situations more quickly, decisively and… efficiently than they do. I’m able to pull back at the last minute, but it’s pretty clear that violence is not a tool in their arsenal.
Image source: DeuceTheDog, Caitlin Regan
#23
When my dad got out of prison (10+ years) we nicknamed him Martha Stewart because he was such a clean freak. His home looks like an ikea catalog, he has glass containers for his shoes, he wakes up early to iron/wash/scrub everything.
When I lived with him for a year, I was grounded so many times over leaving water drops in the sink.
#24
Not me – but guy who worked for me. When things were very busy, I would often get carry-out lunch for everyone and bring it back to the workplace. This one guy would eat a cheeseburger and french fries in two minutes. Wow! Once I asked him why he ate so quickly. He said “Well nobsforgma, I spent 7 years in a Federal prison and if you didn’t eat your meal in 10 minutes, you didn’t get anything. That 10 minutes often included the time it took standing in line to get your food.” OK then. I never said anything to him about it after that.
Image source: NoBSforGma, H. Michael Miley
#25
Not being able to goto the free infirmary when sick or hurt.
Image source: donkeywhax, upupa4me
#26
Not me but my best friend who spent 2/3 of her life locked up in juvie and prison: If she wanted a glass of water, she would ask permission.
Also, if we were at my apartment and we’re gonna leave to go somewhere, she would stand behind the door and wait for me to open it. As if the door to my apartment was locked and only I had the keys.
RIP M
#27
I spent 72 months in prison for a tragic car accident that I had caused. After I was released I kept telling my wife exactly what I was doing without her asking. She thought it was funny at first but after a few weeks of it she was starting to get bothered.
Image source: carter5oh, Vera Arsic
#28
Having your head on a swivel, protecting your personal property in an obsessive manner, and sizing everyone up. When I was locked up, I always knew what was going on 360 degrees around me. Only the last unit I was in had lockers with actually locks, so before that, I had to protect my commie, paperwork and books all the time. Most people would fight you to take your s**t because that is the respectful way to do it, but cat burglars are the worst; they sneak around and take s**t. They get f****d up by everyone when they get caught. It is code: you want my s**t, come get it. Not sneaking around and steal it. I’ve been out for almost a year and a half but I still constantly size people up. No matter where it is (grocery store, Walmart, walking down the street), I still analyze each person and figure my best course of action if we have to fight.
Image source: sDotAgain, Nicola Barts
#29
Dude I work with said for the first little bit after getting out he would take a leg out of his pants when he’d s**t. Not sure how common that was, dude’s a fighter though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Image source: themeltykind, Bastian Greshake Tzovaras
#30
Not wearing shoes in the shower. Eating with forks and knives. Having salt and pepper for food. Not always having to watch your back. Being able to get food when you want it, and just get up and leave to go for a drive or something.
Image source: the-walkin-dude-, Didriks
#31
Hardest habit? Talking s**t to dum***s old men who think they’re right cuz they’re old. Easiest habit? I’m never eating top ramen or getting a bowl cut from a Mexican “barber” again
Image source: the_mighty_j, Tim Gouw
#32
Not an ex con but my step dad has been in and out of prison for the majority of his life, he always said that whenever he gets out of prison you’re so use to to it being loud all the time that when he got home he couldn’t sleep because it was so quiet.
Image source: anon, mckinney75402
#33
Never been to prison. But i did a few months in county jail. Something i havnt seen mentioned is trading food. When i got out i asked my girlfried to trade me her chicken wings for my macorni. Pure habit. I really couldve just went to the kitchen and got more chicken
Image source: Ondareal, gromgull
#34
Just knowing what I could do to someone who crosses me. Knowing just how badly I could f**k them up physically and mentally. I have to remind myself that “no, this person probably has a family, probably hasn’t done anything wrong in his life, don’t destroy him just because you can.”
Image source: anon, rebcenter moscow
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