Walking back into the DC Jail still throws me for a loop. Even though I now walk in as a free man, the jangling of keys or the smell of a stale baloney sandwich reminds me of my previous life.

On July 29, 2022, largely because of D.C.’s Second Look Amendment Act, I was released from prison after 26 years of incarceration.

I immediately started working for the Georgetown University Prisons and Justice Initiative and became a justice fellow at Families Against Mandatory Minimums. My experience has been chronicled in a documentary called District of Second Chances, which follows me and two others—Anthony “Pete” Petty and Gene Downing—as we navigate life on the outside after spending decades behind bars for crimes we committed during our youth.

Since the film’s release in 2023, I’ve traveled across the country for screenings and Q&A panels at film festivals in New York and Los Angeles. But back home in D.C., I got to show the film to an audience with whom I feel a special bond.

People currently incarcerated in the DC Jail, some of whom are in the same Prison Scholars program through Georgetown University that I attended, gathered in the jail’s chapel in February to watch the film. I saw myself in their faces. I remembered the burning desire to correct the wrongs I had committed, to demonstrate the changes I had made, and to get a chance to give back. 

“Your value does not diminish based on another’s inability to see your worth,” I told them.

At other screenings, I noticed that people who haven’t been incarcerated are interested in what happens inside prisons: the daily routines, the relationships, the politics, and unfortunately, the violence. But this jailhouse audience was fascinated by what comes after release: the challenges we face in life after prison and the joys of reuniting with family and enjoying a meal at Ben’s Chili Bowl.

After the screening, a woman in the audience raised her hand and described the despair she’d been feeling. She’s staring down a 20-year sentence, and she felt her life was over. But, she added, seeing the documentary offered her hope and the realization that she could use her time to educate and improve herself.

I recognized a man in a wheelchair, who was having obvious difficulty getting around but had managed to attend the screening. He was able-bodied when I knew him while I was incarcerated in 2020. He said he was inspired by my story and the positive work I’ve been doing since my release. Even with a life sentence, as I had, people inside prison need to see that they can take the time to better themselves, the man observed.

Standing in front of my former classmates and mentees, roughly half of whom I’d spent time with in jail, gave meaning to the suffering I endured during the 26 years of my incarceration. As a free man who has been given a second chance, I feel an obligation to remind those currently incarcerated that they are not defined by their worst mistakes.

I don’t take for granted how lucky I’ve been. At 18, I was sentenced to life without parole for murder, but now I have the opportunity to show that, like my former classmates, I am deserving of this second chance. 

But in D.C. and across the country, second chances are threatened by the fear that releasing people like my former classmates will lead to a rise in crime. In D.C., at least 229 people have been released under the Second Look Amendment Act, and only 26 have been rearrested (about 11 percent), according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.

There are many more people like me inside DC Jail and in prisons throughout the country. Given the opportunity, they will make the most of their second chances. It’s on all of us to see them not as “inmates” or “felons,” but instead focus on their potential for redemption.

Colie “Shaka” Levar Long is a writer, speaker, mentor, criminal justice reform advocate, youth detention specialist, community projects manager, and returning citizen. He serves as a program associate for Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative. Sign up to organize a screening of FAMM’s documentary District of Second Chances at districtofsecondchances.com.

This column is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

This story was published in partnership with Prison Journalism Project, a national nonprofit organization which trains incarcerated writers in journalism and publishes their work. Sign up for PJP’s newsletter, or follow them on Instagram and X.

I was never a party animal, and I didn’t need to use drugs to enhance my natural good vibes. It’s like the old heads used to say about getting high off of dope, “One time is too many, and too many is never enough.”

I had zero history of heroin or opioid use prior to my arrest in 2004. Many of my incarcerated peers have turned to Allah or Christ to sustain their mental and emotional health throughout our decades of incarceration. I, not being the most spiritually inclined brother, turned instead to drugs to numb the pain of my regrets stemming from my criminal activities. I did it to maintain my sanity.

Slipping into darkness, in a moment of stupidity, I started blowing joint (snorting heroin) in the DC Jail back in 2005. For a while, it worked miracles, silencing the shame and guilt I felt from the hurt I caused myself.

The drugs muzzled all the negative barking in my head: “You sold your family out for the streets. You’re a deadbeat dad. You’re an ignorant, stupid, worthless Black motherfucker. You ain’t never getting out of prison, and you deserve to die in jail.”

Fast forward several years. I was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to serve out my sentence, as are all people convicted of D.C. crimes. By then, those moments of euphoric escape transformed into a merciless stranglehold, a chemical and physical addiction. I still struggle to completely escape its grasp. Many of my fellow prisoners are struggling, too. And from where I’m now sitting, inside the 5A housing unit at USP McCreary in Pine Knot, Kentucky, it looks like the BOP doesn’t give a damn.

Over the past several years, there have been a slew of drug overdoses throughout BOP facilities. Too many have ended in death. Many could have been prevented.

A February report from the U.S. Department of Justice’s inspector general on deaths inside BOP facilities found that at least 70 people died of drug overdoses between fiscal years 2014 and 2021. That figure makes up about 20 percent of the 344 deaths in BOP facilities during that time. Drug overdose was the second leading cause of death; hanging was the first.

The inspector general also found “significant shortcomings” in the BOP’s responses to nearly half of all in-custody deaths the agency looked at. Problems included a lack of urgency, failure to bring the appropriate medical equipment, and issues or failure to use naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote.

The report identifies the most tragic outcomes for prisoners who are addicted to drugs, and reflects the fears of many people I know inside who struggle with opioid dependency. But the truth is that daily life for a drug-addled person in a BOP facility is much grimmer than a sterile report can convey.

***

“One of the most horrific and traumatizing things you can witness in prison is watching a close friend, someone you love and care about, trying to kick, cold turkey, a heroin addiction,” says Leonard Bishop, a former advisory neighborhood commissioner at the DC Jail, who is now incarcerated with me at McCreary. “It’s ugly seeing brothers going through the throes of detox. Watching many of my friends and generational peers fall victim to the addictive lust for heroin and ultimately transforming into somebody that neither of you recognize—it’s hard feeling helpless to make your buddies understand that they’re playing right into their own self-destruction.”

When a prisoner decides to try and kick his habit in the BOP, he is often met with barriers, delays, and flat-out denials. The first obstacle is getting approved for treatment.

Such lifesaving medical care is promised in the First Step Act, signed into law in 2018. I have asked how to get a prescription for medication assisted treatment, such as Suboxone. But in my experience at USP McCreary, the medical and psychology departments have provided conflicting answers to my fellow prisoners and me about which department is tasked with providing addiction treatment. Neither department can explain the criteria we must meet to be placed in a recovery program.

For example, I have been told that the program is only open to guys with 90 days left in their sentence.

Michael “Boogie Swan” Johnson, from Baltimore City and who served time in USP McCreary from 2023 to 2024, says he received a similar response.

“While I was in USP McCreary, I was denied medical treatment, and they told me they were only providing medication treatment for those 90 days to the door or less,” Johnson, who has been incarcerated since he was 18 years old, says via email. “That didn’t apply to me because I have 12 years with four to go.”

He says when he was transferred earlier this year to FCI Williamsburg, a lower security facility in South Carolina, he was immediately prescribed Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction, and he now takes one 8-milligram strip per day.

“What it does is it takes out the craving for opioids,” Johnson says via email. “So it helps me function on a day-to-day basis much better.”

BOP spokesperson Randilee Giamusso says an order to begin treatment in many BOP programs “is arranged according to projected release date, [but] services should not be withheld until someone is 90 days before release.” That wouldn’t even be enough time to complete the two residential treatment programs, which run for 12 months and 18 to 24 months, respectively, she acknowledges.

The type of medication-assisted treatment that Johnson is receiving at FCI Williamsburg should be available at any point during a person’s incarceration “depending on clinical need,” Giamusso says. 

Giamusso initially told City Paper that two kinds of residential addiction treatment programs should be available at McCreary. The Challenge Program, which runs from 18 to 24 months and is specific to high-security institutions, provides treatment for drug addiction and mental illness as well as violence intervention. At McCreary, the program currently has an enrollment of 46 people, according to the BOP, according to the BOP, with a waitlist of 94 people. In response to follow-up questions, the BOP clarifies that the separate Residential Drug Treatment Program, which typically runs for nine months, is not offered at McCreary. A non-residential treatment program here currently has 35 people enrolled, according to the BOP, with a 424-person waitlist. 

In light of questions regarding the denial of these programs and treatment, Giamusso says that the “FBOP will be sure to follow up and provide any necessary training or information to ensure treatment is compliant with policy at all locations, including USP McCreary.”

In 2022, the Marshall Project reported on deficiencies with the BOP’s compliance with the First Step Act’s drug treatment provisions. At the time, the outlet reported that only 10 percent of the estimated 15,000 people in BOP custody who needed opioid addiction treatment were receiving it.

By the end of October 2022, nearly four years after the First Step Act went into effect, 21 prisons offered no addiction medication, and 59 more were treating 10 or fewer people, TMP reported.

Guys who are close to release should absolutely be given treatment because of their higher chance of relapse and overdose when they’re out. But what about those of us who have been led to believe we don’t qualify for treatment? We fall deeper into the disease, made to feel as though our lives are less valuable, or worse, expendable.

***

Serving time at McCreary is chronically depressing. Intellectual and artistic stimuli are practically nonexistent. When we’re not locked down, we are allowed out of our cells at 6 a.m. Healthy, able-bodied men, who could be engaged in intensive rehabilitative and reentry programming, just sit around in an overcrowded day room. They play card games or other tabletop games; some play video games on their tablets.

In an attempt to break the monotony of this all-consuming idleness, some of us turn to drug use as a coping mechanism. The high provides momentary escape. But drug use and addiction in prison have ripple effects.

Some addicts are better than others at hiding their dependency. Insulated with a little cash and a degree of hustle, a prisoner with an opioid addiction can find the means to keep their fronts up by dressing neatly, shopping at commissary regularly, and paying their debts in a timely fashion, which allows them to maintain a prison work detail without a problem.

For prisoners struggling with opioid addiction who don’t have the capital to float their habit, life can be dangerous.

Addicted prisoners run up debts small and large—anywhere from $20 to $1,500 in cases that I’ve known about—that they are unable to pay. Avoiding those consequences is, in my estimation, the No. 1 cause of prisoners’ requesting placement into protective custody, which is typically an act of desperation intended to avoid violent retribution. The inspector general’s audit broadly confirms that drug addiction and debt in prison beget violence.

The more aggressive opioid addicts resort to strong-arm tactics to get their fix. Some use homemade knives and shanks to rob jailhouse dealers. I’ve been in housing units where two or three addicted prisoners mob up, walk into the cell of the prison dealer, hold him up at knifepoint, yank his pants and boxer briefs down to his ankles, and retrieve the narcotics hidden between his cheeks.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed other acts of desperation, too.

Prisoners will make shanks and sell them to anyone willing to pay—even to opposition groups—all to fuel an addiction. Making weapons for rival gangs is like treason on the inside. If he’s discovered, he could get beat, stabbed, or both.

Guys will tell all sorts of lies to their family and loved ones, goading them out of their money so they can pay for drugs inside.

Men and women have been known to sell their bodies in exchange for drugs or the money to buy drugs. This doesn’t change for incarcerated people, but it does become more dangerous. Men and women in prison don’t have condoms for protection against contracting or spreading sexually transmitted infections.

Suicide behind these walls has also been linked with drug use. The inspector general’s findings cite BOP-producted reports on two suicidal deaths that say the individuals who took their own lives “experienced hopelessness about the inability to repay their drug debt.” 

And even if a BOP prisoner is accepted into a recovery program, they risk punishment (loss of good-time credit and phone, email, and commissary privileges) if they backslide and end up with a dirty piss test. Relapse is a well-understood hallmark of addiction recovery.

I have no desire to return to my family or community addicted to heroin. I recently attempted detoxing, as I have before. Every waking second, I’m thinking about it, fighting the temptation. Guys like myself, who have jailhouse addictions, are seeking addiction medication, and since we’ve been denied at USP McCreary, some of us are spending our own money on medication that the prison should be supplying to us. I pay $25 for 1/16 of a strip of Suboxone when I can afford it. Technically, it’s considered contraband.

The BOP should provide this treatment to all who need it. No more lives need be lost for a problem that the federal prison system is capable of fixing.

Additional reporting by Mitch Ryals.

This article has been updated to clarify USP McCreary does not offer a residential drug treatment program.

Askia Afrika-Ber was born and raised in Southeast D.C. and Prince George’s County and is serving a 53-year sentence for felony murder in USP McCreary, a high-security prison in Kentucky. He published a book about life inside prison in 2024. Inside Voices is produced in collaboration with More Than Our Crimes, a nonprofit dedicated to raising the voices of people locked in federal prisons across the country.

If you asked staff at the DC Jail about solitary confinement, they might tell you it does not exist in the correctional facility. That’s because it goes by many other names. I worked for about a year as a clinical case manager in the jail, where I saw an extreme overreliance on the use of the practice. At the Department of Corrections, it’s called the SHU, North 1, South 1, administrative segregation, the Special Management Unit, protective custody, and so-called “safe cells”—those were the worst.

I am still rattled by the sight of a woman, housed on a predominantly men’s medical unit, sitting on the floor of a safe cell with a sheer curtain as her only form of privacy. She wore an oversize smock, had bare feet, and had no sheets or pillows on the bed that was bolted to the middle of the floor. She was placed in that cell because she expressed suicidal ideation, I was told, as are all people locked in the DC Jail who express similar thoughts. She cycled in and out of the safe cell during her incarceration.

During my time as a social worker, which included in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex, I had never witnessed such a heinous response to a mental health crisis.

Rikers Island is where I began my career in social work. I was drawn there as part of my commitment to criminal justice reform. I witnessed the horrible effects that solitary confinement has on people. I also witnessed efforts to eliminate the practice in general, a citywide ban of the use of solitary confinement for people with medical conditions, and more therapeutic responses for people diagnosed with mental illness, including 24-hour monitoring. I worked on Rikers Island for more than two years as a mental health reentry coordinator before I accepted the position of clinical case manager at the DC Jail.

I thought our nation’s capital would be a leader in the progression toward a humane criminal justice system. But I quickly realized that D.C. is far behind. 

During my first week working for DOC, colleagues would ask me how I was settling into my new role. My response was always the same: “I can’t believe there is a place that makes Rikers Island look good.” 

I still recall my first time walking into North 1, one of the two solitary confinement units in the Central Detention Facility. It was dark, dirty, and loud. Incarcerated people shouted from their cells, officers showed no ability to manage the incarcerated people outside of their cells, and men exposed themselves to me through the slots in their doors as I walked to the case manager’s office.

I observed DOC’s frequent use of solitary confinement not just as a means to address serious infractions, but also as the default placement for people who expressed concern for their safety or who were experiencing a mental health crisis. People in solitary confinement in the DC Jail are typically held in a single cell for 23 hours a day; they are allowed one hour out of the cell for exercise and showers.

Individuals in DOC custody have been placed in isolation for nonviolent violations, such as substance use, often without the required internal hearing and attorney representation. Similar to the judicial process, if an incarcerated individual receives an institutional charge, they must have a hearing and be found guilty prior to receiving discipline. 

If an individual says they feel unsafe in general population, including for their sexual orientation or gender identity, that person is placed in “protective custody” and locked in a cell alone for 23 hours per day.

The DOC response to a mental health crisis is to send a person to a “safe cell,” where they are held until they are no longer determined to be a risk to themselves. Despite the different names, these practices all constitute solitary confinement and cause serious harm.

What I have observed to be DOC’s overreliance on isolation stands in stark contrast to its transparency around the practice. A recent report from the Council for Court Excellence highlights the difficulty the nonprofit had in getting even basic information about DOC’s use of solitary confinement. CCE requested data from fiscal years 2019 through 2021, for example, but DOC only released limited information from 2021.

According to the CCE report, despite years of negotiations, DOC would not provide demographic information, including the number of pregnant people, placed in solitary confinement; information on when and for how long restraints are used; the number of safe cells and how frequently they’re used; the number of people placed in solitary immediately after intake; and the number of people in solitary confinement who attempted or completed self-harm or suicide, among other details.

The limited details provided to CCE about DOC’s use of solitary confinement in 2021 include: 

• 98 people were held in safe cells for an average of 2.6 days

• 35 percent of residents with an active diagnosis of a serious mental illness were placed in administrative restrictive housing, disciplinary restrictive housing, prehearing detention, or protective custody.

• The average length of stay in restrictive housing for fiscal year 2021 was 49 days (“which includes the time when an entire housing unit was in COVID-19 quarantine,” according to the report). 

DOC’s use of solitary confinement fails to reduce violence and poses significant challenges to successful reentry into the community.

Solitary Watch says that jurisdictions that have limited their use of solitary confinement have experienced a decrease in prison violence and safer working conditions for staff. As part of North Dakota’s process of ending solitary confinement, the corrections system sought to train officers, improve working conditions, and create an environment where staff are engaged in the rehabilitative process.

There are alternatives that allow carceral institutions to maintain safety in a facility, as well as the mental and emotional health of people in their custody. 

In my experience, commissary restrictions, relocation, and conflict resolution are more effective at promoting prosocial behavior in response to institutional infractions. To avoid exacerbating mental health issues, the use of 24-hour suicide watch by an officer and peer support specialist has been successful in other facilities, including those on Rikers Island. 

Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau’s ERASE Solitary Confinement Act, introduced with support from seven other lawmakers last fall, calls for the prohibition of solitary confinement for individuals in DOC custody. The legislation also mandates a minimum of eight hours of recreation time daily, imposes limits on the use of safe cells, and encourages better access to mental health and medical treatment. 

The bill also requires DOC to collect and publish data on the ongoing use of solitary practices, which would lead to increased accountability and oversight. That part is essential, too.

In order to successfully implement some of the bill’s provisions, DOC should hire more mental health care providers and more correctional officers. On any given day, two or three guards could be supervising a floor of 30 to 100 jail residents, making it difficult to carry out the bill’s goals. Higher pay and better benefits could help entice more people to apply to these hard-to-fill positions. For safer alternatives to succeed, staff must receive the necessary training, such as in crisis intervention, and support from leadership. 

Bills in Congress aimed at addressing the use of solitary in the Federal Bureau of Prisons (where many D.C. residents are serving sentences) and in immigration detention centers appear unlikely to move forward. Similarly, the ERASE Solitary Confinement Act has not been scheduled for an initial hearing in the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety. Lawmakers have until the end of the two-year Council period in December to act before the bill expires. Its passage would be a positive step toward transforming D.C.’s correctional facilities into environments where safety, mental health, and rehabilitation take precedence, benefiting not only those within the walls of the jail but our entire community as well.

Brittany Vazquez is a Licensed Master of Social Work with an Advanced Certification in Forensic Social Work. Her experience includes working with court-involved youth, incarcerated individuals, and returning citizens in New York City, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. She has volunteered with the DC Justice Lab’s Unlock the Box Coalition, pushing for reform in D.C.’s criminal justice system.

Rob Barton was perhaps a perfect candidate for parole. During his nearly 29 years of incarceration, he’s served as a mentor in the D.C. Jail’s Young Men Emerging program, he’s taken classes through Georgetown University, and he’s co-founded an organization and blog called More Than Our Crimes that spotlights the lives and perspectives of those held in federal prisons.

(Full disclosure: I work with the organization’s co-founder, Pam Bailey, to produce some of City Paper’s Inside Voices columns.)

Most importantly, though, on his third shot at parole, Barton presented his case to the U.S. Parole Commission that included a grid score of zero (the best possible score) and recommendation from a hearing examiner for release to a halfway house by September.

But last week, the commission ignored the hearing examiner’s recommendation and rejected his parole application.

According to Barton’s reading of the “action sheet” that explains the USPC’s decision, commissioners acknowledged that his score had decreased from his previous parole hearing from one to zero, indicating he met all of the requirements for release. But in rejecting the hearing examiner’s recommendation, according to Barton, commissioners focused on his use of another prisoner’s allotted minutes to make phone calls, which is against U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons’ rules.

“I just don’t understand,” Barton says. “You got people that’s not from where we’re from making these decisions.”

Barton’s confusion and deep frustration stems from the lack of local control over parole for people who have violated D.C. laws. With the feds calling the shots on who gets paroled and who doesn’t, attorneys and advocates have long complained that the outcomes are overly punitive and contradictory.

Under the current system, which was set up in 1998, the U.S. Parole Commission decides whether people locked up for D.C. code offenses can be released on parole. The commission also has jurisdiction over federal prisoners whose offenses occurred before Nov. 1, 1987 (Congress eliminated federal parole in 1984; and D.C. transitioned to a system known as “supervised release” in August of 2000), but as of 2020, 90 percent of USPC’s caseload was made up of people convicted of D.C. crimes. And unlike what’s left of the federal parole system, prisoners under D.C. parole cannot appeal the USPC’s parole decisions.

The USPC’s decision in Barton’s case (and others) has revived outrage from local advocates and attorneys who have pushed for D.C. to regain control of its parole system from the federal government.

“They are their own judge and jury,” says Robert Davis, who was released on parole in 2015 and served on a local committee that studied how D.C. could regain control from the feds. “There’s no appeals, it is what it is, and [commissioners] are only appointed by the president. C’mon man, just give us a regular parole board that has checks and balances—somebody who I can give a call to.”

Federal officials have been in favor of abolishing the USPC since at least 1987 when Congress transitioned to a new federal sentencing system. And in 2019, the current chair of the commission, Patricia Cushwa, wrote a letter calling for such action.

“It is seemingly inappropriate to have a federal agency with a national focus exerting control over local Washington, DC cases,” Cushwa wrote in the letter, advocating for the D.C. Superior Court and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency to take over those responsibilities. She added that “this transfer should occur as soon as possible to leverage the USPC’s existing personnel who have an expertise in parole and supervised release.”

For a time, it looked as if D.C. might actually pull it off. But due to a combination of disinterest and disorganization from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration, those efforts died last year.

In an emailed statement, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah says Bowser “remains supportive of retaking control of the Parole Board; however, the efforts were paused and remain so due to parties not reaching a majority opinion on how to structure the Board or its authorities, roles, and responsibilities.”

“It is beyond time that D.C. take back local control of parole,” says Stacey Litner, parole program and advocacy lead at the Washington Lawyers’ Committee. “We should have people from the community making these decisions. Over the last few years, it’s been increasingly difficult for individuals from D.C. with parole eligible sentences to get into programming that the parole commission expects in order to be granted parole. The barriers are increasing, and it’s time for D.C. to take this back.”

Davis, for his part, is left feeling as though the hours upon hours of work he and others donated to studying the issue and providing recommendations to the Bowser administration are wasted.

“We did this with the hope that we would be bettering the city,” he says. “The mayor just said, ‘Hey guys I’m gonna go ahead and give the parole commission and extension. Thank you for all your help.’ All our hard work, for nothing.”

Nathan Welch, who like Barton grew up in D.C. and has been incarcerated for nearly 30 years, was also recently denied release despite a recommendation for release from a USPC hearing examiner. In a phone interview, Welch says his grid score indicated that he should be paroled, and the hearing examiner recommended as much, with a proposed release date in July 2024. But the commission denied the recommendation and set his next parole hearing for 36 months out.

“It’s like some mental cruelty,” Welch says. “You get your hopes up that you’ll finally make it home after doing all this time in this crazy institution. And then two weeks later you get denied.”

Davis has had his own difficulties with the parole commission. He was released on parole in 2015, and was released from supervision altogether a few years later. But due to miscommunication from USPC, as NPR has reported, no one bothered to tell Davis or his parole officer.

Davis has also been vocal about the fact that he has been released on parole, but one of his co-defendants, Angelo Daniels, remains locked up. He says the commission rejected his co-defendant’s application and set his next parole eligibility date five years out. But the reason for commission’s denial is what rubs Davis the wrong way.

“They said the nature of the crime is the reason why. But it’s for the same crime! And get this here: They guy they’re hitting [with more prison time], he’s an accomplice. I am the primary.”

Barton says after he got the news that he had been denied, the first thing he did was return to his cell and cry. Then he had to call his mother. After the recommendation from the hearing examiner, he has previously told her he thought he would be coming home later this year.

“My mother’s been my everything this whole time. She’s done this time with me,” Barton says. “Now I think it’s more strenuous and stressful. She sees my friends at home, and it’s right there. And for me to have to keep telling her, ‘no,’ that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.”