Justin: This was an absolute hell ride. I wish I could tell you it only happened this once but I also did a separate 9 month stint in solitary and three different 6 month stints. I wasn’t a victim here, I want to be clear on that. I knowingly and willingly attacked guards and inmates. I won’t apologize for not coming down with Stockholm Syndrome. Trust me, for that environment and the mentality there I did what I had to do.
I told myself long before I went to prison as a survivor of childhood traumas that I’d never let anyone hurt me and that I’d defend myself at all costs even if I have to suffer terribly. I’ll not just survive I’ll also show people what happens if you try and hurt me.
All that being said what I didn’t know was that this experience made me confront my shadow and ask myself ‘Am I a f * * kin’ animal or am I a loving person?’
Through deep picking apart of my psyche I realized there was a deeply wounded child inside me that birthed a vicious man. It wasn’t that I was heartless. I was created so I can be recreated. Fearless work on myself upon release, working with yogis, meditation, helping people ( anyone ), vedic texts, drinking ayahuasca with shamans is what it took because I wanted to live so f * * kin’ bad. It was, and is, an incredible passion I have to love life. To feel its’ pulse; to wake myself up; to pick up the broken pieces of other people. Hate put me in a darker hole than this experience in solitary ever did. Only love was my freedom. Deep, hard passionate ferocious love.
-Justin Downey April 2020 Follow up to his interview.