Daniel M.

When you have this vision, you can feel that tingling all the way down to your bone marrow. That’s how I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I have undergrad degrees in medical technology and psychology. I’m working on my master’s in addiction science. I had a rocky upbringing with alcoholism and abuse. Even though I did well in school, athletics, and the honors society, I ran away at 17. I didn’t realize it then, but I kept self-sabotaging because of trauma from my childhood. I was sentenced to life without parole for a string of drug charges. With HB780, the ACLU and Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project, I had my sentence commuted. I want to advocate for reform in education and in prisons. Mental health should be taught all through school. Prison reform should include replacing punishment with treatment. I’m also working on books integrating major religions with the science of human behavior. A lot of people go to church, motivated by fear of hell. When you’ve already been to hell, you’re motivated to go out of love.

A lie was told, and we lost the vital key to paradise, then came sickness, war, death, and all kinds of vice;

separated from the spirit we are all confused and lost, we search for it in everything, everywhere, at all costs;

some find it in the elixir of power and think they are right, in the name of God, they turn day into endless night;

some find it in drugs and are doing the best they can, the ones in power think this is the scourge of man;

the lost oppressing the oppressed lost not knowing why;

by declaring a war on drugs, they are living out the lie;

the truth is the oppressor and the oppressed are one, both want returned to the garden, the desert they shun;

but the only way back to Garden of Eden is through love, this can only be accomplished through God within and above.

-Written by Daniel M.