My name is Ryan Coggins, I am currently in Federal Prison serving a 17.5-year sentence for a methamphetamines case in 2019. I am a father of three beautiful daughters. I have been battling the disease of addiction since the age of 12 years old. By the time I turned 12 years old, I was already dealing with a drug addiction to stimulants prescribed by my family doctor at the age of 7 years old. I was diagnosed with a mental health issue named ADHD. My family doctor prescribed me a drug called Ritalin which is now known as a drug that is commonly known and abused by teenagers and adults as a stimulant. I was just a child when I was prescribed this drug but little did my parents know by administrating this “medication” to me was opening a lifelong nightmare in my life called “drug addiction”. During my early years in school, I was mentally, emotionally, and physically abused by my teachers and the other students due to my so-called illness of ADHD. I was just a hyperactive child treated differently and outcasted. My teachers used to lock me in a closet for hours looking at a green cardboard turtle with three questions written on the shell. 1- What is wrong with you? 2- Why do you act that way? 3- What are you going to change about yourself? As I look back at them questions it blows my mind away their drilling those mentally and emotionally abusive questions into a 7-year-old mind while being locked in a janitor’s closet for hours by myself. They put tape around my desk and told me I wasn’t allowed to get out of it until all the students left for the day. This carried on for many years until one day I told my parents and they put an end to it. By the time I was in 5th grade, I was introduced to powder cocaine. I was a full-blown drug addict by the age of 12 years old. I was only a kid. From the age of 12 to 19 years old, I experienced several traumatic events from being bullied to being homeless as an adolescent to being emotionally mentally, and physically abused by strangers and even people I was supposed to feel safe with. I am not making excuses for the actions I have made, I am just trying to give you some insight of what events that have happened in my life and to give an insight on where everything began in life. I ended up getting my girlfriend pregnant and now we were expecting a newborn baby. I am extremely happy but I was nowhere near ready to be a father. My life continued to maintain unmanageable until the best thing that could have happened to me happened. At age 19 years old I ended up going to county jail for a couple of weeks for possession of cocaine. I got sober and started going to church and really decided I wanted to come home and be the father I always wanted and I wasn’t going to be the same person my biological mother decided to be. I came home 5 days after my daughter was born on 8/28th 2006. At that moment when I held my daughter in my arms I made a decision to do the right thing. I started working a few dead-end jobs until one day this environmental company gave me an opportunity. I started working for the company for $10 dollars an hour and worked my way up the chain and became a foreman and making over 100k a year. I owed that company my life I felt in my heart because no one else wanted to give me a chance to provide for my family but them. I worked every minute they needed me for several weeks at a time out of town and several days straight on emergency hazmat calls. I was the modeled employee, I never told them no. This went on for about 9 years till eventually, I lived for the company and not my family anymore. Well, at least that’s how my wife took it at the time. I had gotten married and had another daughter during those 9 years also. I struggled several times through the 9 years with my sobriety and fell off the wagon several times. My sobriety was very important to me but addiction is just a beast of its own. Well, eventually my wife had an affair with me with a good friend and co-worker of mine. I ended up losing myself in my drinking and addiction and my whole world came crashing down. I ended up spinning out of control and I ruined my career and I divorced my wife and went through a terrible custody battle I ended up losing. At that moment my life became unmanageable and I felt like a failed my children and myself. I fell back into my old ways and got wrapped back up with the old friends I had and I ended up catching two drug cases along with a combined sentence run concurrent of 11.5 months to 23 months in county jail. I also lost my license at that time for 36 months due to being charged with a drug offense. I came home on March 04, 2019. I had nothing to my name, I had a very small support group, just basically my father and my mother, and I was lost. I spoke with my probation officer every week when I visit him at his office and asked several times for assistance. I was told there was nothing he could do for me. I couldn’t get hired at any job because I couldn’t have a reliable ride every day to make it to work I lost my Commercial class b driver’s license so my driving career was over and my back was up against the wall. the pressures were so great and I made another wrong decision. I used it again and my addiction went wild. I ended up repeating the same decisions I made when my life fell apart the first time and I ended up catching a several-man indictment and with several people cooperating against me. I had the option to cooperate or as they say “play ball” but I couldn’t get myself to push my problems off on another man. I would be sentenced to what I would be without pushing my problems on another man. So I am here today serving a 210-month sentence in a medium security BOP. I plead out to 180 months and the judge gave me an upward departure of 210 months even though I was only involved with the entire 3-year investigation the last 3 months the judge still said I had a leadership role and he didn’t want to give me the 180 months because he sentenced another member of my indictment to 235 months and he didn’t want them to be able to come back for less time. Since I have been in the BOP for the last 4 months I have taken a few classes that were available to me. I completed a business class, k2awareness class, drug education, and ACT workkeys class and I am currently in a legal writing class. I am also on the waiting list for several classes but the issue is that the BOP doesn’t have enough staff to properly handle these classes. I have been reading the Preparing for Success After Prison book and studying every page. I have made a decision to take this time and make sure I prepare myself better this time and make sure I turn this horrible nightmare into a positive event in my life. I have filed for federal funding to go back to school. My plans and my goals for success, when I return back to society, are to have completed my college courses and earned a 4-year bachelor’s degree in Psychology. I want to come home and work in a juvenile rehab and work with kids and let kids know that they have someone they can relate to.
