By Samantha Malott
Moscow-Pullman Daily News
MOSCOW, Idaho — While sitting in a Nevada prison in his early 20s, Noel Vest, now a doctoral student and psychology instructor at Washington State University, decided he did not want the story of his life to read that he died as an addict.
“I want the story of Noel Vest to read like a fairy tale, or at least read way better. I don’t want to die a drug addict and alcoholic, constantly in and out of prison,” he said.
Vest spoke Monday at WSU as part of the WSU common reading program lecture series.
Vest had been sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in prison, with a maximum of 60, on multiple charges in Nevada. Because of an illegal search and seizure in his case, his conviction was overturned after three years in prison.
He was retried and sentenced to a minimum of five years. He was released three days short of seven years, he said.
Looking back at how his life changed 20 years ago and again 10 years ago is hard to fathom, he said.
In his early 20s Vest was a successful co-owner of a sports medicine store in Portland and had quit school to devote himself to the business, he said. He was also a new father to his daughter, Brealyn, but he wasn’t happy.
“I hated owning my own business,” he said.
Vest said he was also not ready to be a father.
“They say addiction is born to genetic predisposition and an environmental event will happen to make it express itself, and, generally, you end up with this disease as a result,” he said.
For Vest, that occurred when his girlfriend of six years and mother of his daughter told him they either needed to move forward in their relationship or she would move on, he said.
He said, “I decided ‘I’m not ready to be married now.’ ”
Within five months she was married to another man.
“I had never had to deal with that amount of pain before,” he said. “I had one coping tool. That was to get high and to get drunk, and that’s what I did, and it worked.”
Over the next three years Vest’s life went in a downward spiral, he said. He was now using drugs he told himself he would never try, he said.
Vest said neither the disappointment from his family following his first arrest or blacking out at a stoplight for 10 minutes with his daughter in the car were enough to make a difference. His “rock bottom” moment came when a picture appeared of him in the paper as the suspect in a stolen check cashing case, he said. When his family confronted him about the article he tried lying and said that it wasn’t him, he said. Vest said as he was leaving his parent’s house his mother asked for his key back and told him he couldn’t return until he was sober.
Vest moved to Nevada where he eventually ended up in prison. After his appeal and new sentence, Vest said he began to make changes, starting with academia.
In prison he read three books that changed everything for him, from learning he had a disease, a better understanding of addiction, to realizing the pain he caused. He also began taking college classes and working in the prison school.
When he was released, Vest said, he was completely terrified knowing he belonged to two of the most stigmatized groups - convict and addict.
He became a certified chemical dependency counselor through Columbia Basin College and graduated from WSU Tri-Cities with a 4.0 GPA, a far cry from his 2.02 GPA in high school. In 2014 he was accepted into the WSU experimental psychology doctorate program.
“There is a lot to be said about finding what drives you,” he said. “I was miserable owning my own business because it wasn’t my passion.”
Vest said unfortunately, the United States’ treatment of addiction and prison systems are set up in a negative punishment model. Between 65 percent and 85 percent of the prison population are addicted to drugs or alcohol or had drugs and alcohol play a major role in their crime.
“We take away their freedom hoping that will result in them not using drugs later on,” he said.
Between 1925 and 2012, the U.S. prison population increased by 500 percent and has continued to increase until just very recently, he said.
Vest said there has been a decrease in violent offenders, but addicts and alcoholics are “filling that void.” They tend to be from low socioeconomic status and can’t do much to fight the system, he said.
Copyright 2016 the Moscow-Pullman Daily News