Isaac’s Story
Isaac Davis grew up in a large family in Brooklyn with a loving mother and father who cared for and supported their children. But by his mid-teens, Isaac was following his brothers and the wrong crowd. This led him down a toxic path of drug abuse, drug dealing, violence, prison and getting women pregnant without taking responsibility. For almost four decades, Isaac lived this life of despair. Then in 2016, he decided he could no longer live like that. His mother told him he could get clean, and Isaac did. Through rehab, support from counselors and perseverance, Isaac has now been clean for seven years and is continuously working towards a better life. He recently got his first paying job, working in a program for homeless individuals at All Angels’ Church in New York City. Isaac says the best thing about the job is that he’s keeping busy helping other people and that he’s around positive people. “I like it,” he said.
Isaac typed and told his story to Broadway Community volunteer Peter Aronson in the spring and summer of 2023. Peter edited the story for structure and clarity.
Isaac’s early life …
First and foremost my name is Isaac Davis, born July 15, 1964, in Brooklyn, NewYork, Kings County, to Louise Robinson and Burl Davis. I am one of 16 kids, 8 brothers and 8 sisters. They called me the “need” Baby,” which is the second youngest. A little football team to be exact. At age 4 my Mother and Father bought another house in the East Flatbush section in Brooklyn, on East 52nd Street. At that time, we were the first African-American family to move to that neighborhood. All my friends were white growing up and it was fun as a child. But growing up, I experienced racism. Going to school, they used to wait at the bus stop with chains, bats and whatever they had in their hands, while shouting the N word. Yes, it was crazy. We used to have to run for our lives.
My father was a hard working man. He worked in a fish market and man did he smell like fish when he came home from work. My mom stayed home and took care of the house and kids. Dinner was at 6 o'clock every day like clock work and you better be there to eat. Pops did not play being late for supper, that was the number one rule in our house. We didn’t have much, but what we had I learned to appreciate. My mom was very religious and she took us to church every Sunday. She also put me in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in the church. And that’s where we went on all the trips, like camping and hiking. That was a lot of fun. They taught us how to start a fire by rubbing two rocks together with tree branches. And how to put up a tent. Plus, we also cooked food outside. They also showed us how to swim, but I was too scared of water to really learn. I just couldn’t get it, I guess.
In sixth grade, I had a very bad accident when breaking down a dresser in my room. I stepped on a nail, but didn’t know it at the time. I noticed my left foot was as big as a ball. I was in so much pain, my mother rushed me to the Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. They told her if I waited a day later, my leg would be cut off since the nail was rusted and the poison traveled up to my leg. So I had to have 2 operations on my foot. I was stuck in the hospital for about 6 to 7 months. My teacher visited me to make sure I got my homework, so I wouldn’t be left behind. Some of the kids came and brought me get well cards.
During my stay there, I met three kids named Andrew, Lenny and Brenda. They were kids that lived in the hospital. They were way older than me and funny, but I was scared of them because they were disabled kids that their parents just left there. I couldn’t understand it to save my life, until my mother explained to me their situation. Andrew was 3 feet tall, but in a wheelchair. He reminded me of a little baby. Lenny was also in a wheelchair and all he said all day was “Lenny going to the Bloomberg building.” Last, but not least, there was Brenda. She had both her legs cut off, and she was the one who I was kind of afraid of. I guess because she didn’t have no legs she scared me. My mom used to bring me all types of food and stuff and I used to give it all to them, because they weren’t getting any visits. I was a child myself. I just felt really bad for them at the time, because nobody was coming to see them and they were all alone. My mom also told me to never make fun of them and to always help them if I could. She also said God will make sure they will be ok, being that my mom was religious and she lived in that Bible of hers. At the time, my mom really fell in love with them kids. She told me that she wanted to bring them home from the hospital. I asked my mom why she would want to do that. She said they don’t have anybody and she just loved those kids. I couldn’t understand it.
I was a quiet little kid growing up. I had a great upbringing. My brothers and sisters were tight with each other. Yes, it was crazy in the house. There were many of us there and it was tight, but we all managed. Every holiday mom always did it up. Big Lord knows my mom always cooked from scratch. To me she was the best cook in the world. Christmas time was the best for me and my little brother John. We used to get all the stuff under the Christmas tree. I remember my first Apollo bike me and my brother got. My mom made us believe in Santa Claus, so funny. She baked pies and made cocoa and locked my sister’s door to her room and made us believe she saw Santa Claus and he put pepper in her eyes. Yes, they really played it on us and it was fun growing up with my family.
Things start to get “crazy”…
Junior high school was cool. My brothers were really out there in the streets doing their thing and everybody was like bigging me up because of who my brothers were. This is when things started to get crazy, when things went downhill. The older girls were all over me. I was a handsome guy coming up. I stayed fly always, had money because I’m following in my two brothers footsteps, watching them and trying to follow them, not even going to school, cutting classes like crazy. I really didn’t like school that much, being that I had a stutter problem. I didn’t want people to laugh at me, make jokes. So when I was there, I always kept silent. Soon, I started smoking joints and selling joints, cause you could make more money selling loose joints back then. Then I began trying anything: acid, angel dust, uppers, downers. In those days, whatever was around, I did. So crazy. Then I was in the streets robbing people. I carried a bunch of keys and tried to open or bust locks and do break-ins. If that didn’t work, then we climbed in through a window or kicked the door in. Any means necessary to get in there. I pickpocketed people on the buses, in the streets, on the trains, anyway to get money. I also used to boost clothes from stores. I used to snatch diamond necklaces off ladies’ necks. I can go on and on. Gold was the come up back then. We used to be on a mission snatching gold chains and bangles that got you paid. I wasn’t too much into carrying stuff out of the houses we robbed. I had other guys doing that. All the money we made, all we did was buy clothes, foot wares and drugs and hung out in the clubs. To us that was living. Every day was a holiday. I was a young kid, in my teens. I didn’t get a job because I just didn’t want to work. My thing was, people that went to work, I thought they was crazy for getting all dressed up to go to work. What did I know at that time? I was young and dumb and really didn’t know any better. All I wanted to do was have fun with the females. They were all over me in my younger days. I was the guy hitting everything that moved. Then one of my homeboys got killed and that just set me off. We were in junior high school and I blamed myself, cause I wasn’t there to save him, so that’s when I started packing a gun myself.
I felt like I had the power then. You couldn’t tell me anything. I was going crazy out there. I was running with everybody. All the guys from every neighborhood knew me and my brothers, so it was cool for me. I stayed strap (armed) all the time, cause you never know what you will run into when you are outside in the streets. That’s how I was thinking. Also, at this time, I’m getting all these girls pregnant all at the same time. I did not want to be a father, so I made them all get abortions. It was sad at the time. Very sad.
Isaac’s father dies …
Now time is moving along. My father got sick and died from a heart attack. I could not understand the death of losing a parent, and I lost my mind thinking that somebody killed him. It was hard for me to deal with. I thought my parents were going to live forever. My mother never explained that to me, so I just went out there and just started hurting people, doing what I do, so crazy. I loved my pops. He was old enough to be my grandfather and I had fun with him even though he used to talk in riddles. But it all made sense to me. He was a hard working, strong man that I really looked up to. He even told me one day that I would see people eating out of the garbage and I said, Get outta here. Then he said he might be dead and gone, but it will happen, and after my father died, I saw somebody eating out of the garbage on the Bowery in Manhattan. That’s a fact. Now, my father is gone and I’m bugging out, going crazy, doing everything under the sun … getting in trouble, going away to jail, doing some time.
My brothers had already done time, so I’m thinking, it’s cool to follow them around. I had no father figure. All I learned from my brothers was to rob and steal. Around the same time, one of my sisters passed away in her house while talking on the phone to another one of my sisters. The phone just fell to the floor. By the time we got over to her house and kicked her door open, she was dead on the floor. Another loved one lost. I was crazy. I didn’t know how to deal with death. Her son was four years old at the time she died. Fast forward, I came home from a bid in upstate prison and met this girl. We were then out there hustling and charging through life, stealing mink coats and $1,000 dollar shoes. This was me going crazy. I was wearing all these expensive clothes from head to toe. Every day was a bad holiday out there, picking pockets using stolen credit cards. The people in the stores just waited for us to come in and to charge up stuff. We felt like we had Manhattan locked down. I was bugging out. I couldn’t believe it.
Anyway, this girl was getting high off that dog food, which is another name for dope or heroin or pee funk, just different names, that’s all. I asked her to let me try that stuff and when I did, I threw it all up like a dog, but I liked the high. I didn’t know it then, but I fell in love with it. It just made me feel more invincible than I was and I was really off to the races. At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew I had more women and was having sex like four times a day. I was really going crazy. I was only 16 years old, still a kid hanging out with all the big guys. I was liked by a lot of the guys in the streets anyway. I was a smooth talker and a handsome guy tearing stuff up, never afraid of anybody in the streets. My father always told me to never fear a man that walks on two legs like me and that always stayed in my head. Now, the free base is out heavy, everybody cooking up the cocaine, smoking it, that was the worst. I thought the dope was bad, with people shooting it up, sticking needles in their veins. I myself never did that, I guess, because I was scared of needles. I was snorting it. In the beginning, I just was doing it, not realizing I’m going to be hooked. Until one day, I didn’t do it and I wasn’t feeling good. So my girl said that if I took a hit, I would feel better. So I took that hit and boy, did I straighten up and feel better. So crazy. I could not believe what happened. That stuff was so powerful … now off to the races … living off the land, going out robbing and stealing, whatever it took. We were tearing up the city, because that’s where all the money was. Believe it or not, trouble comes with that also. I began going back and forth to jail. First it was juvy, later regular jail and prison. I would come home and do the same stuff all over. How dumb is that? You couldn’t tell me nothing, because I was just doing street stuff. I did it all: sold crack and coke and made a lot of money. Like I said, everybody and their mother was on that shit. I also seen some crazy stuff from people smoking it. Wow, it blew my mind.
People got rich during that era and people went to jail. A lot of women I knew got messed up off that crack. It was so sad. After a while, I started hating that stuff. So I moved on with the dog food (heroin), being that I was addicted. Over the years, I been to a lot of cities and states selling it, just opening up shop wherever I land.
I always had homies with me, so we did what we knew best. If the beef (police) came, we dealt with it and let everyone know we ain’t going nowhere. That’s because I was making so much money.
As an addict, I couldn’t stop …
I was caught up in the streets my whole life, doing street stuff to stay alive. The more I did it, the more money I made. That dog food was so strong I stayed high everyday, all day. I used to sniff so much drugs for so many years, I don’t understand how I’m still alive today. Only God knows that answer. One town I was in I used to make $1,000 per gram selling. I was getting so much money I had to send for one of my girls to come and bring the money home after a while …
My life has been a freaking roller coaster ride. I never had a dream when growing up. I was just living day to day, never thought I would live to be here now, so crazy. I thought I would be dead already, because the life I lived was crazy and wild. I wasn’t scared of nothing. The drugs kept me numb. I had no feelings. I didn’t really know how to love nobody. My thing was I always look out for people, so that was my way of showing them love I guess. It’s so crazy. I never ever thought about the future, my future.
I was going back and forth out of town … I’m sniffing like crazy, all day every day. I had a little team with me … I wasn’t even scared at all. As time moving along, people getting made, money getting short, the guns come out, getting crazy, shootout everytime we step foot outside. It was like the wild wild west. That drug had me not caring about a thing.
My lawyer sniffed a lot of coke, so I paid him in coke and cash. He was the best I ever seen. He can get you out of anything. I gotta give it to him because he was so so smooth he knew what I was doing, but he was my lawyer and a down one, too. So I did a little time in the county and was selling drugs in there, too.
Not even prison can break the addiction …
I did my time and got out. This time it was 12 months and time went by fast. In prison, I had a job in the kitchen. I was messing with the lady cooks and behold I was having sex in the freezer. I was in my twenties. I new all the hustlers in there. Wherever I went, people dug me. I was that kind of guy.
Then I got out of prison and I’m still running around, doing my thing, trying not to catch another case … The money was coming and I started messing with some other chicks and had kids with them. I didn’t really want to, but they had them. The truth was, I didn’t know what I was doing. Having children, becoming a father … while selling drugs, playing the streets. I wasn’t even there for those kids. Sad. One was a boy and one was a girl by different women. Now, I’m back in New York, messing with a different woman and she has a baby girl. But then I end up getting locked up. … Then I get word my brother died, so they want me to come to the funeral. My plan was, when they bring me down, I was going to escape. But my mom told me not to do it, not to go on the run. But that’s how I was thinking at that time. I didn’t care about nothing. Drugs really messed up my head.
I didn’t love those women I was with. And I didn’t love myself. I thought I did, but I didn’t know how to love myself or no one else. All my life I had very good women in my corner, but I was stuck on getting high and really didn’t know how to stop. So dumb of me.
The ultimatum …
So now it’s about 1998. I am about 25 years old. I was with this Puerto Rican chick. I had been with her for years. I raised her kids … and then I was with another woman and she tells me: “Either the drugs or me.” That’s the ultimatum. I tried, tried getting sober, you know, I tried, I tried. I went to my first detox. I didn’t know too much about detoxes and stuff like that. But, um, you know, I end up, you know, going into one and I stayed in there for, like, a week. Yeah, it was like a week. Seven days. Then I came home, I tried to stay clean. I started going to an AA place. But they were talking about alcohol. I ain’t never had an alcohol problem. So I was like, nah, this ain’t for me. So I was trying to find a drug program. But I wasn’t into it. I just thought, you know, if you put the drug down, you ain’t gonna get high again. But nah, that stuff was calling me. I couldn’t understand it. You know, it was like I couldn’t get away from it. I stayed clean for like a week and then I was back to the races again. I tried to do it differently. I said, you know what? I ain’t gonna sniff every day … But I hate getting sick from withdrawal. You know, I don’t like going through that, taking my body through that. That’s why I always got high. I don’t care where I was at or what I was doing, you know, I always got high. I didn’t give a f--- about nothing else but getting high.
A little later, I did a real detox while on parole. I did 18 months in Phoenix House. That was a new experience for me because I’ve never been in a program like that. I didn’t want to stay. But the director kept talking to me, telling me I could do it, I could do it. I was in that program for a whole month, sick like a dog. It hit me for like 30 days. I was on bed rest in the program and I wanted to leave. Matter of fact, I was trying to get drugs in there, but I didn’t get it. I tried to stay clean, because I was on parole and I couldn’t be violated. I couldn’t take that chance. I slid through the program … You know, they say: You fake it till you make it. That’s what I was doing, because like you had to get a position in order to come home. So I worked my way up to coordinator status, where I was running the kitchen, I was coordinator of the kitchen. So, you know, when you’re a coordinator, you get to come home every week. So I was playing. It was like a game to me.
I had one of the coolest drug counselors. I was lending her money. Me and the counselor were so cool. We was real tight. I learned a lot, but I wasn’t ready to stop. I stayed in the rehab program 18 months. I wanted to hurry up and get out. So they moved me to a facility at 74th street in Manhattan. But when I hit Manhattan, it’s like, wow, I’m back in the city now …
Even rehab couldn’t break Isaac’s drug cycle …
And then after that 18 months, I’m bouncing, I’m out of there. I went back to my crib. I stayed clean for a minute. Because the stuff was calling me again. So like that I’m back hustling again. So I’m back selling again. And while I’m selling, I start sniffing again. The cycle never ends, it never ends, it never ends.
I was with my girl. She was cool. I raised her two kids, she had a son and a daughter. I raised them. I didn’t even raise my own kids. That’s a sad, sad thing about this whole thing. I didn’t raise my kids, but I raised every other girls’ kids that I was with. I was with a lot of women and a lot of kids.They can never say nothing bad about me. They never seen me get high, none of the women. They just knew I was high. I gave them all respect. I try to love them all, but I just couldn’t. My life just went crazy. Just been crazy because of all the stuff I’ve been doing.
Selling drugs is all I knew. Getting high, paying my bills. Selling drugs, that’s all I knew. My brother had a pet store. He tried to give me a job. He was the first black owned pet store in the neighborhood in Brooklyn. I started working with him, but I don’t wanna get into all that …
During all this, I got beat up by the police. This is another story. They used to jump on me in front of my building, as soon as I came out of the house. People start telling. But they couldn’t catch me with nothing. So one day, I go into a store because I had a bad headache. I got some Tylenol. I lit my cigarette when I came out. The police asked me why I lit my cigarette in the store. They thought it was a signal. They tried to get rough with me. I’m like, man, go ahead. That’s how the altercation started. I pushed them, then took off. The police called for backup. I’m trying to outrun them. I end up getting caught. They beat me up pretty bad. But this still didn’t wake me up to stop this crazy stuff.
You know, this drug stuff is just crazy.
Finally, a realization, a change …
Then it was around 2015 or 2016. Me and my girl ended up falling out after all those years. Then I ended up back at my mom’s crib, and I’m like damn, I’m at my mother’s house. So this is when I said, now I gotta start getting my stuff together. That’s when I asked a friend to take me to some meetings. I tried to kick it cold turkey. It was rough, you know. It was three days, four days. It was like torture, because I said I ain’t going back to no detox. I just don’t like going to those places.
So it’s 2016. I’m just trying to just lock myself up in the crib, try to lock myself up and detox myself. Yeah, that’s what I did. I bought me a little bit of meth and just stayed locked up in the crib and did my detox. It was rough, but I did it. But then, you know, the urge, it starts coming back. That heroin, that’s the worst drug in the world for anybody to mess with. You know, I’m here to tell you. I wouldn’t recommend that to my enemy - no, no. I wouldn’t recommend that stuff to anybody.
I was on that stuff for a long time. It was rough. All the stuff that happened to me in my life. All the family members. All the friends I lost. All the people I lost. Your body and mind just get tired, get tired of running, you know, because I’m saying to myself, I ain’t done nothing in my life. All this shit I’ve been doing in the streets, streets don’t show me no love. I learned that, you know, all the work I put out there in the streets, streets don’t give me no love back. The streets just suck you up like a freaking vacuum cleaner. That’s what it did to me. Right now, after seven years of staying away from the streets, I’m struggling with trying to stay clean. I’m struggling. I said to myself, I can’t do this no more. I don’t wanna do it. So now, you know, I’m trying to find a way, you know where I can stop being around it.
I had to dislocate myself from it. I couldn’t sell it. I couldn’t be around a drug that messes you up. I’ve never worked in my life, never had a job. It was like giving a monkey a banana. What do you think the monkey gonna do? They gonna eat it all up. So it was the same way for me. I was around a drug that I couldn’t say no to. I ended up sniffing it for years and years. I thank God I never shot drugs. So now for many years I am going to programs and listening, talking to the counselors. It finally worked for me. Going to group sessions. No shed tears, just asking myself why my life turned out the way it did.
I enjoyed my life. But that’s what was killing me. So I realized I had to stop hustling, because you can’t hustle if you’re trying to stay clean.
So I had to put the drugs down completely. Can’t be around it. Don’t wanna be around it. I never studied what the drugs do to your body. I just enjoyed it. But then I started listening, because I had to. I started hearing the counselors talk about the drugs, what the drugs do to your body and mind. I talked to counselors that have been clean for 25, 35 years. I’m like, wow, how did you do that? I realized, it can be done, it can happen.
So now it’s been seven years. And now I am working to get off of methadone. When you stop abusing yourself, you wake up, you wake up a lot. I learned a lot. It wasn’t easy. You gotta work towards it. That’s the only way it’s gonna work. You gotta be around positive people.
I go to group every day. I listen to the counselors. I take my medication and that’s it. That’s what works for me. That’s what keeps me strong. Every day it’s a struggle. I can’t think about three weeks from now. No, I live day to day. I survived today. I’m blessed. Seven years now.
I know I ain’t going back to the streets, to the drugs. I can’t do that. I fought. I bitched. I moaned. I cried, I ain’t never cried as much in my life. You know, why me? I reached for a higher power. My higher power is what keeps me strong.
My God, that’s my higher power. It ain’t about religion. You have to stay strong. I have to keep the monkey off my back. Keep the gorilla off my back. Keep King Kong off my back.
Like chasing a high, you gotta chase that recovery. That’s the only way you’re gonna make it.
When I lost my mom seven years ago, that really messed me up. But before she left here, she saw me clean. She did. Yes, she did. She had told me, “You can do it.” She said pray, and you can do it. It is more than that, but she was right.
So now I gotta take care of myself right now. It’s not me being selfish. It’s just that all my life, I’ve been taking care of everybody but myself.
What I want for the future is like what everybody else wants for their future. But it’s not about what I want, it’s about what I need. I’m of an age now where I might have 20 years left in me. I just want to live a normal life. That’s all I want. I don’t ask for much. All I want really is just to live a normal life. Have a crib. Have my grandkids with me. Have my kids with me. That’s all I need. And I’m good with that.