I was stunned. As I stared at the computer screen several thoughts began swirling at once, my mind a hurricane. I felt panic rising from some primal place to a degree that left me frozen in my seat, fixated on what was in front of me.
It was my mugshot. And it was on numerous websites. It was out there for the world to see. My most regrettable day was immortalized in color, archived and on display.
Somewhere around six months after my arrest, a half year into my recovery, I had done a Google search of my name. All these years later I don’t remember why or what it was I was specifically looking for. But I remember with perfect clarity what I found and what I thought and felt upon running across it. That moment remains indelibly stamped on my brain.
Google image search had returned dozens of copies of my mugshot on dozens of websites. When you get arrested in Maricopa County, your mugshot gets posted online by the MCSO (Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. It doesn’t matter that you haven’t been convicted. It doesn’t matter if you’re pre-trial and haven’t had your day in court. Your picture gets posted along with your name and charges.
My stomach sank. My first instinct was that I needed to get rid of it. Somehow I needed to get them taken down, all of them. I went to the first website that showed up in the search results. There, along with my picture, name, and charges was a big button that said “Click here to have your mugshot removed.” I breathed a small sigh of relief. If this one would let you ask to have it removed, maybe the other ones would too. As I clicked on the button, a credit card form popped up with a request to authorize a $99 charge. Immediately, the scam became clear to me. Even though I knew what I was going to find, I went to the other sites with my mugshot. It was exactly the same, though the removal price varied a bit.
The predatory individuals who made these websites clearly used bots to grab the info and pictures from law enforcement websites and then replicate it all on their own sites– dozens of them, if not hundreds. They were banking on panicked, hurting, desperate people forking over hundreds or thousands of dollars in order to hide their arrest, their shame, from family, friends, employers, and the world at large. Calling the people behind this vultures would be doing a disservice to vultures. Yes, people shouldn’t be doing things to get arrested in the first place, and I was wholly at fault for the fact that I even had a mugshot taken in the first place. But to coerce and manipulate people who are likely at their lowest low is evil.
In that moment, I took a breath. I considered the situation and pondered my options. Very quickly I realized I had two choices. I could let my mugshot have power over me. I could scramble to hide it, avoid it, deny it, and spend the rest of my life worrying about who would see it and what they would think or say. I could give it power over me.
OR, I could intentionally choose to not allow it that power. I could take the power back. I could embrace the reality of that mugshot. I could use it as fuel, as accountability, to light a fire under me to do everything in my power to never be that person again. I could use it as part of my platform, show it to as many people as possible, and use it as a contrast to show how much I’ve grown. I could shine a spotlight on it and use it as an illustration that change is real and recovery is possible. I chose the latter.
When I began my career sharing my addiction and recovery story with youth, I very quickly made the mugshot an integral part of my presentation. For people who saw me in recovery, healthy and happy, and had a hard time envisioning the guy I was talking about in the addiction half of the story, the picture very quickly made the story incredibly real. Showing the picture often even got an audible response from the audience.
Then something interesting happened right around my one year sober date. I took a picture of myself to see a side-by-side with the mugshot. My motivation at the moment had to do with wanting to see the progress I had made getting my weight back down from a bloated, alcoholic 215 lbs to a healthy 170. When I put the pictures next to each other in Photoshop, something else struck me that wasn’t related to weight (though the weight difference was very noticeable). I saw the difference in my eyes, in my expression. I saw the emptiness in my eyes in the mugshot and saw the spark of hope in my one-year recovery picture.
I thought it would make an interesting post on Reddit in a couple recovery or sobriety-related subreddits. I thought it might be encouraging to people wanting to be in recovery or newly in recovery. So I posted it in there along with a version of my recovery story. The response was positive, but not anything particularly noteworthy. But if it encouraged or helped even one person in there, it was worth it. Each year on my sober date, I took another photo and put it along with the mugshot and prior progress pics.
Fast forward a handful of years. I started getting DMs on Instagram and Facebook from complete strangers. I started getting emails at Silverladder from people I don’t know, thanking me for sharing my recovery photos and telling me how much of an inspiration they were. Then, friends began DMing, emailing, or posting links on my Facebook wall to articles showing transformation photos of people who quit drinking. My pictures were in there.
At first, it was via the website Bored Panda. Quickly, however, it expanded to numerous online publications, news sites, and other outlets. Before I knew it, they were on The New Zealand Herald, The Mirror (UK), The Daily Mail, and dozens of other websites. I think the one that was most surprising to me was when my progress photos even ended up in Cosmopolitan. The pictures kept spreading.
I kept receiving messages from people I didn’t even know, expressing truly heartfelt thanks. Some of them told me that they were in a really dark place but that my progress pictures and story gave them hope. I ended up in multiple conversations with people, encouraging them, listening to them, and helping them find treatment resources. At one point I was getting messages every day.
Just as dozens of websites had shared my mugshot years prior, now several websites were sharing that same mugshot, along with progress photos next to it. What had been intended for my detriment was now being used for my good and for the benefit of others. What had started with a moment of panic and fear had been transformed into numerous moments of gratitude. And the people behind the mugshot removal websites didn’t get so much as a cent from me.
All of this was happening because I chose not to fear my past but to be transparent about it and emphatic about the point that I was no longer that person, proving it through changed behavior. These moments were made possible because at a fork in the road I went right. Every time someone has shared with me another website that has posted my progress pics, I have thought back to that day over 12 years ago where I refused to let something negative have power over me. Additionally, I know that it was through the grace of God that the weapon formed against me not only failed to prosper, but allowed ME and others to prosper.
Every time we make a mistake, every time we make a poor choice, every time that something negative happens to us, we have two choices. We can be a victim. We can allow the circumstance to have power over us. We can accept defeat. Or, we can refuse to be a victim. We can choose to take power back from the circumstance. We can form a plan, a strategy, and we can figure out where the good, the silver lining, is in even ugly situations.
What will you choose today?
By the way, in a somewhat amusing twist of fate, the owners of perhaps the most well-known mugshot website were arrested in 2018 for extortion, having coerced over $2 million in mugshot removal feels from over 5,000 people. As a result of their arrest, their mugshots are now available online.
I am so proud to know and love you Shane.