Abstinence forces clear thoughts, peace

Dear Diary,

I am 43 years old, single, educated, and a former government employee serving an 18-month sentence in federal prison for a financial crime that only qualifies as one by the narrowest of margins.

I am also a first-generation Jamaican-American who visit the island several times a year, as my parents (who've been married for 37 years) are retirees from New York City and have returned to live in Jamaica for several years.

When people think of prison, they generally think of dangerous, dirty, and dark places. However, there are exceptions. There are federal prisons, such as the one I am in, with no gates or fences for persons who are non-violent, first-time and white-collar offenders. There are soccer and baseball fields, basketball, volleyball and tennis courts, and movie theatres. I am mostly housed with doctors, judges, attorneys, politicians, bankers, and law-enforcement officers, etc. Aside from the occasional startling sight of men openly engaging in bromances, it is a relatively peaceful and safe environment.

When I arrived in prison, one of my first orders of business was to obtain desirable reading materials through magazine subscriptions. Among the first were GQ magazines and The Gleaner and THE STAR.

Every week, I and the other Jamaican prisoners, as well as older Caucasian men who have visited the island or have properties there, pass The Gleaner and THE STAR around to each another. I am usually tasked with making sure no one holds a paper too long.

I was previously a licensed family and marriage therapist and social worker, so issues like dating dynamics and sexual development are never far from my thoughts. Prior to prison, going 16 months without sex would have seemed like an impossible feat for me. However, now that I have done it and am preparing to return home, my primary self-reflective realisation has been that celibacy and the absence of sexual contact force the existence of elevated clarity of the thought process, crystal-clear vision and foresight, as well as increased peace of spirit. This all leads me to suspect that if men exercised more voluntary sexual restraint, other areas of their lives would develop and grow exponentially, and they would likely find a previously undiscovered power within.