“Drug Lust” discusses Gantos’ encounters with drug use in prison. Given that he is in jail on a drug-smuggling charge, this strikes Gantos as ironic. He introduces the theme of this chapter: “[t]he effort to become invisible, or to appear nonthreatening yet dangerous, was exhausting” (164). Gantos blames drug use on this exhaustion, this need for men to forget, rather than record, what they go through in prison. He meets a man that nearly kills himself with a makeshift needle and a man who swallows hash and needs an enema to remove the drugs. He notes the smell of marijuana when he’s in the prison courtyard. Gantos faces his first review board and finds out he won’t have the opportunity for parole for two more years. After he picks at his face, Gantos recalls a Halloween when he was young; the children had to remain indoors because prisoners had escaped from the local jail. The memory of this comforts Gantos amid the disappointment of his parole meeting and the violence he sees as a hospital volunteer.  

Gantos gains illegal access to his prison report; there, he finds others’ comments on him, noting that he may be a sociopath, showing no remorse and lying to tell people what they want to hear.