"I was embarrassed and felt shameful," he says, "because not only are you concerned with the illegality, you're worried about things like getting called up for an emergency detail while you're fucked up."

Then Wayne ... got called for an emergency detail while fucked up. He was tripping on acid when he had to help respond to protesters outside the base. Thankfully the protest died down, because it's hard to drive away angry people when they look like dragons that breathe hugs.

Then he got annoyed about feeling guilty. "The same leadership that I looked up to were going out almost every night and getting drunk." So he continued his recreational drug use despite the risks, and soon realized he could turn his hobby into a job.

And he didn't have to stuff a condom up his ass, carve a hidden compartment into his wooden leg, or sneak past border guards. LSD comes in the form of colorless, odorless paper, so Wayne mailed himself a greeting card with the sheet inside. The card, no joke, read: "On your birthday, free your mind."

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Personally, we would have gone with, "Have a great trip."

Wayne worried so little about getting caught that when he flew back to Italy, he completely forgot about the three hits of ecstasy he had on him. "Most people implicitly trust soldiers," he says, "so they don't ever think to search them. People look at a military ID as some kind of magical thing that means you're either above the law or somehow exempt from punishment."

That's right: Security checked him about as carefully as they would a cancer-ridden child carrying a puppy, and he strolled through an international airport carrying illegal drugs with no issues. Everything's comin' up, Wayne! Nothing but good times forever!

Two military detectives spoke to him, and Wayne immediately recognized the good cop / bad cop routine. One threatened to send him to prison for a long time, while the other told him that everything would be fine if he cooperated. One also may have been a loose cannon with nothing left to lose, while the other only wanted his last two weeks before retirement to go smoothly. They then took him to an interrogation room:

"[It was] straight out of Law & Order. A single light over a plain table with two wooden chairs, concrete walls, one-way glass on one wall. I'd thought their method of interrogation would be a little different than what I saw on TV."

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Halfway through, they stopped and posed for a stock photo.

He actually laughed when he saw it, but he stopped laughing when a detective showed him photos of his greeting card and LSD sheet. Oh, and there was a signed statement from Buddy. While Wayne was in the US, Buddy had started pre-selling and approached an off-duty cop. They weren't the victims of an elaborate sting -- Buddy had just been dumb and unlucky, and then he showed zero hesitation in ratting out his business partner.

Wayne now really did abandon all hope at this point, because the parade of cliches stopped before he was assigned a down-on-her luck lawyer with something to prove. Instead, he was asked to waive his right to an attorney and sign a statement. He agreed. Cracked Legal Tip: Don't do that.

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Go tattoo the sixth amendment on your chest.

"That was the dumbest fucking thing I could have ever done," he says. "I talked myself into my conviction. It's not that I wasn't guilty, but I could have been convicted of less, had I not opened my mouth."

We guess the lesson is that while drugs are important for a drug empire, what's even more important is trust.

Wayne was caught in June and convicted in December. He kept working during that six-month period, although he was moved to "a lot of bullshit cleaning details, like raking leaves or cleaning offices." He even went on a mission to Romania, where he ran phone and data lines, despite technically having his security clearance revoked.

Then he went to military prison -- which, despite what pop culture tells us, turned out to not be a supermax facility with turrets mounted on the walls and a minefield in the yard. It was more like Boot Camp 2: Booted Out. They'd wake up, do some work, do some cleaning, and enjoy some downtime. Even the guards were laidback; they were from Wayne's unit, they'd worked alongside him, and they liked him. The only oddity was that prisoners were banned from saluting, because then a guard would have to return the salute, and disgraced prisoners don't deserve that honor. (Why the guards couldn't ignore the salute is unclear; maybe it would just look stupid.)

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"You guys get nothing but probationary fist bumps. Maybe high-fives with good behavior."

Wayne saw two minor fights over basketball and a game of spades (presumably, the fight was about a partner bidding nil with an ace like some kinda chump). There were no gangs or racial tensions; it was just a bunch of soldiers trying to get through their latest posting together. Even the escape attempts were disappointingly lame. Wayne watched one inmate simply sneak out when a guard's back was turned, but he was caught a mile down the road and had 18 months added to his 45-day sentence. Cracked Legal Tip: Wait the 45 days out. It's 45 goddamn days.