"You lose your friends and family, you can get killed, you can get stabbed up, you can be paralysed, but in any event, you will have deep psychological wounds that will be almost impossible to heal."
After being associated with an Australian motorcycle gang for a number of years, Joey Armstrong knows the risks that come with being part of a criminal underworld.
Like Cornelius Bowser, David King Raj, Justin Rollins, and Manuel Medrano, Armstrong experienced the full force of gang life before making it out of the other side, and is now reflecting on his experiences as part of UNILAD's Stripped Back series about gangs.
As he hung out with other gang members, the now-36-year-old animal rights activist became known as someone who 'wasn't afraid to be violent'. He used drugs and alcohol, and was in solitary confinement in prison by the time he was in his 20s.
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For Armstrong, like with so many other gang members, it all started when he was a teenager.
He left school when he was just 14 years old, having already been exposed to alcohol and domestic violence in his home growing up. He was only 10 when he first started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and as he got into his teenage years he started hanging out with a street gang of kids around 15 to 18 years old.
"I started to get acclimated to low level street gangs, violence, and becoming conditioned slowly," he recalled to UNILAD.
Armstrong insisted he didn't have the violence 'in him' at that point, but he became used to seeing 'people being bottled in their face' and being punched, seeing weapons and hearing of stabbings.
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"I started using drugs to deal with my environment, and alcohol particularly was a big one to deal with the anxiety that comes with that environment," he said. "But obviously, these street gangs, they kind of evolve and you become more acclimated to violence, and you learn on the streets really fast that violence is a language everyone understands."
Armstrong recalled using violence 'for building your reputation', noting he was 'less likely to be bullied and targeted' as a result.
"I'm not a very big guy, and there were people that was a lot bigger than me. But if you use weapons in a street fight, and you smash a bottle over someone's face, or you pull out some kind of weapon and you smash it over their head really quickly, then you might curb the attack from happening to yourself," he said.
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Armstrong learned this technique early on, and remembered being around fights involving weapons like knives and machetes.
But as he grew older, the 'low level street gangs' began to develop into something more 'structured'.
The animal rights activist explained how 'a lot of people knew someone who knew someone who was in a motorcycle gang' where he grew up in Adelaide, Australia, and by the time he was 20 years old Armstrong was living with a 'high ranking' motorcycle gang member.
Such gangs were common enough in the area that Armstrong later became a member of another motorcycle gang, and when asked about how he came to join, Armstrong told me that 'different gangs have different reasons for thinking you might be be good in their group'.
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"I think people fulfil different roles. You don't necessarily have to be a big, massive, scary kickboxer in order to fulfil a certain role. It might just be that you're a solid guy, and you're a good guy. And you know, you don't open your mouth too much. But you're actually willing to stand by your other members, if something happens."
Armstrong believes his position in his gang was helped by the fact he gave off a 'vibe' that he was 'not afraid to commit an act of violence'.
This was well known among the gang, and gave the impression that Armstrong was 'willing to protect people' if needed.
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However, he didn't know how serious gang violence would become until one of his friends became the victim of it.
While he was living with the high ranking member in 2010, Armstrong became aware of a 'pretty bad shooting' in which his friend was caught in the crossfire.
"He was shot so many times, and then he was kicked in the head with steel caps on the ground after he was shot. A few other people got shot, but he got shot really bad," Armstrong recalled.
He had no idea why the shooting happened, explaining that even if you're in a gang, there can still be a 'strong code of silence' where members will 'only need to know things you need to know'.
However, what Armstrong did know was that his friend was seriously injured - so much so that he died and was revived three times on the way to hospital.
"I was about 20 years old. So I was acclimated to street gang stuff, but I was never really conditioned to shootings and high level gang violence," Armstrong said. "That was a first for me, and we thought he was going to die."
Thankfully, Armstong's friend did survive the shooting, but the activist's views on gang life were forever changed.
He explained: "You might think that you're actually pretty tough where you're from, but there's actually other people that are a lot tougher, and they have a lot less to lose. They're a lot more willing to commit these kinds of things... they can kill you."
Armstrong came face to face with the repercussions of a criminal lifestyle as he got caught in a hotel with a 'pump action 22 sawn-off' gun on him.
He was put in solitary confinement in jail, an experience he described as a 'wake up call', but was luckily released to spend his remand on house arrest while he awaited his sentencing.
It was these 18 months that he recalls when asked about his time in the gang, because although he was being tracked with an ankle bracelet, he still fell back in with the same people, turned back to drug and alcohol use, and heard of people being 'assassinated' on the streets.
Looking back, Armstrong considers his house arrest a 'blessing' , saying: "Who knows where I could have been, what I could have got involved with if I wasn't on house arrest."
He was largely able to avoid the ensuing gang wars during this period, but when he was finally sent to prison with a 13-month sentence it was harder to escape.
Armstrong was locked up with a lot of other gang members, and said if there are 'things going on outside, it usually happens on the inside as well'.
"There's a lot of violent people in these gangs, too. So I was in quite an anxious space in prison, because there's a lot of things that go on... stabbings and... you know, gang war," he said.
Though he was still a member of the motorcycle gang while behind bars, Armstrong managed to use his time in prison to get sober. There were two reasons for this - one; he didn't want to be considered a 'junkie' and untrustworthy by other gang members inside, and two; he didn't want to be in a 'drug minded state' while surrounded by 'all the dangerous people in one concentrated area'.
When he was off drugs, Armstrong was able to 'see things differently' and started considering those around him who had been sentenced to life behind bars.
He knew he'd been in situations where he could have got seriously injured, died or been sentenced to life in prison, but it was only then that he started thinking of the repercussions of his actions and questioning whether gang life was 'sustainable'.
After he was released on parole, Armstrong brought this new mindset home with him and decided to go vegan, because he 'didn't want to be involved in violence any more'.
He remembered back to that time, thinking: "I don't know if this gang life is right. I don't know if I'm really cut out for it now that I'm sober."
When he was using drugs and alcohol, he was a 'menace'. But sober? Armstrong realised: "I'm actually starting to think like maybe that's not me, maybe that was just a character I was portraying because of the environment I was in, in order to survive."
Armstrong began posting about his new way of life online, and other members of the gang came to realise he wasn't the same man who'd gone to prison. He stressed there was 'nothing sinister' about his decision to leave the gang - he'd just had a 'transformation'.
But leaving wasn't cut and dried - not after everything Armstrong had gone through.
Recalling the feeling as 'pulling yourself out of a whirlwind', he was left with mental health issues and 'internal demons' which have taken 'years and years' to tackle. He was paranoid people were going to 'come for' him, and remembers the aftermath of his departure as an 'incredibly scary time'.
"I just had to battle through the storm, stay completely away from anyone involved in the circles and just stick by myself and just ride through it," Armstrong said. "And thankfully, I rode through it. And as time went, it became more and more in the past. I didn't associate with anyone, I didn't touch drugs, and it's just long in the past now."
In 2018, Armstrong moved to the UK and is now known for being an outspoken animal rights activist. It might not be where he thought he'd end up all those years ago when he was hanging around with the street gang, but looking back now he recommended that people 'have to look into the future' before getting too caught up in a dangerous present.
"While you're still with us and conscious and lucid, before you get too far gone into this gang world, people need to start thinking of where it leads and listen to other [former] gang members," he said.
Stressing that life in the underworld is 'no joke', he laid out that gang members can end up with a life sentence in prison or a 'crazy drug habit'; you might lose your friends and family, get 'stabbed up', 'paralysed' or even be killed.
"In any event, you will have deep psychological wounds that will be almost impossible to heal unless you've got a really good support system around you," Armstrong added.
"Trying to assimilate back into society afterwards is really tough. So my advice would be to listen to other people who've been involved in this and stay the hell away from it. It's not cool... And the cost that you pay is so much more than any benefit you get from it."