Recently, El has been honest with himself and stated on many media outlets as well as on several talk shows that he has come to terms with his problems with drug abuse for almost twenty-five years and has acknowledged his problems with the law in the past. These are a few examples:
In 2001 he was arrested for cocaine possession and was given probation.
In 2006 he was arrested again for possession of a controlled substance and was once again given probation.
In 2007 he was arrested in a domestic dispute and was held without bail. The charges were later dropped. Later that year he was arrested yet again and charged with cocaine possession and given probation again: however, he was once again arrested in 2008 for possession of crack and drug paraphernalia, breaking the terms of his probation. For this violation he was immediately sentenced to two years in federal prison in California. During this time El re-evaluated his life and realized he could not go on any further without getting off drugs. He attended classes, getting rehabilitation for his drug problems, began to attend religious services, and eventually proclaimed himself a born-again Christian.
He was released from prison in October 2009.