TRIGGERnometry - "What I Learned From Going to Prison for Selling Drugs"

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Niko Vorobyov is the author of 'Dopeworld: Adventures in Drug Lands' Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVVAN. vanish. Hello and welcome back to Trigonometry. As you know, we put out an interview here every single Sunday once a week. But what we thought we do is we've got a few extra episodes in the bank where we talk to somebody about something that's not really a core subject, a core issue

that we normally talk about. So we've got a few slightly shorter, slightly different episodes that we'll be putting out, and this is one of them. So sit back, relax and enjoy. What, do I get, do I not get to speak? Thankfully not. What? Right, Anton, on, mark me. I'm done. I quit. Right, that's it.

I'm off. See you later. The podcast is going to be a lot better now. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you if you're bored with people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts.

We ask the experts. Our brilliant guest this week is a former drug dealer and the author of Dope World, which is this book here, which we'll be talking about. Nick Havarabiov, welcome to Trigonometry. Hi, thanks very much for having me. What's up, everyone at home? What's up, Mom? Sorry, I wore this shirt. Well, that is the first shout out to your parents we've had on the show.

Fantastic. Welcome. Listen, before we get into the interview, just tell everybody you've had quite a journey through life. So tell us a little bit about what it's been like. Yeah, so originally I was born in Leningrad and was then the Gloria Soviet Union. I came to Britain about the mid-90s and I lived in Bath, which is a great sort of city for visiting if you're like a French student on the exchange trip. But when you actually live there, it's kind of eh. So yeah, it's enough to turn a man to crime, which I did. I wasn't very good at it.

I got caught and because I still have no work ethic, I became an author. So here we are. Well, you summarized it quite neatly, but actually, I think having read the book, your story is much more detailed than that. And you've traveled around the world looking at the war on drugs and drugs in general and stuff like that, which is something. So the book weaves your personal story with some of the experiences you've had elsewhere and the research that you've done into drugs. Yeah, so one of the few good things about prisons, I had a lot of time to read. So I kind of became quite obsessed with like the whole reason why certain things are legal and certain things are not So because for me when I was a drug dealer, none of the stuff I saw was like the sort of stereotypical kind of like pimping out junkies when they can't pay their 20 quid crack rocks

To be fair, Nico, you were a drug dealer in Bath. This is true. This is also true. But yeah, so I would, like, for me, it struck, I saw myself more as kind of like a bartender, you know. So, like, it wasn't unfair that I got locked up because, like, they say, don't do the crime if you can't do the time. But it did kind of, something did seem very off. So I started reading a lot about it. In jail, you get obsessed with certain subjects very easily because you have nothing else to do.

So, yeah, I kind of got obsessed with that. And afterwards, when I got out, I got probation so I could leave the country finally. I started going around the world, went to places like Russia, Iran, Philippines. I just wanted to find out more about this, the drug problem. And, yeah, the result is this book. I mean, so what were you selling when you were a drug dealer? Was it just weed or were you selling the hardest stuff? Sweet, Coke, MDMA, so basically everything you need for a good night out.

Sounds like you're still working right now, man. And so what happened to you? Just tell everybody before we get into some of the research that you've done and the stuff like that. You were selling the stuff. You went on the tube in London with some coke in your pocket. Is that right? Yeah, well, it was MDMA. So basically I'd moved to London because I was going to uni there.

And I know that one of the tactics that the MET uses to get a few easier restats is they stand on top of the escalators with some sniffer dogs. And that's why I always tell, I was aware of this tactic. So I always tell people, don't take drugs on tube. There are dogs on a tube. Or if I would have to do that, I put in a glass jar because it takes a while for smells to get through glass. But that day I was in a rush, so I thought, fuck it. I just put like a few wraps of MDMA in my back pocket, and I set off. And the dumb thing is I actually got off at the wrong tube station.

I got off at Tottenham Court Road. If I go off at Goode Street like I was supposed to, none of this would have happened. I wouldn't be here. Probably have a real job, like writing up Excel spreadsheet somewhere. Yeah, but here we are. I was actually when I was arrested. So what I had, it's about three grams. So I could still black that was a personal amount, but they're in half gram wraps.

So it looked like six grams. So there's not really much I could say there. And when they went to my house and my housemates were still there, and they'd actually ordered the pizza half an hour before the feds came. So the pizza man and the police came at the same time. And there was a very confused pizza man walking up the stairs while all these coppers are taking down like massive bags of weed, like bags of cash. And yeah, I got two and a half years of which I did just under a year because I didn't start any fights.

Right. And how much money were you making as a drug dealer? Right. This is one thing that annoys me about drug dealers a lot. They're saying like, oh yeah, I made like two grand this week. But like at least like half of that money is going. going to go towards buying more drugs because you have to have a sustainable business model. But like in terms of pure profit, I would say I was probably on about like 22K a year, give or take, so like yuppie salary.

22K a year? Like just profit, not like... Oh, okay, right, okay. Like if the money that passed through my hands, probably some more like 50, 100, something like that. I love how what annoys you about drug dealers is their poor account. Practices more than anything else you're like these guys are selling drugs that are killing our kids but fuck them they've got shit accounting Practices that's what really pisses me off right So you you get caught you go to jail for

officially two and a half years you come after a year and in in the time you kind of started to question Well why is the stuff that you had in your pocket? Illegal yeah, but tobacco alcohol Yeah, et cetera why are these drugs legal those two and particular of the big ones. Yeah, so for example, like I used to sell weed and there is not a single record of weed killing anyone ever in the history of mankind, not like directly anyway. And then maybe someone fell asleep in the wheel and crashed, but that's not direct. But I do have like one friend in Russia who killed four people in a drunk driving accident and that's kind of, you can

directly pretty much link that to alcohol. So I thought, why is this one? If anything, when you're stoned, you're a more careful driver. You slow down more. I feel like we're promoting all the wrong things in this episode. If you want to be a drug dealer, do not take drugs on the tube. Be careful when you drive stone. What are the tips have you gone for us, Nico? No, but the main thing actually is the impact on your own body from consuming drugs.

Yeah. Right? Because tobacco and alcohol are incredibly toxic and bad for you. you, there are other drugs that are not. And also in terms of their psychic, not psychic, psychological effects, right? There are, you know, marijuana, for example, there are some people, there's a link to psychosis. But broadly speaking, it's a drug that makes people into nicer people. Yeah. Where something like alcohol or cocaine really doesn't, right? Yeah, yeah. So you've explored some of that as well. So why is it that these harmful, unpleasant, dangerous,

anti-social drugs are legal and yet there are other drugs which you might say are not as bad which are illegal how did we start how did this start i think like um a lot of it has to do with uh it's not so much the effect of the drugs themselves it's like some social political or cultural thing that was going on a certain time which led to that uh so for example i was in iran and they're okay, well, in Iran, pretty much everything is illegal. Like, you can get arrest for having the wrong haircut even. But you'd be locked up, mate. According to our fans anyway, trigonometry fans would in Iran want you locked up.

Yeah, they're true. They don't. Not just for the haircut. So one thing that's funny in Iran is, so alcohol is, it'll be legal for us because we're not, we're not Muslim. also legal for all the Armenian refugees who fled the Turkish genocide, the descendants of them. So basically, yeah, if you want some booze and alcohol, call Kim Kardashian. But what's funny there is that opium, it's very much, they're both illegal, but opium is kind of more tolerated because there's nothing in the Quran, there's nothing in the Islamic law specifically about opium. And if you really want to dig deep, like according to some interpretations, it's only a very

specific kind of alcohol, which should be, they've blanket banned all alcohol, but in some interpretations, a very specific kind of alcohol should be banned. So that's just give you an idea that around the world, different cultures view this differently. Another thing, so weed originally, so when weed was banned in America, it was 1937, I think, the American Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1933. So there was 14 years where smoking a joint was legal, but having a drink wasn't. And part of the reason that happened was, so there was like a bunch of these Prohibition Narks, led by a guy called Harry An Slinger from the Federal Prohibition Bureau.

And once they saw that the sun was setting on the booze ban, they didn't want to like sit around with their dicks in their hands waiting to get redundant they wanted to get another job so one way they did that was they started stoking fear about marijuana so they made uh they paid for films like um or they supported films sorry like rea for madness great movie great movie have you seen it i haven't oh it's hilarious the piano scene oh it's incredible it's just faster faster it is one of the funniest films i've It's top 10 funny films. It's brilliant.

Really? Yeah. Reefo Madness. Check it out. From the 30s. Yeah. It's from the 30s or the 40s? Yeah, it'll be the 30s.

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So what you're essentially saying is that it was just a way for the police to guarantee themselves a job. Yeah, pretty much. That and at the time there was a big influx of Mexicans, like refugees from Mexican Revolution. So people were quite scared of them. So it was easy to kind of, if you kind of, of attached

Mexican immigrants to cannabis in the media, you'd scare like the white working class more and they'd be more likely to support

measures against it, which is part of why in America, well here we call it cannabis more, but in America they call it marijuana because it sounds more

Mexicans like marijuana, Tijuana. Ah, there you go. That's very, very interesting. That is interesting. So part of it is kind of maintaining

the police force having something to do. And part of it, as you say, is about creating tensions between different ethnic communities. Yeah, yeah. And the United States actually essentially forced everyone else to join in the war on drugs, didn't they? Yeah. It was nine, like drugs, some drugs were sort of gradually being banned around the world already. So obviously, like China had the, the opium wars. So they took a harsh, and anything psychedelic, but it was really America, which got the UN involved, and made everyone signed a binding treaty. I think there are some countries that held out. I think, like, Nepal

didn't sign up to, like, the 70s, which is why Nepal is, like, such a great destination for hippies in the 60s. It's known for its hash. But, yeah, it was mostly America. But what's funny now is that, like, now America's kind of backing off. So, like, even someone, like, line like Donald Trump, they're like saying that cannabis, marijuana, legalization, like a state tissue is pretty much staying out of that. Like he is a douchebag on other fronts, but I appreciate that stance. Broken Clock is right twice a day. But it's other countries like China, Russia, Iran that are fighting the drug war the hardest, I think. And so you've been talking about it. It's essentially jobs for the boys. But,

Can we all just admit that the drug war has failed? You know, we talk about a drug war and essentially it hasn't won. We filmed this in London. If I want to go and get cocaine, it will take maximum 15, 20 minutes. That's because you're a South American man. Yeah, just smell it out. Venezuela and connection. Yeah, exactly.

I just called Pablo up. And he'll bring some round. It'll be good quality shit as well. No, you make good point. Cut with Hugo Chavez's ashes. No, that is going nowhere near my fucking body. That is a dark image right there. But Francis makes a good point, which is drugs are everywhere.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed around the world, probably more over the time the drug war has been waged. It doesn't seem to be succeeding. Why is it still going on? I think just it's a status quo thing. It's very difficult for politicians to get in front of a mic and say like, hey guys, remember that time? We spent loads of money.

We sent a bunch of you to jail tore apart your families started off wars in third world countries for no good reason yeah about that like it's very hard to do a sort of a U-turn on that you know like any politician

that tries to have they're going to be seen as soft on crime there was one person I met he was a former police chief of Brixton, I think. His name's Brian Paddock. So he basically... He ran for Parliament, didn't you? He was a Lib Dem candidate.

He's a peer now, he's the Lord. Oh, is he? Okay. Wasn't he also as well, he ran for the city of London? Mayor? I think he might have done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you met him when he was working for the police, did you say in Britain?

No, when he was the Lord already. Oh, right, you met him when he was already. Like literally earlier this year. Right, okay, yeah. But, so he had a policy in the... I think 2002, 2003, where he basically told his men to, like, lay off the weed. So if they saw someone smoking, like, they might give them a citation,

take the gange off them, and then that was it. And what happened was it freed up a lot of police time where they could solve real crime. So, like, I think, like, the burglary or the mugging rate, like, halved. And also, like, the arrests for harder drugs, like, crack and stuff went way up. But then, of course, the Daily Mail got wind of it. And, yeah, he was accused of being soft on drugs. And there was like some kind of smear story in the press that he was like a dope fiend himself.

And he had to abandon the scheme. But I think now people are more open to that because now I think especially in the UK, like a lot more local police forces are adopting a similar sort of policy. So I think there is some room for change. And also as well, I mean, we're always told about how our country's broke or the US is broke. It's a guaranteed revenue earner, isn't it? Just for tax. You legalize it, you tax it.

Let the dollars or the pounds flow in. Yeah, I read, was it last year, maybe this year, that in Colorado where they legalized. I think the amount of tax they have in one year, it's hit the $1 billion mark. So imagine that, like when they said about what's it like? 250 million for the NHS. We could raise that selling Gange, man. You look like you're

ready to go, man. There's a big backpack over there that's ready to roll. There is a very serious question there. So you were talking about former police chief of Brickson and Brickson is a community the Caribbean community who have been targeted because, you know, especially with

rastafarianism, you know, they smoke part of their religion to smoke weed and all the rest of it. But that is a community that has been targeted and demonized and arrested constantly for smoking weed, selling weed, all the rest of it. Yeah, it's something we see around the world. So, like, you see it with like the Arabs in France or like in Russia with like Central Asians and gypsies. And I think that create, in America obviously with black people and also Hispanics. So I think that creates a sort of very corrosive cycle because you're arresting people en masse, they go to jail, they're not going to learn anything good in jail.

Meanwhile, their family's broken up. Their kids, like, running on the streets without a dad. They come out, they have, like, brought this sort of jailhouse mentality with them. So if their kid isn't already in a gang, they're probably going to get fucked up by this point. And then we wonder, like, oh, why didn't these communities get their act together? Because you keep throwing them in jail. You don't, like, give them a chance to kind of evolve.

Whereas, for example, the Asian community in America hasn't been as targeted and they're flourishing. Now, the rates of drug use the same in the Asian community in America as they are for others? Not sure, probably about the same, yeah. That's interesting. Because it would be interesting to explore. I'm not sure how true that is. Because part of it is cultural, as you said, right? Different people from different backgrounds do different things. So in terms of the... Well, actually, let me ask you this, since you were arrested with MDMA,

do you think all drugs should be legalized? I don't think we have to legalize all drugs, but I think we should legalize at least a core of drugs. So, for example, I think it's necessary to legalize crystal meth, for example. I think that would be a good thing for society. Why? Because it's just insane shit So what you're basically saying is the consequences of people using that drug are so bad that it shouldn't be legal

Which I suppose is the argument that people who think marijuana or whatever are bad are also making, right? Except it's not factual in my opinion Let me expand on that so basically So meth is a stimulant at the end of day But if you legalized, like, for example, if you made like a legal version of cocaine or MDMA, it's another amphetamine, like, crystal meth, I think you would take away a lot of the market for meth anyway. It also didn't need to lock up the user, but it also take a big chunk of the market waste. For example, right now, we have this problem with spice, right? Like, especially among homeless people and in prisons, I never smoked in.

prison, I only got the real massively overpriced prison weed. But people do smoke it in prison. Sorry, Nico, can you just explain to what spice is? Because we've got listeners and viewers from all around the world. They might not be aware of that. And also we have listeners and viewers who don't take drugs. They are a small minority, of course. So spice, it's like a kind of fake chemical weed, which originally came about because like, because weed is, illegal. So people tried, chemists invented it to kind of get around the law because weed is banned, but this isn't yet. But the problem with that is, whereas we've had like decades of research of cannabis, we know what it does, makes you hungry, sleepy, your Doritos are going to be

gone in the morning. But with Spice, we don't fully know what it does. And it could be, and in fact usually is like a lot more dangerous. Like the risk of psychosis is much higher. I don't really know that much about it, to be honest, but from what I saw of it in jail, it looks like nasty shit. But people wouldn't smoke that if they had the alternative available, if they could smoke cannabis. So people, not as many people, I think, would take crystal meth because if they're looking for a buzz, they could take something safer instead. So something, they could take ecstasy, they could take cocaine, they could take like a weaker amphetamine. Yeah, so what you're saying is the legalization of certain drugs would take away the demand for these more harmful, more dangerous drugs. Yeah.

So which drugs in your opinion should remain illegal? Other than crystal meth, which you've already said. Well, it depends how you define. Because I think they should be legalized, but in different ways. So for example, like something like weird, I think you should be able to sell that like the same you do as alcohol. like you have the age checks, getting like a special shop or whatever. It's more interesting for something like heroin. So I don't think heroin should be sold in like waitros next to the frozen fish

aisle, you know? Just in Little. Next to the buggies and the fucking screwdrivers or whatever. Can I imagine that? Sainsbury's taste a difference. Every little helps. I can't believe it's not heroin. Oh shit, it is heroin.

All right. But what they've done in some countries, like, I think Switzerland and Netherlands and Germany is they put it on prescription, and you can only get in special clinics. So you go in, get your smack, shoot up, like, in the presence of a nurse. I didn't think there's a record, or at least I haven't found a record of anyone ever OD at these places. It's on the medical supervision. It's all purest. They don't know what dose they're getting. and it's free, so they don't have to go around boosting TVs like train spotting.

So that's how like heroin would be legalized in my opinion. And in fact, I think we actually had that system in Britain until the 80s when Reagan got involved and told Thatcher to cut this shit out. And I think since the 80s, like the number of smack addicts has grown and exponentially. Because they also have a motive to introduce get other people hooked as well. It's like a pyramid scheme.

So they're selling to support their habit to get other people's hooked and so on. That's very, very interesting. So you're saying that heroin should be licensed, but essentially for people who are addicted to heroin. Yeah. What about cocaine?

Because with cocaine, it's very interesting. You have cocaine, obviously, the powder, but then you have crack. Yeah. And they are two completely different types of drugs. would you legalise both or just legalise cocaine? Well, actually the same drug. They're the same drug.

They're the same drug. They're consumed differently, but fundamentally it's the same drug. But the hit that you get from crack is a lot. Well, I defer to your expertise on that. Well, that's what the customers have been saying. That's a good question. I'm not fully sure about cocaine because, like, I think it's one of the most, like, next to alcohol, actually. It's one the most dangerous, toxic things you could put in your body. Is it really?

Like more so than heroin. Like if you took pure heroin, like they did with those clinics every day for 20 years, you might get a bit constipated, but like you weren't really suffer any long-term damage. Whereas if you're drinking every day or if you're snorting a lion every day, you'd have some serious heart problems, liver problems.

So yeah, it's a... Coke's an interesting one because it does make some people act like dicks. That's a mild understatement. I don't have the answers that one But I'm sure there's like some Some middle ground I think that definitely coca tea Which they have in South America

Which is legal in a lot of South America Which is basically like a cup of coffee I think that's I think there shouldn't be any restrictions at all I mean in theory you could Go to like Asda buy like 30 kilos of Coker leaves

And make like one gram of Coke but I think, you know, if you are that determined, fair play to you. But it's also as well, because, I mean, London has a huge cocaine problem. Like I saw, it's like in the top, maybe it's the top city in Europe for cocaine consumption. I don't remember, there was a headline last week. Yeah, that would make complete sense. Yeah. So do you know what I think it would, it would, it's just better if we just go, look, you can buy it, you know,

the government will regulate it. instead of what happens now, which is quite literally, you go to a toilet and a pub and you have to wait 10 minutes because someone's snorting coke in there. Just take the toilets out of the cocaine room, man. Nick, I wanted to ask you about

kind of crime and prison and the kind of the drug dealer mindset, if you like. How did you get into selling drugs? Well, I'm not going to lie. I am disgustingly middle class. So I guess I was also kind of very insecure. I was quite a weak person, I guess.

So I kind of, I always, and I got picked on a lot for being like always being the new kid, for being the foreign kid. So I kind of wanted to prove myself. But I was too much of like a little bitch to be like a real gangster to just like rob people and stuff. So I thought like if I did like drugs, I'd have like some more. I'd have more friends, I'd have more money. It just seemed like an easy way out. If you keep bullying Russians, I'm going to start dealing drugs, man. That sounds very well.

And this podcast will become profitable. Yeah. But how did you, what I mean is like, okay, that's, that was your situation as a kid. How do you go from that to suddenly you're selling drugs to people? Because you have to go and buy them from somebody. You have to like, be like, okay, I'm a drug dealer. Do you know what I mean? I kind of got into like my sort of, um, My door, I got my foot through the door through illegal rave parties. So there's a lot of that going on, and also legal rave parties. A lot of that going on in Bristol. I'm not going to name the clubs or place involved, but they're not hard to find.

So Brist has like a huge drum and bass scene. Also perhaps coincidentally, a huge ketamine scene. Like a huge Saitron scene. So I just kept going to those. eventually I got introduced to people and from there it's quite easy so like you meet people then you meet more people

and it's like a mushrooming network you know so I started out very much selling XT at Rave so I was like I was the dodgy guys in the corner going weed pills weed pills right and

yeah eventually that moved on to Coke and is a I mean I don't mean this to sound judgment I'm just trying to understand. Is there at any point a part of you that goes, what I'm doing is wrong? Not really. Like the time when I did see afterwards, like I did see like the misery of addiction on what drugs can do to people.

That was only afterwards and I was proactively looking for that stuff in my book. Like it's not all sunshine and rose. Like I had to, I actually met, um, met a guy called, um, Ray forgot his surname. The surname evades me. But he's a former teacher from the Isle of Wight. No, the Isle of Man, sorry. And he lost both his sons to ecstasy in one night,

which was pretty fucked up. Like they went to a football game and they didn't come back. And it turns out that they were later found on the second floor of a pub. And they'd taken like six times, the lethal dose of ecstasy. Jesus. And that was like a very shocking story really stuck with me because it shows you what this stuff can do.

But when I was meeting Ray, it's like I had this sort of like really tight feeling in my stomach because I thought he'd be the kind of guy, you know, who'd hate my guts. But really has the same standpoint as me. So like if they, because when you're buying drugs, even from someone like me,

you don't really know what you're getting. There isn't like a warning label saying, you know, may contain nuts. Like, that's the biggest problem. Yeah, so, like, if they knew what they were getting, if they knew what the exact dose and what the healthy dose for other people was, and if they got it from a shop or whatever,

like a licensed shop, they could check the ingredients. They'd still be alive today. Yeah. So his standpoint was essentially the same as mine. And where do you stand on, you know, because you were talking about, you know, you started dealing in illegal raves, at legal raves. I'm sure that you probably did it, like you said, at certain nightclubs. Where do you stand with the whole, what the police do, which is they shut a nightclub down if drug dealers are found to be operating there as to happen to fabric earlier this year? Well, they'll just go somewhere else. People just go where the party is. Like, so what are you going to shut down all the clubs in London? Okay. People are just going to throw a warehouse. parties or parties in fields like they did back in the 90s. Like it's called the balloon effect.

So you crack down on drugs in one place, it just pops up somewhere else. So I see Pavel Escobar got killed in what, 92, 93. A great man. Colombian cartels came tumbling a short time after. The Cali cartel went down. Then what happened? Like the drug business just moved to Mexico. Mexico is now the most important nation for drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere.

So, but why do you think we need to take drugs? Because surely, you know. That's quite a loaded question. I'm not sure we necessarily need to take drugs. Just to make this podcast entertaining. That's our worst. But I think people do need to, I mean, they do need to take drugs. How many people take drugs on this planet?

And it's more than the people... It doesn't mean they need to. It might mean that they are genetically predisposed to or they might feel like taking them. Doesn't mean they need to. You need to breathe oxygen. You don't necessarily need to take drugs. The message of trigonometry is not that you need to take drugs,

is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to preempt all the fucking libel suits or whatever that's going to come after this shit. Well, that's actually... Especially in the last few years, there's been quite a lot of research that in some ways some drugs in some ways can be good for you. Like right now there's a lot of research in America

about using MDMA for treating PTSD. So they're trying it now on war veterans, people coming back from Iraq, Afghanistan. And I think the organization is called Maps. I forgot where it stands for, but it's called Maps. You guys can look it up. And I think they had like an 81% success rate

for treating PTSD. So that's quite good. And another avenue that's being explored now is psychedelics, how they can kind of change your way of thinking and thinking around the box. So when I came out of prison, because like I said earlier, it's very easy to fixate on certain things in prison. So I became fixate of this one girl that I knew and I basically became a stalker for a bit. And flash forward like two years later,

I'm in the Amazon about two hours away from any anything that could be described as civilization. I'm in like a hut with a shaman and he gives me this the, well they call it a tea, but it just tastes like ass. It's called ayahuasca. It's like it contains DMT, which is like the most powerful psychedelic in the history of man. So I drank that. a lot of shit happened I won't go into all of it but I went to Kermitland

Kermit the Frog took me on like this Odyssey down the river it makes you throw up a lot and I turned to throw up and into a bucket the bucket was actually there that wasn't me tripping but who was holding the bucket but Rafiki from the Lion King

and he was looking at me like you'll come with Rafiki he knows the way and I just vomited and then I saw there were like a million jaguar face in the bucket going in a spiral. They didn't look happy at what I've just done. But it also made me like reassess my life from a lot of points of view. And it helped me get over like a lot of my kind of, not sure if that's the word, but like my trauma or my fixations from prison.

And it's not an issue for me anymore because it helped me see outside the box that I kind of put myself in. my mental cell, as it were. Well, I guess the question you were really asking before I rudely interrupted you just to make a joke was why is it that people are drawn to taking drugs? Like, there is Johann Harry who talks about the fact that it's a way of dealing with trauma. What do you think drives people to take certain drugs?

Do you mean like drives people to just use drugs or drives them specifically to like addiction and bad stuff? I guess both you can take them one at a time with just drugs it's the same same reason for us

drinking a cup of coffee or like smoking a cigarette talking with your friends going for a walk playing sports or whatever it's just something to do it's just the way to be sociable to be happy having a drink

it's the same thing what happens with addiction is so obviously like thousands of people snort lines across the hall of London every Saturday night right but only like a small portion of them go on to do it like compulsively

where it's like 5am on a Monday and they're still doing Coke so like I think with a lot of those people like one a friend of mine she can be described as let's say a problem

Coke user and she got raped a lot when she was a kid. She was like six to nine years old, I think. She was repeatedly raped by a family friend. So I think like for a lot of people I get addicted, and the same with hard drinking. They're kind of trying to numb the pain in their lives, trying to get over something,

some hang up they have, some trauma they have. And I think that's eventually that's where kind of the chemical hooks gradually set in and that's when you start having a problem. And do you think that when you look at, let's say like, let's take a drug like cocaine, right? So you have to go to a drug dealer to get it. You buy the drugs. You then have to find a place where nobody's seeing you in order to take the drug. And then, you know, the entire process, it gives a sort of glamour to it, doesn't it? A sort of dark, dirty glamour that if you went and you just bought it in a shop somewhere, a licensed shop, it just wouldn't

have. Yeah, it feels a bit naughty. Yeah. And do you think that's part of it that, you know, people feel it's naughty, therefore they want to do it more? I think, you know, that could, there could be something to that, because if you look at, if you look at the Netherlands, you know, look at Amsterdam, all their coffee shops, you know, the Bulldog, Dutch people that actually smoke that much weed, like compared to us, I'd say most of the people smoking weed in Amsterdam are Brits and a Stagdo and French teenagers. So yeah, there's something in that sort of forbidden fruit appeal. There's also kind of, I think here in Britain we have like the highest rates of like binge drinking on the continent.

Or at least in Western Europe, like Russia's a whole other mind. But like somewhere like in France, they don't really have that problem because people just drink, have a glass of wine with their parents when they're like 13, 14. and like they're kind of eased into it. They know not to overdo it from an early age. So I think, yeah, I think there's something in that, definitely. And what about, I just want to come back to this start of your kind of drug dealing career because it doesn't occur to you that any of this is wrong. You're selling these drugs.

Do you have, like, you obviously have to avoid the police, you have to think about that stuff. Even at that point, it doesn't cross your mind. And again, I don't mean this in a judgmental way. I'm just trying to get into the mindset. It doesn't cross your mind that what you're doing is wrong. Yeah. Like, obviously, I know it's illegal, but I didn't see it as wrong as like a bad thing, as like an immoral thing. Because for me, there's a big difference between what's moral and what's legal.

Yeah. So, for example, like the people who hit Anne Frank during World War II, they were acting illegally under the German occupation. But I wouldn't say they were acting immorally. Obviously, I'm not comparing myself to that. But like, let's say, like a rum runner during the prohibition, during the American prohibition, someone who smuggled whiskey in from Canada, like, it's illegal. The government says it's wrong, but you know, everyone drinks, all your friends drink. Like, it doesn't really occur to you that it's like an immoral, bad, evil thing.

All right. And then you get arrested. Yeah. And what happens mentally at that point for you? That was a big shock to the system because no one ever thinks they're getting caught. Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. That's why I think things like the death penalty didn't work because no one thinks they get caught in the first place. There's a lot of evidence for that, actually, that it's not the extent of the punishment, but the certainty of being arrested.

The likelihood, yeah, yeah, yeah. That has a much bigger effect on offending. So people think that they're going to get a slap on the wrist, but it's 100%. they're much less likely to do things than if they're going to get a really bad punishment but it's like 10% chance of it happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you didn't think you were going to get caught like most people.

And then bam, you get caught. Yeah. Also for a while, I feel like by being like a sort of white middle class student, I'd been in a few situations with the police before where I did either get just a slap on the wrist or they didn't even suspect me to begin with. So that kind of made me more kind of arrogant I guess or careless.

I don't know what the right word here would be. But when I actually did get caught, it's just like once that metal door is shut, you think like, oh shit, oh shit, what do I do now? What do I do? What do I do? And for a while, like, I was pretty not calm.

But like, my mind didn't really accept it. Except that this was real until I actually got sent down. for two and a half years. And then I went a bit insane because I was like, okay, I'm here now,

no one's going to rescue me. Batman's not going to come busting in through the window. And then I immediately start thinking of things to do and I calculated my sentence down to the second and I started

like counting down like 1,900,000, 999, and so on. And then I eventually I gave up after about an hour when I realized this actually wasn't making time go far. It was making it a lot, a lot slower. Right. And do you think, from your experience, which prison were you in? I was in two prisons. First, I was in HMP Temptside, which is all right, you know. We had a, you'd recommend it. Five stars. Yeah, better than a travel lodge. And then the other one?

It's the Hilton of prisons. And the other one was right next store is the appropriately named HMP ISIS, which was just a shitbox. We called it crisis. Right. Okay. Now, so you spent a significant amount of time in prison. Does it work as a way to rehabilitate offenders from what you saw? IP vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP vanish, encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi.

And with no device limits, one account covers everything. Stream with added privacy. Browse securely. Connect with confidence. Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVanish. Nah, I think maybe with sort of like medium-term offenders, maybe.

Actually, I don't know, because while I was there, I'd sometimes see people get released and I'd see them come back out. Come back in. Come back in, come back in, sorry, yeah. And it was just over just the stupidest shit. I mean, no, like some people do take the opportunity to change their lives around. But you really have to be kind of determined to do that because when you're in jail, everything is actually against. You're surrounded by your fellow co-conspirators. You make new links, especially in ISIS, which is the Inoffenders Institution.

There's a lot of street gangs, like postcode wars and stuff. So it's very easy to get drawn into that. Yeah, I think apart from like violent offenders and kiddie fiddlers, I don't think people should really be sent to prison as much as they are now. It seemed to work for you, though. Well, I got a bunch of new material. Yeah. No, but my point is, you're doing something very different now to what you were doing before, right?

That is true. And it sounds like prison was for you a wake-up call. Is that fair to say? Sounds like a no to tell us what it was like. I think it's more, in my case, it's because I have a strong family, so my family still supported me. But I think if I didn't think, if what my mama thought of all this wasn't constantly on my mind, as well, I think that I could have very easily gone back and been a bigger drug deal. I've got links to, like, Russia, Uzbekistan, Brazil, Bulgaria now all over the place.

Like, if I didn't have, and a lot of the people in prison, they come from either one-parent households or sometimes no-parent households. So I think for them, it's a lot more difficult. And were steps taken to try and rehabilitate you, to try and give you other skills that you could perhaps use on the outside, or were you just sort of left to it? Well, for me, I was already doing my master's by that point. So, like, that's sort of a little bullshit IT class that I did on the side didn't really help much. I just used that for writing and printing off letters because I was too lazy to write them in myself. but one thing that's interesting

the painting and decorating course is very popular so I bet I'm going to say that some like nine out of ten paints and decorators in this country are probably ex-cons really wow I'm now having my house redecorated again I'm just missing but so you talked about how when you are in prison

you have a lot of time to think about stuff. Is the environment that you're in a big factor in why we see that the mental health epidemic is so prevalent and so terrible in jails? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially now, like in the last few years because of all the cutbacks. So even when I was in, I think 2016, that's when they really started kicking up. But even when I was in prison, like the officers were warning like there's going to be riots when they start buying tobacco. they start doing cutbacks. So our prison, ISIS, they basically cut half the stuff.

Wow. So that means that they couldn't run half the prison effectively at any given time. So half the prison was shut down. So we could be in ourselves for up to 23 and a half hours a day. They let us out for our compulsory exercise and that's it. And what will affect is that like mentally being in the room for 23 and a half hours? Well, I'll tell you, Jeremy Carle gets bored. really

quick. So you do have a TV and stuff but it yeah yeah you have a TV

if you behave yourself you get a TV I think the TV is a good thing because if it wasn't there

we'd have a lot more riots that's how strange ways happened pretty much because

people are just like you see people in newspapers say yeah it's tough up operation

it's just a holiday camp I think those people have been taking the wrong

holidays and I also think that that's that's how that's how that's how

riots happen. Like when you toughen up prisons, you don't make people learn their lesson. You make people more mentally deranged. You get this sort of weird thinking about time that you don't have on the outside. You're always counting down. So you're always thinking like, okay, now it's 12 o'clock. I'm going to have lunch in an hour or whatever. Six o'clock Simpson's going to be on Channel 4. 10 o'clock and go to bed. Five more days of this. Then it's the weekend, they get more visit, two more weeks till the end of the month, three more months till the year, one more year till I'm released. Like, you don't think about that in the real world.

You don't think of time that way. And that can really, really fuck with your mind. And one other thing I wanted to ask you about, obviously, a lot of our impressions about prison are actually taken from American movies. Yeah. So it's the Shawshank Redemption. and what's the one with... The Green Mile.

The Green Mile, what's the one with Edward Norton? So American History Acts. American History Acts, right? So it's all about violence, sexual violence, etc. What is the situation like for someone like you,

who as you say is a white middle class kid going in on a relatively short stint compared to maybe some of the other people in the prison in terms of, you know, being assaulted, being beaten up and stuff like that? Actually, you know, I was fine. I used to work out a lot more back then.

So I was a lot bigger. I tried to be like respect to anyone. I was involved in any of the gang stuff. So I was fine pretty much. But I did see like a lot of stuff go down. So one guy get hit in the eye with like a tuna can in the sock. And he was walking around looking like Two-Face from Batman for about a week. There's a lot of, I think we've told him.

of people enough illegal shit for the podcast. There's a lot of stabbing with, let's say, sharpened toothbrushes, like toothbrushes with a little razor blades attached. Melted into the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to tell you guys how to do that.

But the reason I ask about it, what I mean is, is there a lot of that going on? Yeah. And why is it going on? You mentioned, like, the gang stuff. So if you, as a person, you're in prison, you're not part of a gang. Are you generally going to be all right as long as you don't, if you're not being addicted to people or whatever?

I think, yeah, especially in like the big man jail. So, like, I was in ISIS is a young offender, so 18 to 25. There was one 28 year old there by mistake. He wasn't happy. But again, an adult prison, I think most people just want to kind of do their time and get on with it really. Young offenders, it's different. and you have a lot more bullying, a lot more intimidation, just because it's just full of young wannabe gangsters

want to prove themselves. But yeah, generally, it's not as bad as they say, but it still can be pretty bad. It can, so your way of getting through it was essentially keeping your head down. Did you make any sort of connections there? Did you meet people? Or is it something that you just literally,

went, I'm not going to talk to anyone, it's going to be a year. I'm just going to have tunnel vision every day. I'm just going to keep my interactions. That's impossible. You'll go crazy from that. Now, I try to make friends. There's always like a couple of cool people in each wing. I remember there was one group, which everyone called the Russians,

which was basically consists of me, the only actual Russian, about six Lithuanian guys who get really. pissed off, he called them Polish. And then one Uzbek guy. Everyone just called us Russia because they didn't bother with geography. But that also means when someone shouted Russia across the wing, about eight people turn around. Yeah, they were cool. Just played cards all day, really. Yeah. There's a lot of... Oh, I met the guy who stabbed Professor Green. He was an interesting character. The Uzbek guy, he stole, I think, three million pounds, sending viruses to banks and then siphing off the money. But he fucked up when one day he forgot to turn the encryption

on his laptop. So, he traced all to his IP address. And yeah, he got done for like fraud, money laundering, all kinds of shit. So that's really interesting. So it's almost, you know, it's survival, isn't it? You go in there and then you you kind of meet like-minded people. Yeah, you have to. You have to, and that's the way you get through it. But you don't think it works for the vast majority of people. Like, really, it should be about rehabilitation.

It should be about bringing someone in, trying to do your best to fix and give them skills so that they can survive in the outside world. That's what they do in Norway, actually. Norway has like a really good prison system. I think they even have internet there. I think Anders Breivik is allowed internet. He can't like go Instagram his fellow Nazis.

But most prisons, they're allowed internet. Like some, it's like school library internet. So like obviously a bunch of stuff is filtered. But yeah, you can still talk to your family. The sentence, their sentences are a lot short, I think. And some prisons, like, you can just walk around. You don't have to be like bang up six o'clock in yourself for the rest of the night. And I think they're, they're,

reoffending rate in Norway, it's something like 15%, whereas with us, I think it's something closer to half. Wow. So every other person who comes out of prison is going to go back in? Yeah, I don't quote me on the exact statistic, but it is much higher than always. More or less. Maybe a third or 40%, something like that. And you must have encountered people where you just looked at them and they just thought,

look, we need to rehabilitate people, we need to give everyone a chance. But you must have met the odd person who was like, there's no fucking what you should be outside. Oh man, there are these two guys. What were those those two French cartoon characters called all of them's big and the other one's small and like they fight the Romans.

Asterox. Yeah, there's all these two guys that looked exactly like asterix and obelix. And the big fat one, he was a fucking psycho man. Like I was cool with him but like some people don't need to be in jail and some people need to be in jail and he definitely needs to be in jail.

Sorry asteris. Let's hope he never comes out and finds out and starts watching Trigonometry. Thanks for coming in Nico. I recommend everybody get this book and read it. It's a great read and like I said it weaves his personal story with a lot of facts and research into the drug war. It's a really good read. Thanks for sending us a copy. And as always follow you're on Twitter, but you're not very active on there, right? Or are you? My Twitter game is weak.

Yeah, your Twitter game. So don't follow him on Twitter, but follow us and we'll see you again in a week from now with another brilliant episode. Take care, see you next week, guys. Thanks for watching, guys. As always, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Click the bell button next to subscribe button

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