DOPEWORLD

By Rich Hamilton

A refreshing change of style to the true crime or travel genre, I just had to catch up with the author Niko Vorobyov and find out more.  So Niko, your book certainly shares some amazing stories, which we will get to soon but first I just wanted to ask about your pre-book years and how you first got involved the whole scene? Yeah, what can I say? I was a naughty boy! But I was very shy and reserved as a young teenager. So all that stuff, breaking the law, came afterward — when I was about 17-18. Call it an early mid-life crisis! I wanted to make up for all that time I spent jacking off in my room so I started going to all these parties, shotting a few pills. And it was fun! I liked doing it! I was never a gangster; maybe a couple of times I pretended to be. My operation grew bigger, until one day I got nicked and of course, we’ve got to be lucky all the time but the feds only have to get lucky once!

1. It all changed in 2013 when you were arrested in London for possession of ecstasy and sentenced to 2.5 years in prison, this was when the book was born really. Can you tell us about how prison inspired and motivated you to write Dope World?

Well, it all began about seven years ago when I was sitting in prison. I’d never really thought of myself as an evil pusher, more like a bartender: after all, they sell toxic, addictive, highly-diluted substances as well! So it didn’t really seem fair I should be locked away, going crazy in my cell. But a lot of my friends who I wrote letters to on the outside thought my takes on prison life were really funny. So it kind of evolved from there. Actually writing the book and going on a quest to all these places took me about two years, but I used parts of my life from way back as well.

1. I heard that the Howard Marks autobiography Mr. Nice was a big inspiration to you when writing the book? What do you think about his views on the legalisation of cannabis?

Mr Nice, along with Bronson, is one of those books everyone reads in prison. It’s like a prison bible. The first thing you do when you want to get a book published is find an agent (you can self-publish but it’s a lot harder) so I actually signed with Patrick Walsh’s agency, who was Marks’ old agent before he passed away. He told me Marks was a bit of a legend and judged a lot of Cannabis Cups then got invited to the after-parties, which wore him out towards the end. Anyway, there’s a line in Howard Marks’ final book (I’m paraphrasing): why would a drug dealer who makes his living on the black market want drugs to be legal? But it’s like if you’re a doctor, you make a living treating wounds and disease, but if there was a cure for everything invented tomorrow you’d be the first to jump on it. I think me and Marks shared something in that I became more idealistic while other dealers were only in it for the money.

1. You described Dopeworld as a “true crime, gonzo, social, historical memoir meets fucked up travel book’. That sounds like it’s covering a lot of genres, can you explain a bit more about what you were trying to create with this book?

So listen, I read a lot of other books on drugs and I wouldn’t be where I am without them, but most of them are quite detached. They’re written by someone who doesn’t have a stake in the matter. I do. If you want dry, academic prose, read a PhD thesis. I wanted to take readers to places like Morocco and Japan and show them my point of view.

1. The stories you tell certainly “name drop” some of the most infamous players in the game including “El Chapo” and “Pablo Escobar”. It must have been pretty intimidating at times being around the associates of such dangerous legendary characters?

It depends. You’ve obviously got to be careful about the questions you’re asking; I couldn’t say shit like, “where were you on the night of Friday the 13th between seven and twelve?” But even when you’re in the hills of Sinaloa, deep in Mexico’s narco-land, at some point it dawns on you that if they didn’t want you around, you wouldn’t even be there. Actually I was most intimidated by Freeway Rick Ross, the South Central crack kingpin. Not by anything he said, but I really didn’t wanna come off as just another white boy who listened to too much gangsta rap.

1. What is your favourite or most memorable story from those you tell in the book?

The first time I had ayahuasca was definitely one of the strangest nights of my life. It’s like nothing else you’ll experience in your entire life, except maybe DMT. Imagine, we’re in the belly of the Amazon, at least two hours from civilization, sitting in a hut in total darkness letting the chants of the shaman take us away. Nothing happens at first and you think what, this is it? Then suddenly visions of creatures fill your eyes: snakes, spiders, crocodiles, jaguars. Your mind travels to the end of the universe and back. It grabs your soul, pulls it apart and puts it back together again. It gives you a whole new perspective on life — that’s why they’re thinking about using it for treating PTSD. I ended up doing it four times in a week. I’d do it again, but it’s not something that should be taken lightly.

1. Are there any stories that that you left out of the book for fear of reprisals or because they were just too much?

There’s not much I originally left out but since publishing I’ve been to a few other places – Serbia, South Africa, and back to Brazil and Amsterdam – either to write a story or working on a local edition of Dopeworld. I went to the townships in Cape Town and hung out with members of the 26 Numbers gang. There were these three dudes in a shack smoking Mandrax [a sedative] out of a broken bottle. It was the most ghetto shit I’d seen. The main guy was OK but another dude sat in the corner playing with his knife. The way he moved, too, was unnatural – like a crab. He really creeped me out. In Amsterdam I met another guy called Niko. He was a psycho who owned an ecstasy lab. In Serbia I met with a mafia chef – he wasn’t actually in the mob himself, but hearing him talk about their favorite recipes was like something out of Goodfellas. Finally in Brazil, I ran into the militia – that’s kind of a vigilante group they have in some neighborhoods but really it’s just another gang. I was coming home one night and their guard stopped me and put a gun to my head until he realised who I was. That was the second time someone stuck a gun in my face there in three weeks. Rio be crazy.

1. What are you working on now? Any other projects in the pipeline? I’ve started working on another non-fiction book, How To Break Out Of Jail. Nice controversial title. I don’t wanna say too much about it yet, but you’re gonna hear from some interesting characters.

DOPEWORLD by Niko Vorobyov is available now in hard copy, digital download and in Audiobooks now. Pick up a copy today you will not be disappointed.