Dopeworld

What is a grandmother with no drug experience beyond what is legally sanctioned (and some 1960s weed) doing reading a book about “the global social, economic and criminal underworld relating to the production, sale, and use of illegal substances”? That was the first question I asked after the first few pages of Dopeworld by Niko Vorobyov.

Next I wanted to know how a nice Russian kid who grows up in the UK with two well-educated parents gets mixed up in dopeworld in the first place. The answer provided a trajectory from a teenager selling coke on the street and Molly/MDMA/Ecstasy at raves to a promising student who takes a detour from university to a two-and-a-half year prison term for being caught with ecstasy on the London underground.

Vorobyov finds his true calling after prison, deciding to learn all he can about a world in which some narcotics are socially sanctioned and others can get you locked up. Vorobyov then embarks on a truth quest of research, travel, and interviews resulting in what he calls “a true-crime, gonzo, social, historical-memoir” and “f**ked-up travel book.”

His quest takes him to five continents, introduces him—and his readers—to many terrifying and colorful characters as well as to many terrifying incidents with drug lords, shamans, and drugs. None more elucidating than his journey into the Peruvian Amazon for a swig of ayahuasca, “one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man.” This particular vision quest included a giant spider and knowing frog/lizard creatures. One ferries Vorobyov down a river to see an “infinite, never-ending kaleidoscope of impossible shapes and colors.”

There’s a lot of humor in this book, the tone is streetwise and uber-hip, but there is also a lot of heart—and instruction about what we need to face as a country, if not as a world, in order finally to take a more rational, intelligent, and workable approach to a worldwide problem.

Ultimately Vorobyov’s gonzo journalism leads one to the realization that the deeply engrained system of dopeworld “poisons kids, destroys families, drives wars, creates terrorists and splits our society.”

And for this grandmother, that makes this book a pretty big deal.

Realistic, Frightening, and True.

Substance abuse, but more specifically, opiate abuse, has become an epidemic in the United States. Articles in the newspaper citing the opioid crisis are a daily occurrence. Most young people know someone that has died because of an addiction to opiates or heroin. This book tells the all too real struggles that Americans are battling with everyday. Addiction is a real issue that needs to be discussed, not covered up. There is still a stigma surrounding addiction and this book does an excellent job shedding light on that. Please read this! I think it is important for everyone to read this, if only to become more knowledgeable about what is happening and how to confront it, not turn our backs on it.