A former United Nations officer has revealed how he became heavily addicted to cocaine while working in South America—even attending a meeting about drug trafficking while high.
Speaking exclusively to VICE, the UN worker lived a secret double life during his time with the global organization, rubbing shoulders with both government ministers and armed teenage drug dealers in Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil.
While he was working to advance the UN’s mission of “peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet,” the young graduate was also snorting up to five grams of the drug per day, leaving him with a hole in his septum the size of a coin.
After losing his security clearance following a cocaine-induced psychotic break, he’s spent years in and out of rehab but is currently four months “clean.” He’s now calling for the drug to be legalized to help bring an end to violent organized crime in the region.
“I’m speaking out because nobody actually talks about cocaine legalization,” he told VICE, in a first-person piece dictated to reporter Mattha Busby. “Decades of interventions attempting to curb the supply have had no actual positive outcome. Now we’ve just got teenagers armed to the teeth selling it and killing each other for market dominance. I’m still haunted by the times I copped from them.”
Despite spending years buying from drug gangs in South America, the former UN worker now believes that profits and power should be taken out of their hands.
“In Brazil, the rise of armed criminal groups… is driven entirely by cocaine.
“Legalization would most likely move the ‘white gold’ out of the hands of armed criminal groups. Hopefully, then, Latin America would stop experiencing such extreme levels of cocaine-related violence.”
“I’m still haunted by the times I copped from them”
The anonymous UN insider first took cocaine in 2016, after buying it from the dark web while studying for his bachelor’s degree in Europe. At first, the drug made him “see the world with love everywhere,” he says, but gradually it began to get on top of him.
After graduating, he worked for a think tank before moving to Rio De Janeiro where he became a researcher for the UN Development Project. The international agency is tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economies.
“To my knowledge, few of my colleagues were also taking coke,” he told VICE.
He became a UN officer and in 2020 moved to Ecuador where his drug habit “got really bad.” At this time, criminal gangs were gaining increased power, leading to massacres in the country’s prisons. The situation led to the supply of drugs increasing, while the prices went down—a gram of pure cocaine, or perico, was just $10.
As laid out in the full article, he accumulated some startling stories during the years of his addiction. Once, at the tail end of a three-day coke binge in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, he was held at gunpoint by police after being caught with a gang of basuqueros (drug dealers) in the early hours of the morning.
After watching the police beat the other men with a stick until they were “crying, vomiting, and yelling in pain,” he was released just a few hours before he was due at work. He then took more cocaine before attending a scheduled 9AM meeting with the Ecuadorian Ministry of Environment to discuss the finer points of an Amazonian conservation project.
“I snorted coke… inside a Colombian Army base”
Though “high as a kite,” it seemed to him as if no one noticed, perhaps because he was wearing a mask due to Covid. Afterwards, since it was still not mandatory to be in the office, he went home to finish the rest of his drugs.
Towards the end of his time with the UN, he worked in rural Colombia, where he once witnessed a “Sicario-like execution” and also, separately, met the Colombian minister of defense.
“I snorted coke in a former FARC combatant camp, once inside a Colombian Army base, and in the bathroom of the police headquarters before a meeting about drug trafficking in a government building.”
He said that UN doctors eventually decided against granting him the security clearance needed to return to work, so his contract was terminated.
Read his full account now at VICE: Members Only.
If you’re struggling with addiction, you can visit the official website of SAMHSA’s National Helpline for treatment information.
Follow Adam Christopher Smith on X @damsmithwriter
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