A former UN officer reveals his secret double life of cocaine addiction

• UN workers snorted five grams a day
• He witnessed “Sicario-style executions” and regularly bought from armed teenagers
• He used the substance, among other things, at a Colombian army base
• Read the full story at VICE: Members Only

A former United Nations officer has revealed how he became heavily addicted to cocaine while working in South America – even attending a drug-trafficking meeting while high.

Speaking exclusively to VICE, the UN worker led 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 working to promote the UN’s mission of “peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet”, the young graduate also snorted up to five grams of the drug a 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 has spent years in and out of rehab, but is currently four months “clean”. He is now calling for the drug to be legalized to help end violent organized crime in the region.

“I’m speaking out because nobody’s actually talking about legalizing cocaine,” he told VICE in a first-person account dictated to journalist Mattha Busby. “Decades of interventions trying to curb supply have had no real positive result. 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 came from them.”

Despite spending years buying from drug gangs in South America, the former UN worker now believes that profit and power should be taken out of their hands.

“In Brazil, the rise of armed criminal groups … is driven solely by cocaine.

“Legalization would most likely move the ‘white gold’ out of the hands of armed criminal groups. Hopefully, Latin America would stop experiencing such extreme levels of cocaine-related violence.”

“I’m still haunted by the times I came 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 eventually it started to wear on him.

After graduating, he worked for a think tank before moving to Rio De Janeiro, where he became a researcher for the United Nations Development Project. The international agency is tasked with helping countries eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable economies.

“But I know few of my colleagues also took 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 gained increased power, leading to massacres in the country’s prisons. The situation led to the supply of drugs increasing while prices fell – a gram of pure cocaine, or parakeetwas only $10.

As detailed throughout the article, he accumulated some startling stories over the years of his addiction. Once, at the end of a three-day Coke binge in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, he was held at gunpoint by the police after being caught with a gang trash cans (drug dealers) in the early hours of the morning.

After watching the police beat the other men with a stick until they were “crying, throwing up and screaming in pain”, he was released just hours before he had to go to work. He then took more cocaine before attending a scheduled meeting at 9.00 with the Ecuadorian Ministry of the Environment to discuss the finer points of an Amazonian conservation project.

“I snorted coke… inside a Colombian army base”

Although it was “high as a kite”, it seemed to him that 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 at the UN, he worked in rural Colombia, where he once witnessed a “Sicario-style 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 police headquarters before a meeting on drug trafficking in a government building.”

He said UN doctors eventually decided not to give him the necessary security clearance to return to work, so his contract was terminated.

Read his full account now on VICE: Members Only.

If you are struggling with addiction, visit SAMHSA’s National Helpline official website for treatment information.

Follow Adam Christopher Smith on X @damsmithwriter