Summary
In the early 1980s, Brian O'Dea was operating a $100 million a year, 120-man drug smuggling business, and had developed a terrifying cocaine addiction. Under increasing threat from the DEA in 1986 for importing seventy-five tons of marijuana into the United States, he quit the trade--and the drugs--and began working with recovering addicts in Santa Barbara. Despite his life change, the authorities caught up with him years later and O'Dea was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years at Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary in Los Angeles Harbor. A born storyteller, O'Dea candidly recounts his incredible experiences from the streets of Bogota with a false-bottomed suitcase lined with cocaine, to the engine compartment of an old DC-6 whose engines were failing over the Caribbean, to the cell blocks overcrowded with small-time dealers who had fallen victim to the justice system's perverse bureaucracy of drug sentencing. Weaving together extracts from his prison diary with the vivid recounting of his outlaw years and the dawning recognition of those things in his life that were worth living for, High tells the remarkable story of a remarkable man in the late-1980s drug business and why he walked away.From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the publisher
Brian O’Dea is now gainfully employed as a film and television producer in Toronto, where he lives with his wife and son. He also regularly speaks about his own experiences to young people struggling with addictions.
From the Hardcover edition.
Details
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Title
High: Confessions of a Pot Smuggler
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Author
Brian O'Dea
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Binding
Paperback
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Edition
First Edition
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Pages
368
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Volumes
1
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Language
ENG
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Publisher
Vintage Books Canada, Toronto
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Date
April 10, 2007
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ISBN
9780679312796 / 067931279X
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Weight
0.71 lbs (0.32 kg)
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Dimensions
8.01 x 5.12 x 0.98 in (20.35 x 13.00 x 2.49 cm)
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Dewey Decimal Code
364.177
Excerpt
ONE
The Dawn of an Old Day
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA. Eight o’clock in the morning, 1990. I lay in bed, thinking about the hospital. A heroin addict named Danny had come in the night before. I could still feel the pressure of his head on my shoulder as he sobbed his wretched heart out. I’d started to work with him, then left about midnight. I wanted to go back that morning, see how he was doing. Poor bastard.
A hard knock on the door. Just from the knock, I knew this day was my day.
I got up, put on the bathrobe my friend Molly had made for me – a black and white thing – and went to open the door. There were venetian blinds on the windows. They were partly closed, but through the slats I could just see the hands and the handguns. I felt this strong desire to disappear. I opened the door. One guy held up a badge with one hand – a Drug Enforcement Agency star.
“My name is Gary Annunziata, and I’m with the Drug Enforcement Agency,” he said. “Your name Brian O’Dea?”
“I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly. “May we come in?”
“You’ve got the gun.”
“That’s right. You got any guns in there, Mr. O’Dea?”
“No.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m positive.”
They came in.
“You know why we’re here?”
“No, I don’t.”
The other cop, the bad cop, Doug, laughed. “Don’t bullshit us, O’Dea,” he said.
“I’m not into bullshitting anymore.”
Doug snorted. “Let’s get this straight, O’Dea. We know what you do. We know you work with drunks and dopers at the hospital. We know you do good. But this ain’t about change or rehabilitation. This is about crushing your life, motherfucker. Now do the right thing.”
Something rumbled deep in my gut. “The rightest thing I can think is to call my lawyer.”
Doug laughed outright. “Listen, asshole, I wouldn’t be calling your lawyer, because he’s fucking next, and so is every other lawyer down at that fucking Main Street law office.”
So that was it, then. My whole law thing was out of the bag.
“Brian,” said Gary, the good cop, “we’re going to have a couple of people come down here. Do you mind?”
“No, no. Knock yourself out.”
They got on the radio, and in two minutes there were eight cops in my apartment on the side of the hill in the Riviera district of Santa Barbara. They started to tear my place apart right away.
I asked to go to the bathroom. They checked it out and said, yeah, go. I shut the door, and after a minute I had a terribly thorough bowel movement. I flushed and imagined following it down down and out, out of everything that was happening here.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. “You still in there, O’Dea?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Just about done, are you?”
“Oh yeah.”
I had a glassed-in pool room out on the deck that overlooked the town. This Gary guy and I went out there.
“I guess you must have thought we’d never come,” he said. “I mean, you working in hospitals with dopers and all.”
“Listen,” I explained. “I’ve got nothing to say. Honest to God, I don’t. I’ve got absolutely nothing to say. Please don’t try to trick me into answering questions. But you know what? I’ll just talk to you. We’ll talk about the weather, about sports, about girls, about drinking. We’ll have a game of pool, and we’ll let them do what they need to do. That’ll be fine.”
Gary drank a beer and we shot pool and talked. Weather, sports, girls. The crew was there for a few hours, and they finally found my storage shed receipt. I had a storage shed in downtown Santa Barbara, and they said they had to go down and search it and oh, by the way, they weren’t going to arrest me that day, but I should get ready because they’d be coming back to get me someday soon. There was an indictment coming for me, so I should be prepared.
“Fine,” I said.
“Oh and by the way,” said Doug, “this woman right here, Sergeant Smith, she’s with the Santa Barbara County Police. Soon as we’re done at your storage shed, she’s going to arrest you and take you to Santa Barbara County Jail.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “That county jail is known to be one of the worst places on the planet.”
Doug smiled. “It seems, O’Dea, you owe a fine of $500 for driving without a licence.”
“Jeez. I forgot about that. What can I do about it, guys?”
“Talk to Sergeant Smith,” Gary suggested.
Sergeant Smith came over. She was a nice-enough-looking woman, small, dark-haired. I recommended she overlook this peccadillo.
“No,” she said. “I got to take you there and fingerprint you and book you, but if you pay the fine then and there, you can leave right away.”
I phoned my girlfriend, Susannah, a textile designer I’d met only recently. She worked nearby. Susannah didn’t know a whole lot about my life. She did know I’d had a life.
“Honey, can you come down to my storage shed?”
“Hmm. Well, I suppose so, yes.”
“And would you mind grabbing $500 from the bank for me on your way? Be down there in, say, about five minutes.”
“Okay, Brian,” she said. “I’m working on something, but I’ll meet you there in about forty minutes.”
“Susannah, honey, uh . . . I can’t tell you how important this is. The police are here with me, quite a few of them, and I’m going to my storage shed. Meet me there in five minutes.”
In five minutes, Susannah pulled up. Eight cops and I were standing outside the storage shed.
“Oh Jesus,” she said. She handed me the money and got back in her car.
They ripped my storage shed apart, and then I hopped in the back of a Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s car and went and got booked and paid $500 and got out.
From the Hardcover edition.
Media reviews
“A tightly edited, slick product that will appeal to a wide variety of readers…. Edgy, staccato accounts of the monotonous, terrifying lunacy of a massively overcrowded federal correctional institution are wonderfully realized.” —The Telegram (St. John’s)
“High is an often gripping and sometimes mordantly funny memoir…. A book that’s clearly the product of a fine, and disciplined, mind.”
—Winnipeg Free Press
About the author
Brian O'Dea is now gainfully employed as a film and television producer in Toronto, where he lives with his wife and son. He also regularly speaks about his own experiences to young people struggling with addictions.
