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High

Confession of an International Drug Smuggler

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About this listen

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 Bogot 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.

©2006 Brian O’Dea (P)2014 Audible Inc. Mental Health Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Sciences True Crime Exciting
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I really enjoyed this book, the narration was good. The story is a wonderful story of recovery and drug dealing in the 1970s.

Wonderful Recovery Biography

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Great story, but somewhat spoiled by the narrator insisting on clearly saying each word, with a clear gap between them.
Sounds almost robotic :(

I... will... pronounce... every... word

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From the get go the style of reading his diaries from his cell makes this such a fantastic listen. Fantastically narrated with some accents that just paint a raw picture of Jail in a foreign land. Brian Is a shining light through the darkness of the prisoners time, some ridiculous sentences! I felt every anxious coke binge locked in a cabin for days, every monotone count from the guards on the landings & the beauty of Brian's friendships with some amazing & somewhat "interesting" characters. All be it a story of law breaking & addiction, you can't help but want sanctuary for Brian & his cohorts. Excellent book

Modern day Midnight Express & a heart wrenching tale, beautifully narrated.

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It’s boring. It jumps backwards & forwards. No real story. I didn’t even finish it. Waste of miney

Boring

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