 | |
| Author | Slava Pastuk and Brian Whitney |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Dundurn Press |
Publication date | 2022 |
| ISBN | 9781459749276 |
Bad Trips is a 2022 non-fiction book by Slava Pastuk. In the book Pastuk documents cocaine smuggling while working as a music editor at Vice Media.
Bad Trips: How I Went from VICE Reporter to International Drug Smuggler is co-written by Slava Pastuk and Brian Whitney. Whitney will collect all the royalties for the book. [1] Published by Dundurn Press, [2] it was acquired and edited by Russell Smith.
Pastuk's full name is Yuroslav Pastukhov. [3]
The book documents Pastuk's life that started with his birth in Ukraine, and emigrated with his mother to Canada. [1] He lived in Barrie, before moving to Toronto at the age of 19 for a marketing job, that he then quit to work for Noisey Canada, part of Vice Media. [1] At Vice, he reports being encouraged to use cocaine and doing so. [1] He started DJing as a side job and selling marijuana to people he met on Grindr. [1] In 2015, [3] his drug dealing escalated and he earned $20,000 from helping a drug cartel smuggle cocaine from Australia to Canada. [1] After boasting about his smuggling at work, he recruited five colleagues: Jordan Gardner, Robert Wang, Porscha Wade, Nathaniel Carty, and Ketiba Senusi into the smuggling efforts, but they failed and were arrested. [1] [3] Each of the five were sentenced to between three and four years in prison. [3]
Pastuk was fired from Vice after news of his activities reached Vice management and the front page of the National Post newspaper. [3] In 2018, Pastuk was arrested and in 2019 jailed for nine years. [1] [3] [4]
Alan MacKenzie of the Winnipeg Free Press describes the book as entertaining, but Pastuk's self-importance as exhausting and notes his lack of remorse. [1] Publishers Weekly called it "a riveting cautionary tale." [2]
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