I met up for an interview with Poker News at the Rio.  The interview was actually a quick 40 minutes or so, but the final edit was only 4 minutes.

I’ve also done an interview for Poker Road.  It’s about 24 minutes into the recording.

This isn’t even the tip of the tip of my story.  But it’s something i guess.  So yeah, basically I learned to play poker on death row in a Pakistani prison.  Why was I in a Pakistani prison? Well, because a good friend of mine at the time decided to royally screw me over and hire me to work for his leather courier company and unknowingly smuggle opium for him.  Yep.  I was hired to travel around the world for free, importing expensive leather goods, and would get a measely 800 bucks for doing this.  And of course it ended up being too good to be true.  I was being used as a Dupe.  I was being used to unknowingly smuggle Opium.  I’d like to think had I of known, I would’ve been smart enough to get it out of Pakistan without being detected.  Flip the customs guy 10 bucks, and he’d allow you to carry bombs through the check points in that country.

Seriously, I was innocent.  Talk about all the bad beats you like.  Not a whole lot of them will ever come close to this.  I was guilty of being gullible.  Of being trusting.  Of never knowing or even thinking that someone could ever do this to another human being.  But after the facts, it made perfect sense.  People in the drug business are shameless.  They’ll get their product anyway they can.  Especially at the expense of someone as naive as I was.  By keeping me in the dark about what I was really being used to do, they would save alot of money on me in comparison to someone that would know otherwise they were transporting narcotics, and they figured I wouldn’t draw any suspicion to myself at the airport because I had no idea of what I was really being used to carry.

Fucking sucked.  I had my whole life going for me.  I was a successful up and coming actor/stuntman.  I had girls, friends, and a hell of a great life.  I had everything to lose and nothing to gain by being a drug smuggler.  Because of my loyalty to a friend, and being green as far as the way things worked in the world, I would spend 3 years in a Pakistani Prison for a crime I did not commit.  1 of those years on Death Row.  The only American to have been arrested at that time in the country, right after 9/11.

Before during and after the Afghan, and Iraqi wars.  I would be tortured for information I didn’t have.  Spend 132 days in a cramped punishment cell in total darkness, surviving from the lack of food by eating cockroaches.  The only time anyone would see light was when we were fed once a day with 1 roti and a small cup of liquid dall, and for our hourly beatings.  Ironically I would look forward to those beatings, simply to recharge the glow in the dark watch dials that I was able to keep.  I spent 8 weeks of those 132 days in a row.

Related posts:

1. My luck sucked in the Aussie millions

Tagged with: Best ever blog post, Erik Aude, Erik Aude Blog, Erik Aude Poker, Erik Aude Poker Blog