ROCK IN A HARD PLACE: THE TRUTH ABOUT DRUGS

First in jail, then without a roof at all; Mike Rock is rising from the
depths of a drug conviction towards literary acclaim with a book researched
among drug users in prison.

It would be neatest to file Mike Rock away under the recent spate of hyped
rags-to-riches authors. After the London bus driver turned literary genius
and the New York crackhead-turned-literary-genius comes the hippy
ex-convict-turned-literary-genius-writing-about-drugs. But that is not quite
the whole story.

Rock is a slight dark man with bruised-looking, hooded eyes. He hunches over
his coffee - condemned as very addictive in his book but "it's hard to find
any real reason to quit" - and explains in his quiet Canadian burr why his
book is different from the burgeoning piles of "Drugs Are Good" and "Drugs
Are Bad" books.

"My book is from the heart, not the establishment," he says. It is called
The Truth About Drugs and its main purpose is to provide hysteria-free facts
about heroin, cocaine, anabolic steroids and barbiturates. Their dangers are
illustrated by a smiley Ecstasy motif with downturned grumpy mouth; the
endorsed substances get a full-on grin.

But the real difference about the book is that it was written through
interviews with a wide range of drug users in prison - Rock was sentenced to
10 years for conspiracy to supply LSD, a charge he denies. His trigger was a
plea from his son, then 16, to write an honest guide to drugs, unfettered by
the establishment line.

The research had to be smuggled out of jail by a friendly prison officer
because the authorities insisted that the material was not to go beyond the
four walls of Rock's cell.

"You'd think they'd encourage people doing constructive things while they're
inside but the system is designed to deter anyone from doing anything
positive." It was this treatment that engendered a frenzy of productivity as
soon as he was released.

"The establishment has made some substances illegal to control but once you
do that you lose control, not gain it," says Rock, 47. "I came to the
conclusion that prohibition outlaws the substances which increase creativity
and endorse those which make us dull and passive, such as alcohol and
prescription tranquillisers." Without his spell in prison the success might
never have come and he refers to his sentence as "a gift". "I found myself
in a very small room with metal bars and a door which they kept slamming on
me but then beyond that cell I discovered the computer room and learnt the
skills which would help me to do the book when I got out. And I met the
people who agreed to be interviewed for the book, the drug users and
ex-users. People who are cast aside as worthless by society but who I found
to be very kind and decent." Rock was homeless when he was released in
November 1995 after five years. But he managed to put the book together on
an ancient Apple Macintosh. "I found it abandoned in a skip," he shrugs. He
published the book himself after coming up with the inspired idea of selling
eight pages of adverts in the back of the book to sympathetic companies such
as Ben & Jerry's ice cream to pay for the printing costs and avoided the
entire business of agents, publishers and PRs.

Sales are now brisk but the book almost didn't make it to the outside world.
Review copies with no accompanying explanation were sent to some newspapers
and magazines and netted little response. But as part of the haphazard
mailshot a copy was sent to distributor Freedom Books, which was intrigued.
A chain reaction was set in motion and Virgin Records and Tower Records
snapped the book up, along with Dillons and Waterstone's book stores. "It
has only been out for a few weeks but already 23,000 copies are being
distributed," Rock says.

In jail Rock met Max, the cartoonist whose sure touch pervades the book.
Rock describes him as "a gentle, creative soul" who is also now free and
sharing the profits of the book. "I loved working with him and we hope to
collaborate on future projects." Rock's entrepreneurial spirit had surfaced
long before his spell in jail. His first love was music and songwriting and,
fired up by new musical projects, he moved to America from England in the
mid-70s and in 1980 formed an unlikely partnership with Muhammad Ali, who
promoted Rock's record The First Flight Of The Gizzelda Dragon. "It wasn't a
very big hit," he reflects.

Rock's music career never took off properly and he returned to England. Then
he was busted for the LSD that never was - he says he was convicted on the
basis of LSD equipment left in a house he was renting. He produced his first
book during that period, a brief and upbeat philosophy book entitled The
Things They Never Taught You In School, which never made him any money and
was sold via mail order.

After being released from prison he was evicted 12 times in 18 months from
squats ranging from a bank vault to a disused electricity showroom. He set
up a charity to distribute neglected technology, and unearthed scores more
abandoned computers, restored them and handed them out to deserving children
from Manchester to Somalia.

All Rock's other projects have fallen short of real success, but the sales
of his book could propel him towards recognition for the first time. After
years of impoverishment and obscurity he is pragmatically planning for the
best. "I don't think money is the root of all evil," he says, animated at
the prospect of the projects that his new income will enable him to tackle.
He swigs the last dregs of caffeine from his coffee cup. "It's only when the
love of money becomes elevated above human beings in importance that it
becomes a problem."

"The Truth About Drugs" is published by Those Publishers at UKP 9.99.

Checked-by: Don Beck