ANTI-CYCLICAL THINKING
Book 3: Don't Ask For Sugar
⭐ The darkest, rawest and most honest part of the entire trilogy
Can this go well?
One kilo of hash hidden in the soles of your shoes and three hundred grams of hash oil sewn into the back padding of a rucksack – a decision that appears harmless at first, yet ends in one of the harshest prisons of the former GDR.
Volume 3 of “Don’t Ask for Sugar” is the darkest chapter of the series – an unfiltered look at despair, resistance, courage and sheer survival.
A piece of lived history, brutal, unforgettable and deeply human.
🔥 How it began – the moment everything tipped
Three months before his arrest, Chris is stuck.
He has been working in West Berlin for nine months: long shifts, cold nights, endless overtime at the CNC lathe. And still, the money he painfully saves is nowhere near enough to see his great love Suzanne again in New Zealand. 💙
While Chris struggles, his brother Ralf earns in a few weeks from smuggling hash out of India what Chris needs an entire year to scrape together.
The temptation becomes unbearable.
Then comes the fatal advice of a confused co-worker:
“Fly from East Berlin. They don’t check for drugs – they want you to poison the West!”
Absurd madness – and yet frighteningly logical for someone who sees no other way out.
Chris rents out his apartment, buys a cheap ticket from the East Berlin airport ✈️ and joins a British traveller group heading deep into the Himalayas. In a hidden mountain hut they buy pure hash oil.
Back in Pokhara, Chris feels safe – far safer than he ever should. And there he makes his second decisive mistake: he buys an additional full kilo of hashish.
A step that will break his neck later.
He believes he is prepared. Clever. Invisible.
He could not be more wrong.
🚨 The collapse – arrest, interrogation, isolation
As soon as the plane touches down again in East Berlin, his world collapses:
🚨 arrest
🚨 interrogations
🚨 isolation
In the Keibelstrasse police prison he survives sleepless nights, endless questioning and a system built on intimidation and psychological pressure.
After sentencing, he is transferred to the infamous GDR prison Rummelsburg – a merciless labour camp with its own brutal hierarchy.
💥 Inside Rummelsburg – hell behind walls
Hunger. Violence. Humiliation.
And the constant danger of being betrayed.
Chris must hold his ground among
• thugs and cell tyrants
• narcissists and sadists
• paedophiles and psychopaths
• treacherous Stasi informants
• guards who punish resistance without hesitation
When he refuses to cooperate with the Stasi, retaliation follows immediately:
He is moved to another wing and forced to perform the most dangerous job in the entire camp – mounting asbestos lids in a toxic, dust-filled workshop. ⚠️
Chris refuses.
The punishment comes instantly and mercilessly: four weeks of total darkness, hunger, cold and silence in the cellar hole.
His second solitary confinement.
His body breaks – but not his will.
🔓 The unexpected turn
Then, in the third week, the bolts suddenly slide open.
For a moment, Chris believes they are taking him to work – or to something even worse.
But a fellow prisoner whispers the truth:
“We’re being deported.”
Between fear, exhaustion and fragile hope, Chris is placed on the notorious Grotewohl Express, handed over to West German authorities –
and exactly one year after his arrest, on a Friday the 13th of all days, his freedom returns. ✨
⭐ Volume 3 – unfiltered. Dark. Real.
A testimony to human vulnerability – and unbreakable strength.
The most intense, hardest and most essential part of the entire trilogy.
AT THE END OF THE BOOK, YOU WILL FIND CORRESPONDING PHOTOS