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ASPD in The King of Cocaine

Aaryan Sanwal

NARCOS is a Golden Globes nominated TV series that features the rise and fall of the Colombian drug lord and narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar of the Medellin Cartel. At the peak of his career, he controlled more than 80% of the global cocaine market and was the wealthiest criminal in recorded history with his net worth upwards of $30 Billion at the time of his death. In this blog post, I am going to argue that Pablo Escobar as portrayed in the TV show NARCOS had undiagnosed Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD).
ASPD is characterized by “The presence of a chronic and pervasive disposition to disregard and violate the rights of others. Manifestations include repeated violations of the law, exploitation of others, deceitfulness, impulsivity, aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of self and others, and irresponsibility, accompanied by lack of guilt, remorse, and empathy”(APA).
 Pablo Escobar ordered for the killing of Luis Carlos Galan and Cesar Gaviria; 2 presidential candidates, the latter of which became the President of Colombia after a failed assassination attempt. Luis Carlos Galan was shot while at a campaign rally by hitmen on the orders of Pablo Escobar. He tried to kill Cesar Gaviria by blowing up the plane, unfortunately for him, Cesar Gaviria was warned by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) of an imminent attack against him and decided to not board the plane. Escobar was willing to kill an entire plane full of innocent civilians just to murder one man. This blatant disregard for the lives of others shows just how far he was willing to go to make his point. The man he put on the plane to detonate the bomb was under the impression that he was recording a conversation and not triggering a bomb. Escobar manipulated and duped a young man out of his life for a cause that not only did he not believe in but also was completely unaware of. Afterwards, he ordered the killing of the young man’s wife and child just so there would be no evidence or witnesses. This lack of remorse and empathy for a grieving widow and his subsequent actions paint a very dreadful but accurate picture of how bad of a human being he was.
It is noticed that people with ASPD tend to “score higher on Angry-hostility and excitement seeking facets of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and lower on Modesty, Altruism and Self-Discipline facets of the same” (Butcher, Hooley, & Mineka, 2019) and this is clearly visible in Escobar in the episode where he killed 2 of his partners; Fernando Galeano and Gerardo Moncada under the vague suspicion that they stole money from him. The duo explained to him that they did not steal money and that they were completely loyal to him and were not furthering their interests. He believed them and let them go but halfway out the door, he was overcome by immense rage and impulsively clubbed Galeano to death and killed Moncada by beating him to death. His lack of control over his impulses and blinding range make him a very unstable man, prone to emotional and non-consequential decision making.
All of the aforementioned descriptors of ASPD ring true for the case of Pablo Escobar. He was a notorious criminal, responsible for the deaths of more than 500 police officers. He condoned violence and encouraged his hitmen to kill police officers for monetary rewards. He broke countless national, international and human rights laws. He deceitfully exploited and manipulated unsuspecting civilians for his gain and had no remorse to show after they died or were caught by the Colombian Army. He was a man who got whatever he wanted by any means necessary. Over the course of his life, he killed many politicians, district court judges and in one particular instance, half of all the Supreme Court Judges of Colombia.  He was truly detached from everyone except his family and in certain instances, he betrayed his family as well. He cheated on his wife on multiple occasions and put his family through a lot of danger just so he could remain the Cocaine King of Colombia. He was a man truly in need of professional help and it can only be wondered what the world would be like if a mental health professional diagnosed him and helped him through his ordeal.
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References
APA Dictionary of Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2019, from https://dictionary.apa.org/antisocial-personality-disorder.
Butcher, J. N., Hooley, J. M., & Mineka, S. (2019). Abnormal Psychology (17th ed.). Pearson.

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