S/D: Drug writing

Feel free to post junkie or crime novels about the subculture surrounding the use of illegal substances, but what I'm looking for is more books or prose that is particularly evocative of the psychedelic/hallucinogenic experience or other altered states of being. I have never read any Castaneda; is that worth checking out?

I just posted this in the reading thread:

Really not enjoying the second Patrick Melrose novel (Bad News) much. Why is lengthy writing about drug experiences so inevitably awful? It's like hearing descriptions of someone else's dreams. The hallucinatory play sequence is especially skimmable.

― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 10:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess because drugs are just the ultimate you had to be there thing. I mean it's possible to describe weed side-effects in a funny, enjoyable way I guess, or to write good druggy dialogue, but whenever a writer gets into that "The patterns of the wallpaper began a snaky, seductive dance, and the carpet began to shift back and forth underneath his feet as though it were a giant industrial brush trying to scrub him out of the room" kind of stuff my eyes just glaze over.

Yeah Hurting, you and lamp talking about the second Melrose book is what inspired me to start this thread...

One of my favorites is actually a small scene in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: the two guys after a day of swimming share a joint and a plastic bottle of Coke on the front stoop; the narrator, a bit stoned, breaks a summer's worth of sexual tension by touching his friend's face. A minor scene but I liked its verisimilitude: that's the kind of spontaneous moment I've done or wish I had done when stoned.

I liked Dog Soldiers, although the smuggling and the overall paranoid and strange atmosphere seem more the focus than altered states

not technically drug writing, but boris vian's "froth on the daydream" is a full-on non-stop hallucinatory dream ride that is exhausting but incredible to read, even in translation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froth_on_the_Daydream

"Director Michel Gondry is currently directing a new adaption of the novel, starring Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris. The film is set for a 2013 release."

!!

I had Dog Soldiers at one time! But I think I sold it...

Maybe I will also start a dream writing thread for cool dream novels and well done sequences. Until then, go ahead and post them here. There were a few (The Unconsoled, A Dream of Wessex, Butor's Portrait/Artist as a Young Ape, Cixous's book on dreaming) that I am eager to check out...

I have to give a shout out to Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It dodges right past the usual oscillation between the squalor of reality and the drug-induced euphoria that makes most drug addict novels and memoirs such a predictably simplistic series of low-HIGH-low-HIGH-low tableaux, with the implicit moral-of-the-story being "take warning and don't be like me, kids". Instead, HST shifts between reality and hallucination constantly and seamlessly until there is no easy distinction between them and morality becomes warped in many strange ways. It's the book he was born to write.

Pynchon get good comic mileage out of his detective's stoned paranoia, fantasies, and lapses of attention in Inherent Vice.

while we're on the classics (goofy as it may be, it was definitely the first thing i ever read about drugs)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0mv5gywpSzE/TMMN3ovJshI/AAAAAAAABOo/lDPpVYUw_AY/s1600/IMG_7827.JPG

ws burroughs (all)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_F.

PiHKAL and TiHKAL are classics

not exactly poetic or artful descriptions of the psychedelic experience, but definitely evocative and covers such a huge range of these particular types of drugs

both of which are partially available on erowid:

http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/pihkal.shtml
http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/tihkal/tihkal.shtml

I have never read any Castaneda; is that worth checking out?

Castenada is sort of at the comic book level, imo. He exploits the fascination of middle class Americans with native american culture and the thirst so many shallow people have for a guru who will explain all their perplexities and tell them what to do with themselves.

If you want a slightly higher class of the same instinct for exploitation, I'd recommend Gurdjieff, because unlike Castenada, Gurdjieff makes it obvious that he considers the whole thing to be a joke at your expense. No drugs to speak of in Gurdjieff, though, so he's not in the category you're asking for.

There's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. I haven't read it since university, so maybe it isn't as good as I'm remembering.

I think with Suspiria it's definitely worth reading, yes.

i think there are some lovecraft short stories that are essentially drug stories like 'celephaïs' that do a good job of communicating the intense need and desire and pleasure of a good high w/o actively commenting on 'drug culture' or w/e.

E III otm.

arthur machen's got lots of writing about drugs, apparently. well ive never read him, but mark e. smith mentions him a lot. irvine welsh's "maribou stork nightmares" gives a very good description of what its like to take an e.

The only Machen stuff that contains any meaningfully direct writing about drugs is the very good short story The Novel of the White Powder found in The Three Impostors (but also collected elsewhere) and The Hill of Dreams.

The former is a narrative of addiction and grotesque spiritual and physical degradation.

The latter involves in its later stages a prescription drug that plays heavily upon the nerves of the already highly strung main character, and only encourages his total spiritual and psychic alienation from the 'real'.

The early parts, like a lot of Machen's writing, deal with strange and transformative visions that totally drive out the modern world but cannot be said to be about drugs exactly.

The Hill of Dreams also represents to a certain extent I think a spiritual autobiography of Machen's life when he first moved from Wales to London (tho he wrote an excellent actual autobiography - Things Near and Far, and Far off Things as well.)

Incidentally Leave the Capitol as well as being generally Machen influenced shares the mixture of repulsion and fascination with London, and the specifically Roman angle is v much a feature of The Hill of Deeams.

Go Ask Alice is classic early 70s striving-to-be-relevant YA anti-drug propaganda

But is it REAL???

The thing about LSD literature is that whether it is pro- or anti- it's usually a good read. I used to read those Christian anti-drug books as a kid...sometimes the only way to learn about drugs is through anti-drug literature!

I have a huge backlog of books about trafficking - but not literary stuff like "opium eater". I've only read a few chapters so far. I'm also into psychiatric and recreational drugs...but the more literary stuff is lower priority for me.

I didn't like Castaneda, I guess I am embarrassed about that.

I read a little of this book but there was something about the style that prevented me from getting into it. It was anti-drug young adult noir, but it felt like it had a bit of the air of the exploitation film about it:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6618983-reds

there was another book called Purple Violet Squish which I guess was written by a minister and probably was way more alarmist; I only saw it, never read it...

this is my favorite drug book, mostly because it evokes a time and place (nyc 1982) that I'm still fascinated by but also because it communicates the junkie experience in clear-eyed post-beat prose.
also looks at the heroin scene from the dealers perspective, at a time when an entire neighborhood (lower east side) was quite literally a drug bazaar. like The Wire on TV it's fiction but also TRUE.

http://www.amazon.com/Lotus-Crew-Midnight-Classics/dp/1852424176

Is "Reds" an amphetamine book? I always thought this would be an interesting genre - lots of kids abuse amphetamines and tell themselves that at least they are not a "junkie".

Sometimes those scare stories are so harrowing that reading them is like a drug experience. As someone who enjoys horror and crime stories, I am so there.

Speaking of amphetamines, god knows how much prose was written under the influence of that drug.

Of course lots and lots and lots of poetry has been inspired by opiates.

Also, I recently got this, which is about steroid use in the disco era: http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d195/richhunt35/THEBODYSHOPSOLOTAROFF.jpg

I've always been curious as to how steroids affect your body and mind and most literature doesn't address this. I haven't started the book yet but it looks amazing.

"In the Same Boat" by Kipling might sit nicely with the Machen?

I like the Confessions of an English Opium Eater, but it doesn't iirc match my experience of drugs much (but opiates not something I've done really). do find elaborate nineteenth-century orientalised hallucinations fascinating (like have we built hypersapce elves as our equivalent?), but it's the founding of soho myths and memoir of hellenist schoolboy brilliance that stick with me from it.

Walter Benjamin's Hashish in Marseilles I like. "My walking stick begins to give me a special pleasure".

General approval for the acid trip in Crash by J G Ballard over in its thread:
ILX Book Club: J.G. Ballard - Crash

"Jesus' Son" by Denis Johnson ... great book, lots of drug use and the writing style is a bit druggy in general.

And wow, The Body Shop does look awesome. Going to have to order it.

All the de Quincey talk in this thread has moved me to confess that Kubla Khan is probably my single favourite poem of the English language (non-Shakespeare, at least)

Theres a great Solotaroff article on a bodybuilder called Steve Michalik called "The Power and The Gory." actually, i read it almost every year 'cos its so brilliant. its on a compilation of sportswriting and its (almost) comical reading about the insane amount of drugs he put into his body and what it did to him.....and not just steroids either, he took loads of speed for his 8 to 10 hour workouts.

The Body Shop looked interesting because it was about a drug culture or lifestyle. I never thought of steroids in terms of "drug literature" until I found this book. Most steroid writing is sensational and celebrity-based...i.e. there isn't any discussion of culture or history.

I'd had a vague idea that steroids had been a disco drug...

Vurt? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vurt

Jim Carroll was one I loved when I was younger and more badass. The Basketball Diaries, of course, but also the Book of Nods which is writing-while-tripping rather than writing-about-tripping.

Shameful but true is the fact that I read both of these because I was in love with Leonardo DiCaprio who played Carroll in the movie. Actually I found a ton of wonderful writing through that ridiculous crush: Tobias Wolff, Rimbaud, What's Eating Gilbert Grape (the novel, which is awesome).

ha i know a girl who used to be (.maybe still?) obsessed with the Basketball Diaries for the same reason, franny