Description:
This accessible, entertaining book combines scholarly insight with remarkable anecdotal information. Entries cover the chemical and botanical background of each substance and its effects. Rudgley focuses on the historical and cultural role of mind-altering substances, challenging the popular belief that their use is a modern phenomenon, restricted to deviants on the fringes of society. In fact, psychoactives have been used for thousands of years: in Europe, men took opium long before alcohol arrived from Asia Minor, and Parisian housewives whiled away 19th-century afternoons shooting morphine with their friends. Today, monks endorse Ecstasy, and reindeer stumble around the tundra ingesting hallucinogenic mushrooms. There is more to the subject than the DEA would have you know.
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