"Sadie Plant traces the history of drugs and drug use through the work of some of our most revered, and infamous, writers. Rather than exploring drug use as an avenue to spiritual transcendence, Plant focuses on the way that drugs themselves make precise, recognizable interventions in consciousness, in cultural life, in politics.

She argues that the use, production, and trafficking of drugs - narcotics, stimulants, and hallucinogens - have shaped some of the era's most fundamental philosophies and provided much of its economic wealth." "Through examinations of post-Romantic writers on drugs, including Coleridge on opium, Freud on cocaine, Michaux on mescaline, and Burroughs on them all, Writing on Drugs exposes this pervasive influence on contemporary culture."--BOOK JACKET.