by Aldous Huxley

Non-fiction

This is a well-known treatise on altered perceptions and is loosely categorized as Philosophy.

The Doors of Perception is largely about the author's experience of mescaline and the altered mental perceptions of the world he experienced under the influence of the drug. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with the limited viewpoint as this could have been much more interesting with input by other people, especially native American people who have traditionally used Peyote for spiritual questing in their rituals.

The sequel, Heaven and Hell, goes more into the philosophical musings that I was interested to find. In this follow-up, Huxley discusses correlations between hallucinogenic drug experience, especially the heightened sense of color, and religious experience as well as the natural attraction our species has to gemstones and flowers with bright colors.

It made for dry reading, yet had some interesting points. The rock band, The Doors, named themselves for this book so curiosity made me want to read it. I wouldn't recommend it for deep Philosophy, but it was interesting in parts and blissfully short. Reading a few pages at a time worked for me to keep from letting the boredom mask the worthwhile insights.

by Anonymous

I read this Classic many years ago, but had forgotten most of it so tried a sample and it held my interest enough to pay the 1.99 Kindle price so I could keep going, though I hadn't yet got to the 'meat' of the story.

It's about an ordinary young girl in America who has a lot of insecurities about fitting in at school. She turns 15 early in the story and her family moves to another town. It's supposed to be a true story, but I'm not sure whether that's hype or not.

As it goes along, we read through her diary how she got lured into drug use and quickly goes down a familiar route of trying different substances and getting caught up with dodgy boyfriends. She makes a good friend and after a period of going down a slippery slope, they decide to run away to get away from the bad influences plaguing them. Where do they go? San Francisco!

A lot of the tie the diary entries sound too Pollyanna to be real, but they reflect her ups and downs, attempts to get away from drug culture and the pitfalls along the way. In the late 1960s, it was a hard hitting portrait of the culture of the time and the sorts of things that could happen to young teenage runaway girls, or even those who don't leave their families.

It is certainly dated, but I'm glad I read it again.

Why is it that some drug users seem to collect books that warn them against taking drugs? Okay, I am not a drug user, though based upon this book (and this is probably the one thing that I actually liked about this rather sensationalist book), the definition of drug is actually cast very wide and includes prescription drugs (such as pain killers), tobacco, and alcohol, which is different to a lot of other sensationalist anti-drug books which tend to focus only on the illegal drugs.

Okay, I should admit that back in my much younger days I was a significant drug user, and I probably picked this book up around then, maybe with the intention to laugh at what I considered to be, back then, sensationalist rubbish (I still do). The thing with myself and the group of friends that I used to hang around with (who, by the way, were also significant drug users), was that we actually all believed that drugs were not all that bad and that the people that landed up with problems simply did not know how to use their drugs and only had themselves to blame. The funny thing though was that even though that statement would come out of the mouth of a dealer, that particular dealer would still sell drugs to those particular users.

The problem with books like this is that they tend to be rather sensationalist and not really based upon sociological fact (if one can actually point to any facts arising from sociology). The author of this book (who I should advise I have had dealings with, since he is a prominent GP in Adelaide, the city that I grew up in, and also went to my parent's church, though had no influence upon me reading, or commenting on, this book) is a medical practitioner and as such I will probably defer to his knowledge when it comes to pharmaceuticals, and do actually agree with him that many of the prescription drugs these days are abused to the same, or even greater, extent than the illegal drugs (and even over the counter drugs are also abused to this extent). However, I generally do not appreciate him commenting on sociological factors, and also moving into the criminological areas of drug abuse.

Look, I will agree that excessive use of drugs (and in fact excessive use of anything) is dangerous, and I will also agree that drugs tend to be very addictive, which means that it is difficult for a lot to people to be casual users. Take smoking cigarettes for instance – I like sitting out in a beer garden at a pub with a beer and a cigarette, however it is simply not possible (for me at least) to only smoke cigarettes in that setting, and if I do then I find myself spending too much time in those settings, which means, in the end, that being a casual smoker of cigarettes is not possible. On the other hand, many drug users believe that they have a handle on their drug use (and in fact it is a very common statement among them to say 'I can quit whenever I want, I just don't want to quit') when in reality they are only lying to themselves (or reinforcing other drug users' addictions).

As for the sociological factor, let us take the Netherlands as an example. Marijuana has effectively been legal there since 1975 and the place has not collapsed into a seething pot of anarchy. Granted, in my travels to Amsterdam, I have noted that it is actually a very sleazy city, however I also found that it was a very safe city. As I wondered around the Red Light District I would approach some of the woman selling themselves and asked them where they had come from, and out of all of the women there, only one of them was Dutch. All of the others came from, well, Eastern European nations (mostly Bulgaria, and when I performed the same experiment in Frankfurt, I discovered that there were a lot of Romanian girls there – the German girls tended to only hang out at the clip joints). Yet, despite legalised prostitution and marijuana, the Netherlands is still one of Europe's strongest economies, meaning that legalising drug use is not necessarily going to bring about the collapse of society – in fact, most of the drug users in the Netherlands are not Dutch, but tourists.

The other comment that Broadhurst made that I rabidly disagreed with was in relation to the harsh drug laws in many of the South-east Asian countries. He suggested that because many of the countries have such harsh laws, then drug use is pretty much non-existent. This simply is not true. Take the United States for instance, where one can face years in gaol, and also face the prospect of losing all of your assets on the grounds that these assets were gained from the proceeds of the sale of drugs (despite the fact that the user never actually sold any drugs). Despite the fact that the penalties for mere possession are so harsh, drug use in the United States is still at epidemic proportions (and despite the fact that smugglers in Indonesia and Singapore face the death penalty, people still smuggle drugs – though there are probably other reasons for that).

Then there is the whole idea of the 'drug pusher', which Broadhurst uses to describe what could only be referred to as small time dealers. The actual pushers tend to be quite a way up the chain, and don't use the drugs themselves. The further down the chain you go, what you will find is that many of the dealers are also users and the only reason that they are dealing is because by dealing they can get their hits for free. That has been the case with many of the dealer's that I have known. In fact, many of the dealers that I have known have not actually made any money off of dealing, and generally live a hand to mouth existence, namely because any profits that they make off of their sales generally go back to their supply to pay off debts that they owe (and even then they also have to go around collecting money owed to them – and the problem with drug debts is that there is no legal way to get the money off of the user because, since the product is illegal, then the transaction is illegal, which means that there is no contract, and as such no legal debt). Therefore, in many cases I find that these so called 'pushers' are in just as much the same, or worse, predicament, than the users.

While I agree that education is needed to attempt to address the problem, I also feel that simply locking up users (and small time dealers) is not going to do anything to actually solve the drug problem. Instead of treating drug use as a crime, we need to treat it as an illness, which is what an addiction is, and this goes not only for users, but the small time dealers who deal only to subsidise their own habits. What I know can't be done, though, is to rest on the belief that (as many users seem to believe) they can effectively control their habit. As some people suggest, the first step in solving your problem is admitting that you have a problem (though I am not always a big fan of group therapy sessions, since addicts end up only feeding off other addicts in their misery in such sessions).

This book is about Australian's drug culture, or to be more precisely, the marijuana culture. According to the author (who wrote 'He Died with a Felafel in his Hand', which is all about share housing culture) he was approached by his publisher who gave him a heap of money to write this book, and also promised to pay any legal fees that might incur in his research. Thus he travels across Australia, visiting each of the major cities, to learn about the marijuana culture.

The impression that you get from this book is that not only is marijuana quite prevalent in Australia, but the government is also quite lenient with it. It ranges from a simple fine in South Australia, to a warning from the courts in other states. In any case, amongst the youth culture of the country, it is viewed as being an acceptable drug. Now, I have had arguments about the legality of it with people. Some argue that it is illegal in the same way that speeding is illegal. Well, if you travel over the speed limit a certain amount then you are fined, but no conviction is recorded (and these very same people themselves flaunt the road rules as if it was of no consequence). I still fall into the category of those who say that it is not criminal to possess, and certainly not illegal to use (some countries it is actually illegal, and can range in penalties from imprisonment to death being under the influence of the drug).

Now, Birmingham suggests that one reaches a stage in life where one simply becomes board, grows up, and moves on. Well, I would hope so. You see, marijuana is like any drug (and it doesn't necessarily need to be illegal, or even a pharmacuetical) in that it can take control of your life. Those who claim that marijuana is not addictive are probably addicts themselves who are in denial. While it may not create the sickness that heroin does, there is always going to be that craving, that desire to have more, and that desire to be under its influence, because reality is simply not the same. However, there are lots of other substances that are like that (take for instance the adrenalin junky).

Look, don't get me wrong, I think marijuana can be a dangerous substance and that it can act as a gateway drug. I have seen people throw their lives away because of this drug. Either they have gone onto harder substances, or simply just let themselves fall through the cracks. It is very demotivational: you smoke it and you simply do not want to do anything else. In fact, a lot of friends that I have had who have been pot heads have got up my nose simply because all they want to do is to lie back and smoke drugs.

From this book one wonders if he is trying to write an Australian version of Junky? I don't think so, and if he was, he failed. While Burroughs was writing about addiction, and the impact of junk on his life, Birmingham is doing something completely different: he was exploring an Australian subculture. He was not writing a tale of his life. He was travelling around Australia rather than reminiscing on his life. No, this is not an Australian Junky.

Obviously Birmingham made something more of his life: this is clear because he has become a successful author. Now, I likes his books where he was telling a story about his research, but I read two of his works of fiction and found them boring and uninteresting, and haven't read any since. This book is very interesting, especially how he does seem to know the drug culture in Australia and he does have a following among that cutlure. The problem he found, and many people find, is that once they get into that culture it is very difficult to get out. If all of your friends smoke drugs then simply deserting them is not always an option, but it is the choice one needs to make. Even marijuana is a very slippery slope into a pit of nothingness.

When I first bought this book I thought it was written by the same guy that wrote Tarzan (yes they have the same last name, but that is about it). It turns out that it wasn't, and Burroughs was not a fiction writer, but rather, as the introduction to the version that I read, the father of the beat generation. However, one does wonder how he ended up becoming a writer because from reading this book one wonders how he ever actually amounted to anything.

Junky is not a book that glamourises drug taking, in fact it is completely the opposite. It does not necessarily say that drugs are bad, but this is the impression that one is left with as one travels with the author through his drug induced haze. It is much better than Diary of a Drug Fiend where the conclusion was that one needs to have the will power to master the drug. Burroughs seems to be under no illusion whatsoever about the mastery that junk had over his life.

The book appears to be an autobiography and follows his descent into the drug underworld, and throughout the book we learn of the lifestyle of the homeless and vagrants in 1950's America. In fact, it does not paint a pretty picture at all. From the art of Lush Working (where one steals money from sleeping drunks) on the Subways of New York to the drug scene in Mexico City, one is left with an uncomfortable feeling that to fall into these cracks is very easy, but to escape is completely the opposite.

This is a book about addiction, in particular heroin addiction. The junkies don't just use heroin, but also seek out all of the derivatives as well. It is just that heroin, to them, is the best hit. One of his descriptions is how heroin changes you on a cellular level. This has been confirmed medically in that if you take opioids as a pain killer you can never go back to the weaker stuff. Once you have taken heroin, once you have become addicted to Junk, then you are never going to be the same again. Once a junky, always a junky. He tells of how hard you may try to get away from the scene, but the scene simply does not let you get away. He speaks about the dealer Old Ike, who is always lurking just around the corner, waiting to tempt you back into the world that you are trying to escape from.

What he spends a lot of time talking about though is what he calls Junk Sickeness: that is withdrawal symptoms. It is true when he says that there is nothing like it; many of the drugs that are used these days are not physically addictive like Heroin, they are psychologically addictive. They introduce something into your mind, a pleasure sensation that you must have more of, however go off of it for a couple of days and you can function normally, and even in some cases you can simply walk away from the scene. Not so with junk, to withdrawal from it leaves you sick, leaves you incapacitated, and you must have more to feel better. The author at one stage tries to numb the sickness with alcohol, but to no real effect (in fact he almost killed himself).

The final thing I wish to point out is how one's life becomes dominated by the junk. One is not interested in anything but getting junk, being on junk, and getting money for the junk. There are characters in the book who have regular jobs, but they don't last long because either they steal money for the junk, or get arrested for possession of junk and thrown into gaol. We are told that there is simply no interest in anything, not even sex or food. It is only after a few days that one gets ones appetite back. He also describes that the longer one stays on it, the worse the junk sickness becomes, and the book climaxes in Mexico City, a place where the junk flows free, but with it comes the worst experience of the sickness he describes.

As mentioned, this book does not glamorise the drug scene, far from it. In fact, if this book stops one person (hopefully a lot more) from going down that road, then this is definitely one book worth reading.