Narcomania - On Heroin

Faber & Faber 1987

Heroin inspires in people a unique feeling of fear and dread. Hundreds of newspaper columns are devoted to `the crisis' and millions of pounds spent by the government in attempts to combat the problem. Why is heroin so powerfully sitgnificant, when other social evils - poverty, alcohol - cause misery and death on a far larger scale? Narcomania deals with this mystery surrounding drug addiction. It looks at opium dens and the Chinese; the literature - Coleridge, Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu; the `drug fiend'; psychoanalytic theory; the overwhelming importance of society's attitudes; Boy George; today's heroin panic. Narcomania looks back at history and attacks and assesses current thinking. It steers a way through the myths and morass, and the very real problems, of heroin and addiction...