This is the story of how America got high, told from a personal point of view by someone who took part in many of the events that he reports in this book. Martin Torgoff has spent ten years interviewing and researching this book, and many of the people with whom he spoke are no longer alive (Ginsberg, Burroughs, Leary, etc). His intention was to write a history that could be the basis of meaningful dialogue about how society should regulate drugs. He doesn't romanticise or demonise drug use, but neither does he accept hopelessly glib slogans such as 'Just say no'. With roughly one-third of the population having used illegal drugs, it is clear that many Americans don't just say no. But discussion of drug policy is confined to a small section at the end of the book. This is a history, told mainly through the words of participants. The book covers the major drugs of the century: heroin, cocaine, marijuana, Ecstasy, and amphetamines. It begins with the jazz musicians of the 1940's, through the Beat Generation of the fifties, the flower-power of the sixties, the wake-up call in the seventies to the designer drugs of the eighties and nineties. Through this history of drugs Martin Torgoff presents a facsinating social history of America over the last sixty years and shows how the use (and misuse) of drugs have shaped a nation.