This Is Your Country on Drugs

"A cornucopia of unconventional wisdom about our relationship to mind-altering substances."--Laura Miller, Salon.com "A compulsively readable and revealing history of our torturous relationship to drugs."--Christopher Hayes, Washington Editor, "The Nation" "Astonishingly clear-headed and well-written, as if someone had taken David Courtwright and added just a splash of Hunter Thompson."--Mark Kleiman, TPMCafe "A wide-ranging, fascinating romp through the history of America's insatiable appetite for all manner of drugs, from opium to crystal meth, all the way up to the possibly soon-to-be-illegal hallucinogen "Salvia divinorum.""--"Philadelphia City Paper" Did anti-drug campaigns actually encourage more drug use? Did acid really disappear in the early 2000s? And did meth peak decades ago? Did our founding fathers--or their wives--get high just as much as we do?As entertaining as it is informative, "This Is Your Country on Drugs" goes far beyond the usual "war on drugs" manifestos or reference books to bring a fresh perspective that will both enlighten the uninitiated and surprise the expert (however you define the term). Even-handed without being neutral, Grim brings more to the table than past histories by covering the who and the what so he can get to the "why." Not only does Grim derive surprising conclusions from looking at consumption patterns throughout eras, he chronicles America's romance with getting high from founding father Benjamin Rush telling Lewis and Clark to bring along eight ounces of Turkish opium and thirty gallons of "medicinal wine," to today's teenagers, who spend so much time alone online that they do far fewer drugs than any of their predecessors.