Drug-Trip Abroad : American Drug-Refugees in Amsterdam and London

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas. This book is intended to be impressionistic. It uses solid documentation and background, but the primary intent is to show the current drug-scenes in London and Amsterdam--and, by extension, North America--through the perceptions, feelings, insights, and experiences of those who have lived them. Informed observers and specialists look and comment; the drug-takers and abusers describe their lives. The material is organized by the logic of a documentary account rather than of a socio-medical study. The soft-drug scene in Amsterdam, the lighter and shorter section comes first; the hard-drug scene and the addicts who have fled North America for London come after. Most of the more weighty material--background, documentation, conclusions--gravitates toward the end of the section or the book. This book is concerned with fact. It is also concerned with the broader truths that emerge when real human experience is presented and understood Foreword Authors' Note Acknowledgments Contents The WHO Definitions The Drug-Scene in Amsterdam Making the Scene Visit to Kosmos In Paradiso: A Conversation with the Staff Coordinator The Drug-Scene in London The Boys of St. Giles London and North America The Treatment-Clinics The Background Looking Back on the Trip References