This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America

By Ryan Grim

Book Overview

Everything we know about drugs-from acid to epidemics to DARE and salvia-turns out to be wrong

Stock up on munchies and line up your water bottles: journalist Ryan Grim will take you on a cross-country tour of illicit drug use in the U.S.-from the agony (the huge DEA bust of an acid lab in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas) to the ecstasy (hallucinogens at raves and music festivals). Along the way, Grim discovers some surprising truths. Did anti-drug campaigns actually encourage more drug use? Did acid really disappear in the early 2000s? And did meth peak years ago? Did our Founding Fathers-or, better yet, their wives-get high just as much as we do?

Traces the evolution of United States's long and twisted relationship with drugsGives surprising answers to questions such as: how did heroin become popular, when did the meth epidemic peak, and has LSD gone the way of QuaaludesBased on solid reporting and wide-ranging research-including surveys, reports, historical accounts, and more

Not since Eric Schlosser ventured underground to marijuana's black market in Reefer Madness has a reporter trained such a keen eye on drugs and culture. A powerful and often shocking history of one of our knottiest social and cultural problems, This is Your Country on Drugs leads you on a profound exploration of what it means to be an American.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470167394
• ISBN13: 9780470167397
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.6"