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Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography is a 2014 memoir by former drug kingpin Rick Ross, co-authored by American crime writer Cathy Scott, about the rise and fall of Ross, in the 1980s and '90s, to his 2009 release from prison. The book was released by Freeway Studios in June 2014.
According to the publisher, the book embarks on the day-to-day dealings of a drug kingpin in the heart of the ghetto. It is also the story of a boy born into poverty in Texas who grew up in a single-parent household in the heart of South Central Los Angeles, next to the 110, thus the nickname "Freeway," and was pushed through the school system, emerging illiterate. He saw his options as few and turned to drug dealing.
Authors Ross and Scott chronicle the times by highlighting the social climate that made crack cocaine so desirable. Ross points out that at the time the "cops in the area didn't know what crack was; they didn't associate the small white rocks they saw on homies as illegal drugs." All Ross knew was people wanted it, so he sold it.
During his reign as the head of a nationwide drug enterprise, it is estimated that Ross profited nearly $300 million, selling nearly $3 million worth of drugs in one day. Ross' role in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair that took place during the Ronald Reagan administration was outlined in "San Jose Mercury News" reporter Gary Webb's original series of articles alleging that the CIA was complicit in smuggling drugs into the U.S., which effectively ignited the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s.
The autobiography includes the outcome of Ross' crack cocaine dealing, his conviction of conspiracy to illegally traffic cocaine, and the knowledge that the money Ross paid drug supplier Danilo Blandón funded the Nicaraguan rebels in the Contra scandal, which Ross learned of while in prison when he was informed by "San Jose Mercury-News" reporter Webb. It also details Ross' successful appeal of his life sentence without the possibility of parole and his re-sentencing to 20 years. Ross was released from custody in September 2009.
In July 2014, Ross talked about what is included in the book, telling the NPR affiliate in Los Angeles that it took about five years of dealing before he saw the negative impact crack was having on his community, but customers asked for more. When he realized he did not want to see his brother or sister smoke crack cocaine, he decided to get out and start a legitimate business. "This story," wrote "Crimespree Magazine"'s Marie Nicoll, "will be retold and shared to American classrooms to children on what can happen when you go down the wrong path. His story shows the true meaning of having everything you could imagine, but at what price."
In the book's foreword, Los Angeles Bishop Noel Jones writes that "this work portrays the heart of a man who is seeking the opportunity, in whatever form, to right the wrongs he has done to his community."
"Freeway Rick Ross" debuted at the Eso Won Bookstore in Los Angeles at a book launch on June 17, 2014 to a standing-room only crowd.
KCET TV wrote in its review, "(The book) is fascinating for its unsentimental, inside look at his career on the streets of South Central, which started for Ross with car theft and quickly shifted to drugs and the big time."
The "Los Angeles Sentinel" wrote, "While some have yet to move past the stigma of Ross' former image, it has worked to his advantage in dissuading students interested in following in his foot steps.
Upon its release, "The Huffington Post UK"'s Ruth Jacobs described the book as "the eagerly awaited autobiography."
During a national book tour, Fox 59 in Indianapolis interviewed Ross about his autobiography in September 2014 for its morning show.
The book was named a finalist in "ForeWord Reviews"' Best Book of the Year 2014.
Leave the Light On is the second memoir written by Jennifer Storm. The book deals with Storm's recovery from drug and alcohol addiction and her experiences coming out of the closet. The book is the companion to "". It has been called "fearlessly honest" and "courageous" by "We Magazine for Women".
Mr. Nice is the autobiography of former drug dealer Howard Marks. Published in 1996 it became an international bestseller due in large part to the humour and unabashed bravado the author uses to describe his life and the sheer scale of his drug deals involving, amongst others, the CIA, MI6, the IRA and the Mafia. The book received mostly positive reviews, though some critics were initially sceptical of some of the more outlandish details portrayed. It was adapted for film in 2010 as "Mr. Nice".
Welsh born Marks began small scale dealing of hashish in the late 1960s whilst at Oxford University studying nuclear physics and, later, a postgraduate degree course in philosophy.
His activities rapidly expanded after a chance meeting with a Pakistani supplier made him realise how lucrative drug smuggling could be. After teaming up with Jim McCann, a senior member of the IRA, his business was soon bringing in huge amounts of cash and he began setting up various legitimate businesses as a front, to launder the proceeds of his hashish smuggling. At one time he claims to have had 25 such companies, 89 phone lines and 43 aliases, including the name used for the title of this book, Mr. Nice, an alias he adopted after buying a passport from a convicted murderer of that name.
Following his arrest in 1980 in a combined operation by British and Spanish police, Marks managed to avoid a lengthy sentence by claiming to be a spy for the British intelligence agency MI6. He was eventually caught again, this time by the American DEA, and sentenced to life in prison at Terre Haute federal penitentiary in Indiana. He was released after seven years and allowed to return to the UK.
The book was adapted into a film "Mr. Nice" in 2010, directed by Bernard Rose and starring Rhys Ifans and Chloë Sevigny.
Growgirl is a 2012 book by former actor Heather Donahue about dropping out of Hollywood and moving to a semi-collective society in Nevada County, California's Sierra Mountains called "Nuggettown" to become first a "pot wife" then embrace the "backbreaking, spirit-sucking work" of a cannabis grower.
"The Hollywood Reporter" called the work "always funny and surprisingly sweet". "Publishers Weekly" said it was "wry, with a nuanced distance from the events". "Kirkus Reviews" called it "at times funny, sensitive or filled with obscenities...an intimate look at a woman's yearlong search for her place in the world".
Prozac Nation is a memoir by Elizabeth Wurtzel published in 1994. The book describes the author's experiences with atypical depression, her own character failings and how she managed to live through particularly difficult periods while completing college and working as a writer. Prozac is a trade name for the antidepressant fluoxetine. Wurtzel originally titled the book "I Hate Myself and I Want To Die" but her editor convinced her otherwise. It ultimately carried the subtitle "Young and Depressed in America: A Memoir."
The book was adapted into a feature film, "Prozac Nation" (2001), starring Christina Ricci.
Writing in "New York Magazine", Walter Kirn found that although "Prozac Nation" had "moments of shapely truth-telling," altogether it was "almost unbearable" and "a work of singular self-absorption." Calling the book a "tedious and poorly written story of Wurtzel's melodramatic life, warts and all (actually all warts)," Erica L. Werner asked in "The Harvard Crimson", "How did this chick get a book contract in the first place? Why was she allowed to write such crap?" Werner also described "Prozac Nation" as "obscenely exhibitionistic," with "no purpose other than alternately to bore us and make us squirm." She said that the author "comes off as an irritating, solipsistic brat."
"It would be possible to have more sympathy for Ms. Wurtzel if she weren't so exasperatingly sympathetic to herself," wrote Ken Tucker in the "New York Times Book Review".
He observed, "The reader may well begin riffling the pages of the book in the vain hope that there will be a few complimentary Prozac capsules tucked inside for one's own relief." "Kirkus Reviews" thought the book to be filled with "narcissistic pride" and concluded, "By alternately belittling and belaboring her depression, Wurtzel loses her credibility: Either she's a brat who won't shape up or she needs the drugs. Ultimately, you don't care which."
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life. The "Confessions" was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one that won him fame almost overnight".
First published anonymously in September and October 1821 in the "London Magazine", the "Confessions" was released in book form in 1822, and again in 1856, in an edition revised by De Quincey.
As originally published, De Quincey's account was organised into two parts:
Though De Quincey was later criticised for giving too much attention to the pleasure of opium and not enough to the harsh negatives of addiction, "The Pains of Opium" is in fact significantly longer than "The Pleasures". However, even when trying to convey darker truths, De Quincey's language can seem seduced by the compelling nature of the opium experience:
From its first appearance, the literary style of the "Confessions" attracted attention and comment. De Quincey was well read in the English literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and assimilated influences and models from Sir Thomas Browne and other writers. Arguably the most famous and often-quoted passage in the "Confessions" is the apostrophe to opium in the final paragraph of "The Pleasures":
De Quincey modelled this passage on the apostrophe "O eloquent, just and mightie Death!" in Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World".
Earlier in "The Pleasures of Opium" De Quincey describes the long walks he took through the London streets under the influence of the drug:
The "Confessions" represents De Quincey's initial effort to write what he called "impassioned prose", an effort that he would later resume in "Suspiria de Profundis" (1845) and "The English Mail-Coach" (1849).
In the early 1850s, De Quincey prepared the first collected edition of his works for publisher James Hogg. For that edition, he undertook a large-scale revision of the "Confessions", more than doubling the work's length. Most notably, he expanded the opening section on his personal background, until it consumed more than two-thirds of the whole. Yet he gave the book "a much weaker beginning" and detracted from the impact of the original with digressions and inconsistencies; "the verdict of most critics is that the earlier version is artistically superior".
"De Quincey undoubtedly spoiled his masterpiece by revising it... anyone who compares the two will prefer the unflagging vigour and tension of the original version to the tired prosiness of much of the revised one".
The "Confessions" maintained a place of primacy in De Quincey's literary output, and his literary reputation, from its first publication; "it went through countless editions, with only occasional intervals of a few years, and was often translated. Since there was little systematic study of narcotics until long after his death, De Quincey's account assumed an authoritative status and actually dominated the scientific and public views of the effects of opium for several generations."
More generally, De Quincey's "Confessions" influenced psychology and abnormal psychology, and attitudes towards dreams and imaginative literature. Edgar Allan Poe praised "Confessions" for its "glorious imagination—deep philosophy—acute speculation".
The play "The Opium Eater" by Andrew Dallmeyer was based on "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater", and has been published by Capercaillie Books. In 1962, Vincent Price starred in the full-length film "Confessions of an Opium Eater" which was a reimagining of De Quincey's "Confessions" by Hollywood producer Albert Zugsmith.
In the 1999 documentary "Tripping", recounting Ken Kesey's Further bus and its influence, Malcolm McLaren refers to De Quincey's book as the influence for the beatnik generation before Jack Kerouac's popular "On the Road" was written.
The Book of Drugs is a 2012 memoir by the musician and songwriter Mike Doughty. The book details Doughty's struggles with drug addiction, his musical career, both before and during his time with the band Soul Coughing and during his solo career.
The book was noted for its acerbic take on Doughty's Soul Coughing band mates, as well as its unflinching look at the damage caused by addiction.
The book covers Doughty's experiences growing up in a military family, his education, first experiences with drugs such as alcohol, his friendship with Jeff Buckley, and his antagonism with his (unnamed) fellow Soul Coughing band members. It also covers his experience with 12-step programs, his travels to Ethiopia and Cambodia, his experience with bipolar disorder, and his post-Soul Coughing solo career.
The book received a generally positive reception for its unflinching narrative and engaging writing. The "Village Voice" review called it a "quickly paced, finely observed, and often mordantly funny read"—though some reviewers wondered, as Jay Trachtenberg of the "Austin Chronicle" did, why "...if the atmosphere was so rancid, Doughty stuck around."
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a 1968 nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe. The book is a popular example of the New Journalism literary style. Wolfe presents a firsthand account of the experiences of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, who traveled across the US in a colorfully painted school bus, the "Furthur", whose name was painted on the destination sign, indicating the general ethos of the Pranksters. Kesey and the Pranksters became famous for their use of psychedelic drugs such as LSD in order to achieve expansion of their consciousness. The book chronicles the Acid Tests (parties with LSD-laced Kool-Aid), encounters with notable figures of the time (Hells Angels, Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg) and describes Kesey's exile to Mexico and his arrests.
Tom Wolfe chronicles the adventures of Ken Kesey and his group of followers. Throughout the work, Kesey is portrayed as desiring the creation of a new religion. Kesey forms a group of followers based on the allure of transcendence achievable through drugs and his ability to preach and captivate listeners. The group was labelled as the "Merry Pranksters" and participated in a drug-fuelled lifestyle. The beginnings of Acid Tests started at Kesey's house in the woods of La Honda, California. The Acid Tests were carried out with lights and noise in order to enhance the psychedelic experience.
In an effort to broadcast their lifestyle, the Pranksters publicize their acid experiences and the term Acid Test comes to life. The Acid Tests are parties at which everyone takes LSD (which was often put into the Kool-Aid they served) and abandon the realities of the mundane world in search of a state of "intersubjectivity." Just as the Acid Tests are catching on, Kesey is arrested for possession of marijuana. In an effort to avoid jail, he flees to Mexico and is joined by the Pranksters. The Pranksters struggle in Mexico and are unable to obtain the same results from their acid trips.
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" has been described as faithful and "essential" in depicting the roots and growth of the hippie movement.
The New Journalism literary style is seen to have elicited either fascination or incredulity by its audience. While The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was not the original standard for New Journalism, it is the most-often cited work of that genre. Wolfe's descriptions and accounts of the adventures of Kesey and his cohort were influencial and, particularly characteristic of New Journalism by inviting the reader to view the work as fiction rather than reportage.
The novel received modest literary acclaim, in particular for the clear narrative Wolfe maintained amidst the indulgent and often intoxicated milieu depicted. Despite Wolfe's immersion within Kesey's "movement" and advocacy of Kesey's and the Prankster's ideology, he renders sober portrayals of their experiences as being triggered by both paranoia and the acid trips which had become the group's cultural motif. Wolfe chronicles the Prankster's day-to-day lives and numerous psychedelic experiences, and his abstinence usefully differentiates his point of view. Wolfe endeavors to depict the Pranksters and Kesey within their environment, and as he believes they themselves wished to be seen.
While some saw New Journalism as the future of literature, the concept was not without criticism. There were many who challenged the believability of the style and there were many questions and criticisms about whether accounts were true. Wolfe however challenged such claims and notes that in books like "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", he was nearly invisible throughout the narrative. He argues that he produced an uninhibited account of the events he witnessed. As proponents of fiction and orthodox nonfiction continued to question the validity of New Journalism, Wolfe stood by the growing discipline. Wolfe realized that this method of writing transformed the subjects of newspapers and articles into people with whom audiences could relate and sympathize.
Asked in 1989 by Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" what he thought of the book, Kesey replied, It's a good book. yeah, he’s a—Wolfe's a genius. He did a lot of that stuff, he was only around three weeks. He picked up that amount of dialogue and verisimilitude without tape recorder, without taking notes to any extent. He just watches very carefully and remembers. But, you know, he's got his own editorial filter there. And so what he's coming up with is part of me, but it's not all of me. . . ."
Beautiful Things: A Memoir is a 2021 memoir by American lawyer Hunter Biden, who is the second son of U.S. President Joe Biden and his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden. It was published on April 6, 2021 by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. In "The New York Times" reviewer Elisabeth Egan described the book as "equal parts family saga, grief narrative and addict's howl".
In "Beautiful Things", Hunter Biden writes about his family and recounts his history of substance abuse and path to sobriety. He discusses the grief and trauma he experienced following the death of his brother Beau Biden and the 1972 car accident in which he was injured and that killed his mother, Neilia, and his sister, Naomi. He also defends his time on a Ukraine company board.
Hunter Biden told CBS that his cocaine addiction reached a zenith in 2015 after the death of his brother Beau.<ref>
Then It Fell Apart is a 2019 memoir by American electronica musician Moby. Moby had previously written a memoir called "", published in 2016, which covered his life pre-fame. "Then It Fell Apart" covers the subsequent decade from 1999 to 2009 when Moby released the album "Play" to acclaim and success.
The memoir predominantly deals with Moby's life from 1999 to 2009 with some flashbacks to his early childhood. In particular, the memoir deals with his surprise at the accidental success of "Play", his descent into alcohol addiction, and his decision in 2007 to finally go to rehab in order to stay sober.
Moby also revealed that in 2001, he rubbed his flaccid penis on Donald Trump at a party after being dared to do so by his then-girlfriend. Details of this incident were later called into question by "Vanity Fair", who revealed that, based on Moby's own description of events, the incident most likely took place years later.
Kitty Empire writing for "The Guardian" called it "funny and often harrowing".
The Hasheesh Eater (1857) is an autobiographical book by Fitz Hugh Ludlow describing the author's altered states of consciousness and philosophical flights of fancy while he was using a cannabis extract. In the United States, the book created popular interest in hashish, leading to hashish candy and private hashish clubs. The book was later popular in the counter-culture movement of the 1960s.
"The Hasheesh Eater" is often compared to "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" (1821), Thomas De Quincey's account of his own addiction to laudanum (opium and alcohol).
First published in 1857, "The Hasheesh Eater" went through four editions in the late 1850s and early 1860s, each put out by Harper & Brothers. In 1903, another publishing house put a reprint of the original edition — and the last complete edition until 1970. , two editions are in print, including an annotated version first published in 2003.
Ludlow said, "The entire truth of Nature cannot be copied," so "the artist must select between the major and minor facts of the outer world; that, before he executes, he must pronounce whether he will embody the essential effect, that which steals on the soul and possesses it without painful analysis, or the separate details which belong to the geometrician and destroy the effect." Many of his passages, which may have seemed like fantastic myth-making to his contemporaries, ring true today with more modern knowledge of the psychedelic state. Ludlow writes of one hallucination: "And now, with time, space expanded also… The whole atmosphere seemed ductile, and spun endlessly out into great spaces surrounding me on every side."
Ludlow describes the marijuana user as one who is reaching for "the soul’s capacity for a broader being, deeper insight, grander views of Beauty, Truth and Good than she now gains through the chinks of her cell." Conversely, he says of hashish users: "Ho there! pass by; I have tried this way; it leads at last into poisonous wildernesses."
The popularity of "The Hasheesh Eater" led to interest in the drug it described. Not long after its publication, the Gunjah Wallah Co. in New York began advertising "Hasheesh Candy":
The Arabian "Gunjh" of Enchantment confectionized. — A most pleasurable and harmless stimulant. — Cures Nervousness, Weakness, Melancholy, &c. Inspires all classes with new life and energy. A complete mental and physical invigorator.
John Hay, who would become a close confidant of President Lincoln and later U.S. Secretary of State, remembered Brown University as the place “where I used to eat Hasheesh and dream dreams.” And a classmate recalls that after reading Ludlow’s book, Hay “must needs experiment with hasheesh a little, and see if it was such a marvelous stimulant to the imagination as Fitzhugh Ludlow affirmed. ‘The night when Johnny Hay took hasheesh’ marked an epoch for the dwellers in Hope College.”
Within twenty-five years of the publication of "The Hasheesh Eater", many cities in the United States had private hashish parlors. And there was already controversy about the legality and morality of cannabis intoxication. In 1876, when tourists could buy hashish at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, the "Illustrated Police News" would write about “The Secret Dissipation of New York Belles… a Hasheesh Hell on Fifth Avenue.”
Ludlow’s writings crop up in a couple of places in pre-marijuana-prohibition 20th century America. The occultist Aleister Crowley found "The Hasheesh Eater" to be “tainted by admiration of de Quincey and the sentimentalists” but admired Ludlow’s “wonderful introspection” and printed significant excerpts from the book in his journal "The Equinox". Using the pseudonym Oliver Haddo, Crowley also wrote at length about his own cannabis experiences, comparing and contrasting them to those of Ludlow. He “was struck by the circumstance that [Ludlow], obviously ignorant of Vedantist and Yogic doctrines, yet approximately expressed them, though in a degraded and distorted form.”
After the prohibition of marijuana, the writings of Ludlow were interpreted by two camps. On the one hand, there were the prohibitionists, who pointed out Ludlow’s addiction to “hasheesh” and his horrifying hallucinations; on the other, those who believed that cannabis deserved a second chance and saw Ludlow as a literate chronicler of the mystical heights that could be reached using the drug.
In 1938, shortly after the federal government cracked down on marijuana, the prohibitionist warning was carried in the book "Marihuana: America’s New Drug Problem". The book included several pages of excerpts from "The Hasheesh Eater" and noted that
It was Ludlow… who contributed the most remarkable description of the hashish effects. He not only described the acute hashish episode with great intensity and fidelity but recorded the development of an addiction and the subsequent struggle which resulted in his breaking the habit. As an autobiography of a drug addict it is, in several respects, superior to De Quincey's “Confessions”
In 1953, Union College selected the alumnus Fitz Hugh Ludlow as a “Union Worthy” and invited three academics to compose speeches for the occasion. Morris Bishop (who would later include his impressions in his book "Eccentrics"), criticized Ludlow’s later attempts at fiction, writing that his short stories “are today stale and meaningless… echoes of all the other magazine stories of his time, originating in literature, not in life, and conducted with no regard for truth and with little for verisimilitude.” In "The Hasheesh Eater" on the other hand:
is a sincerity, a reality, which he could not recapture when he tried to construct stories solely from his imagination… He finds lyric phrasing to convey the unearthly beauty of his visions, and the unearthly horror of the evil fantasia which succeeded his bliss. He is a drugged Dante in reverse, descending from the Paradiso to the Inferno. His descriptions, drawing from his subconscious a strange mingling of the sublime and the grotesque, often suggest the work of Dali and other surrealists. The writer’s passion gives his work an intensity which the reader recognizes and sympathetically feels. This is a very considerable literary achievement.
Robert DeRopp, in the 1957 book "Drugs and the Mind", was perhaps the first to express skepticism at Ludlow’s “addiction” story, noting that “[n]o one seriously interested in the effects of drugs on the mind should fail to read Ludlow’s book,” but accusing Ludlow of a “hypertrophy of the imagination and an excessive dependence on the works of De Quincey” (although he also found "The Hasheesh Eater" to be “more lively and more colorful reading than… the grossly overrated confessions of that ‘English opium-eater.’”). DeRopp suspected that “in many places scientific impartiality has been sacrificed in the interests of literary effect.”
At this point we are at the dawn of the resurgence of marijuana in the United States and the emergence of psychedelics in the English-speaking world. Researchers, like pioneering mescaline researcher Heinrich Klüver, looked to Ludlow’s seminal writings on the psychedelic experience for insight on the new drugs that were being discovered and synthesized.
In 1960, "The Hasty Papers: A One-Shot Review", a beat literature journal, devoted most of its pages to reprinting the first edition of "The Hasheesh Eater" in its entirety, and David Ebin’s book "The Drug Experience" included three chapters from "The Hasheesh Eater". In 1966, excerpts were published in "The Marijuana Papers" edited by David Solomon. In 1970, a reprint of the 1857 edition was put out by Gregg Press, and the "Berkeley Barb" reprinted several chapters.
By this time Ludlow had been rediscovered, both by mainstream researchers into drugs and addiction, and by the growing drug-savvy counterculture. Oriana J. Kalant, in 1971 in "The International Journal of the Addictions" found "The Hasheesh Eater" to be a remarkable description of the effects of cannabis:
With the benefit of hindsight, we can also identify in Ludlow’s account a number of other features consistent with present knowledge, but which even scientists of his day could not possibly have known. For example, the initial change in tolerance, the continuum between euphoria and hallucinations, the differentiation between the hallucinatory process and the affective reactions to it, the relation between spontaneous and drug-induced perceptual changes, the similarity between the effects of cannabis and those of other hallucinogens, the attempts at drug substitution therapy (opium, tobacco), and the role of psychotherapy and abreactive writing, are all in keeping with contemporary thought. These points permit the modern reader to feel even greater confidence in the extraordinary accuracy and perceptiveness of Ludlow’s record.
The mid 1970s saw two new editions of "The Hasheesh Eater" in print, one by San Francisco’s City Lights Books, and a well-annotated and illustrated version edited by Michael Horowitz and released by Level Press. By the late 1970s, you could even find the face of Fitz Hugh Ludlow on a T-shirt, thanks to his alma mater Union College, which had thrown a “Fitzhugh Ludlow Day” celebration in 1979.
In the 2000s, Ludlow has been introduced to a new generation of psychedelics users through Terence McKenna, who read chapters from "The Hasheesh Eater" for a set of tapes (“Victorian Tales of Cannabis”) put out by Sound Photosynthesis, and who regularly praised Ludlow in his books, saying Ludlow “began a tradition of pharmo-picaresque literature that would find later practitioners in William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson.… Part genius, part madman, Ludlow lies halfway between Captain Ahab and P.T. Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish. There is a wonderful charm to his free-spirited, pseudoscientific openness as he makes his way into the shifting dunescapes of the world of hashish.”
"The Hasheesh Eater" remains Ludlow's most remembered work. Only one other of his books, "The Heart of the Continent", has seen a new edition since the 19th Century.
How to Murder Your Life is a memoir by fashion and beauty journalist Cat Marnell. Marnell sold the book in 2013 for an undisclosed sum. The memoir was finally released in 2017 by Simon & Schuster and became a bestseller.
The memoir deals with Marnell's childhood in a wealthy D.C. suburb, her introduction to drugs, her entry into the world of fashion journalism, and her continued struggles with addiction, which constantly threatened to torpedo her career.
She gets into an acting class in New York City, but finds the workshops boring and is unable to make friends. Alone and isolated, she develops bulimia. While attending a show at the Comedy Cellar, she is picked up by Ardie Fuqua, who helps to introduce her to NYC nightlife. Marnell spends the next few years developing a drug habit, dropping in and out of colleges, and building contacts in the entertainment and fashion worlds.
During her unemployment, Marnell attempts suicide. After being cut off from the rest of her family, she turns to her wealthy grandmother, Mimi, who pays off her debts and allows her to stay with her in Charlottesville, Virginia. Marnell eventually returns to New York and splits her time between that city and Charlottesville. When Jane Pratt launches the online magazine "xoJane" in 2011, Marnell's friend Lesley Arfin encourages her to apply. Marnell is hired and while there, works on health, beauty, and drugs, finally able to write openly about her experiences as an addict.
While she disdains the online publication, her columns are nevertheless successful. After Whitney Houston dies in early 2012, Marnell writes about life as a woman who is a drug addict and the piece goes viral, leading her to negotiate a raise with "xoJane". Shortly after, Marnell leaves the publication, in part due to her continued drug use. Nevertheless, in a series of interviews she gives about being a drug addict, her popularity rises. She is able to negotiate a well-paying job at "Vice" and obtain a literary agent, though it takes her until 2013 to piece together a coherent book proposal.
In an afterword, Marnell claims to be doing much better, saying she is much closer with her family, but also admits to still abusing drugs.
Marnell's memoir was warmly received. "The Globe and Mail" praised her "chic-macabre sense of humour". Anne Helen Petersen, writing for "The New York Times", praised her for keeping a balance "between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty."
"The Irish Times", however, criticized the memoir, saying that Marnell was always playing the persona of Cat Marnell, and suggested "she can do much better".
Hole in My Life is an American autobiography of Jack Gantos and was published by Macmillan Publishers in 2002. In 2003 the book was honored with the Michael L. Printz Award and the same year became a winner of the Robert F. Sibert Medal.
The book received positive reviews from "Kirkus Reviews" and "Publishers Weekly".
Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman's Journey Through Afghanistan is a 2011 book by Fariba Nawa. The author travels throughout Afghanistan to talk with individuals part of the opium production in Afghanistan, centering on women's role in it. Generally, reviewers felt that the book succeeded in its portrayal of Afghan culture and the impact of the opium trade on Afghans.
Nawa discusses opium trafficking in Afghanistan, a trade she said is valued at $4 billion in the country and $65 billion outside it. 60% of Afghanistan's GDP comes from opium, of which two-thirds is distilled into heroin, a more potent drug. Because the distillation requires cooking, the traffickers allow women to take part in it. A large number of women and their families are beholden to opium. About 10–25% of women and children are speculated to be addicted to the drug. Many families serve in the opium enterprise as "opium farmers, refiners, or smugglers".
Nawa reveals the story of an uncle who kidnaps a six-year-old boy and his friend in Takhar Province, an attempt to coerce the boy's father to settle an opium debt. When the debt is not settled, the boy disappears and his friend's body is found after several days in a river.
She discusses the positive economic impact the opium industry has had on some families. For one woman, poppy cultivation allowed her to buy a taxi for her son and a carpet frame for her daughter. Some newly affluent farmers use some of the wealth to improve the infrastructure of their neighborhoods.
At the book's end, she reveals that she has married Naeem Mazizian, whom she had met at the Herat chapter of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2005, he moves to Kabul. Following four years of companionship, they marry and have a daughter, Bonoo Zahra. Nawa dedicated the book to her daughter and her parents, Sayed Begum and Fazul Haq.
"Part personal memoir and part history", the book delves into the elements of Afghanistan society seldom seen or comprehended by outsiders. "The Canberra Times" reviewer Bron Sibree called the book a "unique, finely distilled, intense perspective" that was "surprisingly frank and intimate" because women confide in her beliefs they do not tell other people. The book is packed with numerous facts and numbers pertaining to the swell in the drug business. Sibree noted that the narrative is filled with accounts of Afghan history, particularly its traditions and its elegant, multifarious landscapes. Sibree opined that Nawa's intense depiction of the Afghanis, notably the women who are unflappable notwithstanding their adversity, are etched into the mind even after an extended period of time.
"Kirkus Reviews" praised Nawa for deftly depicting the "tragic complexity of Afghan society and the sheer difficulty of life there". The reviewer found parts of the book's dialogue to be contrived but noted that Nawa's convincing narrative "clearly stems from in-depth reporting in a risk-laden environment". Novelist Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns" praised the book for having a "very engaging narrative" and being "[a]n insightful and informative look at the global challenge of Afghan drug trade". Writing for "The Sun-Herald", author Lucy Sussex called the book "strong, informative reading".
In February 2012, "Opium Nation" ranked seventh in the "independent" section of "The Newcastle Herald"s bestseller list.

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