The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics 1500-2000 Book

"Intoxication is neither unnatural nor deviant,"quotes Hines, prizewinning writer and regular TLS contributor, at the start of his compendious chronicle, The Pursuit of Oblivion. This pretty much sums up his objective take on drug consumption although he is far less impartial on the policies surrounding the trade and legislation of the drugs industry. This fascinating book examines the history of changing Western social attitudes to drugs, their place in our culture and what they reflect of it. Hines uncovers the strange duality of our love/hate affair with each drug du jour, fuelled by the twin forces of puritanical morality and the desire to be freed from one's conscious self. This is aptly mirrored by the fact that most drugs originated as medicines. While the burgeoning British-controlled opium trade created addicts across China, physicians at home were lauding the narcotic for its healing properties. Even minds as great as Freud's were at one time convinced of the marvellous psychological curative powers of cocaine. But of course, it has also been in the interests of scientific inquiry to further the development and production of drugs because of what they can reveal about the human psyche. And from the age of enlightenment onwards, we have as a culture been obsessed by this desire to look inwards: for as Hines rightly points out, it would be illogical to explore the outside world without also exploring the inner one. The Pursuit of Oblivion is exhaustively thorough and rich in detail but its real beauty is the energy and incisiveness of its writing. Hines is clearly riveted by every aspect of his subject and uses it to paint a colourful and captivating picture of evolving human nature in all its messy, ambivalent complexity. --Rebecca JohnsonRead More