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

by Ryan Grim (Author)

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 drugs
• Gives surprising answers to questions such as: how did heroin become popular, when did the meth epidemic peak, and has LSD gone the way of Quaaludes
• Based 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.

Back Jacket

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.

Author Biography

RYAN GRIM is the "Huffington Post"'s senior congressional correspondent and has written for "Slate," "Rolling Stone," "Harper's," and the "Washington Post."