High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture

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A global history of intoxication, exploring the international spectrum of drug use in cultures across the world, from prehistory to the present day.

Every society is a high society. Every day, people drink coffee on European terraces, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, take coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth. Mike Jay's global history of intoxication looks at the earliest archaeological evidence of drug use, the botanicals of the classical world, the mind-bending self-experiments of early scientists and today's 'war on drugs'.

In High Society Jay paints vivid portraits of the roles that drugs play as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols and trade goods. He traces the understanding of intoxicants from prehistory to the present, and reveals how the international trade in substances such as tobacco, tea and opium shaped the modern world. First published to accompany the highly successful exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, London, and now featuring a new preface, this striking and lyrical book remains one of the most complete explorations of drug use in cultures across the world.

Reviews

'A vivid report on the other side of drugs' - Hanif Kureishi, Books of the Year, Guardian
'Excellent shows that drug use stretches back too far, and too widely across the globe, to be considered an aberration of the human condition' - Financial Times
'An excellent book a wonderfully open-ended subject' - Daily Telegraph
'Straightforward and engaging storytelling and cool headed analysis of use of, and attitudes towards, mind-altering drugs deserves high praise for rendering a complex, controversial topic with clarity and elegance. Its also good looking quite marvellous' - British Medical Journal
'Fascinating and highly recommended' - Psychedelic Press

Author Bio

Mike Jay has written widely on the cultural history of science, medicine and the mind. His books include The Influencing Machine, Psychonauts, Mescaline and This Way Madness Lies, the latter also published by Thames & Hudson. He is a research affiliate of the Health Humanities Centre at University College London and an Honorary Research Fellow at HHC/UCL.