Cocaine

Don't be misled by the product information, this book is a collection of short stories by an extensive list of contributors. As well as being one of the contributors Jerry Stahl is one of five editors.

The book is an extensive volume of drug stories but I wouldn't say comprehensive simply because there doesn't seem to be the level of international contributors from the rather small number of stories I read. There is a reason for this in the history of how the book came to be published so don't take it as a criticism.

I had thought Burroughs the first to chronicle addiction and the eternal chase in modern society. But Hans Fallada was doing it all decades earlier.  His depiction of two mates out on a hunt for prescription pads, croakers or easy chemists - it's all fresh and very realistic.  Sure, it's morphine (monacetyl not diacetyl) that they chase, but that's probably all there was back then.  I am always amazed at the connection between the paltry lives of junkies a century ago, and their lives today - in some ways worse, as the sources HF had back then are long dried/wised up.

So the front cover of the edition I read goes while the spine has 'Keith Richards Life', since mine comes from the library a catalogue sticker covers the word 'Life' on the spine. All that is neither here nor there but the fact that the book was written with James Fox (no not the co-star of 'Performance' with Mick and Anita) is worthy of note and he gets due mention on the title page and on the inside/back of the dust jacket. The book reads pretty much as a monologue with Keith as first person and is interspersed with various characters contributing their version of events.