A HISTORY OF GETTING HIGH

Out of It: A Cultural History of Intoxication by Stuart Walton Hamish
Hamilton UKP 12.99pbk (UKP 11) Reviewed by Nicholas Lezard

Of the making of books about drugs, these days, there is no end. The same
stories are recycled, the vision grows blurred with yet another account of
how Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on cocaine.

But while Out Of It contains much that is fast becoming common knowledge,
it separates itself from the competition by having a purpose: polemically
reclaiming the state of intoxication as not only largely unharmful to
society and sanctioned by precedent, but as a fundamental human right, a
biological imperative in itself. When Britain's two major political parties
offer no solution to the crux of extra-alcoholic intoxication beyond
criminalisation, a book like this needs to be written, and, more
importantly, read.

The publication of Walton's book is not a matter of voguishness, but is
part of a concerted yet multifariously independent approach to the split
between private and political morality, one that makes a point of tackling
the fact that, whatever the law of the land, quite a few people will
persist in getting blasted. It is good to ask why this should be so, and
while there have been plenty of books on the subject recently, this is one
of the best.

You can almost gauge this from the prose style alone. Walton is
convincingly engrossing, and an elegant and forceful stylist. He is
unafraid of launching himself towards the heart of the argument, as in his
obiter dictum on those who suggest, to the recreational intoxicant user,
that they lay off things for a while: "Users of some non-addictive drugs
are often challenged to go for a prescribed period without them in order to
prove that they are not dependent on them. This is a challenge that may be
honourably resisted on the grounds that there is no point in it." The
argument that follows is the old hippy chestnut about men being as
dependent on trousers as junkies are on heroin (not that he puts it so
crudely), but it is nice to know that there is an intelligent, articulate
writer who is prepared to endorse and justify resistance to the modern-day
temperance league.

With meticulous attention to intoxication through the centuries, to the
numerous logical fallacies perpetrated in the name of the law and recent
custom, this is the kind of book that should be read not only by anyone
given to intoxication but those who are concerned about it. It might not
allay fears, but it will clarify them. No one, either in or close to the
corridors of power, is prepared to think, in any commonly accepted sense of
the verb, about this subject, but it is good to know that Walton has.