Explores the use of mind-altering substances from alcohol to cocaine worldwide throughout history. Beautifully illustrated with rarely seen material, this striking, rigorously researched book puts its controversial subject into the widest possible context. It paints vivid portraits of the roles that drugs play as medicines, sacraments, status symbols and trade goods from classical times through the mind-bending self-experiments of early scientists to the present 'war on drugs', and reveals how the international trade in substances such as tobacco, tea and opium shaped the modern world. "... deserves high praise for rendering a complex, controversial topic with clarity and elegance. It's also good looking ... quite marvellous" - British Medical Journal