Basket

Your basket is empty.

On Drugs

240 pages
Paperback, 23.4 x 15.3 cm
Published August 2019
ISBN 9781925818048
Epub ISBN 9781925818178
Epdf ISBN 9781925818185

On Drugs

Chris Fleming

As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a strong sense of being permeable, porous, of my body being open to the unpredictable forces of outside matter.

On Drugs explores philosopher Chris Fleming’s experience of addiction, which begins when he is a student and escalates into a life-threatening compulsion.

In a memoir by turns insightful and outlandish, Fleming combines meticulous observation with a keen sense of the absurdity of his actions. He describes the intricacies of drug use and acquisition, the impact of drugs on the intellect and emotions, and the chaos that emerges as his tightly managed existence unravels into hospitalisations, arrests and family breakdown. His account is accompanied by searching reflections on his childhood, during which he developed acute obsessive compulsive disorder and became fixated on the rituals of martial arts, music-making and bodybuilding.

In confronting the pathos and comedy of drug use, On Drugs also opens out into meditations on the self and its deceptions, religion, masculinity, mental illness, and the tortuous path to recovery.

A searching, considered account of drug and alcohol use and the mechanisms of addiction. Books+Publishing 

About the Author

Chris Fleming

Chris Fleming is a highly regarded philosopher, translator, and cultural analyst. He is Associate Professor in Humanities at Western Sydney University and is the author or editor of eight books, including On Drugs, René Girard: Violence and Mimesis (Polity, 2004) and Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid (co-authored with Emma A. Jane) (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Read more

Reviews

Fleming has shared his story not to glorify or shock, but to humanise.

The Age