Diary of a Drug Fiend


Book Description

The true story of Aleister Crowley's own experience with drugs.




The Diary of a Drug Fiend


Book Description




Opium Fiend


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world’s oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery. A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu. But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction—from quitting cold turkey to taking “the cure” at a Buddhist monastery in the Thai countryside. At once a powerful personal story and a fascinating historical survey, Opium Fiend brims with anecdotes and lore surrounding the drug that some have called the methamphetamine of the nineteenth-century. It recalls the heyday of opium smoking in the United States and Europe and takes us inside the befogged opium dens of China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. The drug’s beguiling effects are described in vivid detail—as are the excruciating pains of withdrawal—and there are intoxicating tales of pipes shared with an eclectic collection of opium aficionados, from Dutch dilettantes to hard-core addicts to world-weary foreign correspondents. A compelling tale of one man’s transformation from respected scholar to hapless drug slave, Opium Fiend puts us under opium’s spell alongside its protagonist, allowing contemporary readers to experience anew the insidious allure of a diabolical vice that the world has all but forgotten.




The Drug and Other Stories


Book Description

Edited, with an Introduction, by William Breeze. Foreword by David Tibet. This volume brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947). Crowley was a successful critic, editor and author of fiction from 1908 to 1922, and his short stories are long overdue for discovery. Of the fifty-two stories in the present volume, only thirty were published in his lifetime. Most of the rest appear here for the first time. Like their author, Crowley's stories are fun, smart, witty, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling. They are set in places he had lived and knew well: Belle Epoque Paris, Edwardian London, pre-revolutionary Russia and America during the first World War. The title story The Drug stands as one of the first - if not the first - accounts of a psychedelic experience. His Black and Silver is a knowing early noir discovery that anticipates an entire genre. Atlantis is a masterpiece of occult fantasy, a dark satire that can stand with Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Frank Harris considered The Testament of Magdalen Blair the most terrifying tale ever written. Extensive editorial end-notes give full details about the stories.




The Writings of Aleister Crowley 2


Book Description

The Writings of Aleister Crowley 2 presents three essential texts by the black magick master: White Stains, The Psychology of Hashish and The Blue Equinox. Each work has been updated for the digital age with new formatting and punctuation, along with original footnotes and illustrations.




Diary of a Viagra Fiend


Book Description

This book is intended for mature audiences. Both the author and the publisher of this work must insist that none of the self-destructive lifestyles or poor decisions or sordid situations in this work be imitated. Read at your own risk. Diary of a Viagra Fiend Jayson Gallaway -- whose experimentation with the drug Viagra is at the ever-pounding heart (on) of this book -- presents an unflinching, uproarious collection of stories from the edge of sex. From dancing in S+M clubs to dough-nating sperm, naked soul-searching at the Burning Man festival to asking himself WWARD ("What Would Axl Rose Do?"), Gallaway's extraordinary tales of erotic adventure are sure to, in his own words, "blow some fire up the clammy and stagnant rectum of American literature."




Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley


Book Description

Written after his expulsion by Mussolini from the abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily, these records consolidate the work that Crowley began in Cefalu and explore more deeply the various techniques of cabalistic and sexual magic, as well as his contact with the Arab magic of North Africa.




The Works of Aleister Crowley Vol 1


Book Description

This is Volume One of a three-volume set, comprising much of Crowley's early material, written mostly between 1898-1902. His earliest works, written between 1887-1897, were almost entirely destroyed by authorities due to their offensive nature. In writing the material that appears in this volume, Crowley toned things down a notch and moved away from the more lurid and graphic sexual themes he had been primarily focused on. He concentrates almost entirely on religion and mythology in this collection. This reflects a time in his life when he was awakening to an important mystical and spiritual level. It can be seen by the reader how Crowley continues to grow and mature into more advanced ideas in the two remaining volumes, as well. It is hard to think of Crowley as a poet, but his style and advanced mystical vocabulary are unique and go beyond that of everyday poets. His plays are also interesting. Crowley once said that the last play, "Tanhauser: The Story of All Time," contained the theory of special relativity, which Einstein clarified more fully and scientifically three years later, in 1905. This volume contains four poems, five plays, four sections of shorter poems, an Epilogue, and an interesting Appendix on Qabalistic Dogma.




The Book of Goetia, Or the Lesser Key of Solomon the King [Clavicula Salomonis]. Introductory Essay by Aleister Crowley.


Book Description

2010 Reprint of 1903 Edition. The Book of Goetia, or the Lesser Key of Solomon the King [Clavicula Salomonis]. Introductory essay by Aleister Crowley. The Lesser Key of Solomon or, Clavicula Salomonis, is an anonymous 17th-century grimoire, and one of the most popular books of demonology. It has also long been widely known as the Lemegeton. It appeared in the 17th century, but much was taken from texts of the 16th century and late-medieval grimoires. It is likely that books by Jewish kabbalists and Muslim mystics were also inspirations. Some of the material in the first section, concerning the summoning of demons, dates to the 14th century or earlier. The book claims that it was originally written by King Solomon, although this is certainly incorrect. The Lesser Key of Solomon contains detailed descriptions of spirits and the conjurations needed to invoke and oblige them to do the will of the conjurer (referred to as the "exorcist"). It details the protective signs and rituals to be performed, the actions necessary to prevent the spirits from gaining control, the preparations prior to the invocations, and instructions on how to make the necessary instruments for the execution of these rituals.




Iced


Book Description

“Iced is a powerhouse. . . . Ray Shell writes beautifully. The story is heartbreaking. I kept putting it down and picking it up again—it won’t let me go.”—Maya Angelou A timeless tale of one man’s decline into the depths of addiction that is at both a shocking study of the addict’s life, and a deeply compelling and often uplifting tale of human love and loss. First published at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic thirty years ago, Ray Shell’s “powerhouse” (Maya Angelou) of a novel is as timely and relevant today as it was in 1994. It is the story of Cornelius Washington, a young upper-middle-class Black man blessed with burning talent and ambition, who enjoys experimenting with drugs—a dangerous pastime that gradually becomes a destructive addiction. Now a middle-aged crackhead, Cornelius ponders his life and the choices that have led him here. Written as a series of immersive stream of consciousness diary entries, Iced captures the despair and dashed dreams of a man caught between the harsh realities of his present and the adventures and upheavals of his past—a youth marked by a host of characters both intriguing and terrifying. A complicated man both compelling and maddening, sympathetic and defiant, Cornelius tries desperately to break free from his addiction, a struggle that ends in defeat time and time again. Despite the thought loops that lead to his bad choices, this painfully realistic character elicits hope for his survival, even though he will likely meet a devastating end. Resonant and haunting, illuminating and heartbreaking, Iced paints a portait of being Black in America, and the ways in which marginalized communities are targeted and ignored, left to suffer the consequences of policies made by powerful people ignorant and uncaring of their lives. It is a novel that transcends time, offering a glimpse of the past that is present in our lives today.