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Thoughts for a toxicological manifesto:

1. Drugs are normal. Read the statistics or just open a newspaper, go to the movies or to a club on Saturday night: the use of drugs, even illicit drugs, has become a social norm. Taking them is no longer associated with avant-garde thought and rebellion. In the 70s drugs, along with terrorism, were still regarded as a last resort in social protest. Today the willingness to sacrifice one's life for drugs seems passé. The last major pop star in a long line of age 27 drug deaths was Kurt Cobain in 1994, effectively marking the end of romantic drug addict era. Today's drug abuse does nothing but add some spice to a celebritiy's CV (as long as they show up at the set in time) and the marijuana industry in California is flourishing.

2. Drugs are fast. Be it Novalis, Lord Byron or Thomas De Quincey - it wasn't redemption in the hereafter they wanted, they wanted it now in the form of a high. Baudelaire spoke of it in terms of the "artificial paradises," for which opium and hashish were particularly well-suited - mood-elevating drugs that soothe at the same time. The discovery of the stimulant cocaine was the beginning of a high for the here and now. One forerunner for this new drug practice was Sigmund Freud. Taking cocaine spurred the Viennese doctor's exceptional sexual and intellectual performance, culminating in his theory of psychoanalysis. And even this is related to the cocaine high: the need to dig around in your own past, the belief that the solution is talking things over, the indefatigability. A three-hour conversation in a nightclub bathroom stall, pausing only to "blow" again and again in shorter and shorter intervals feels like a quickie analysis.

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1. My own bookcover, blown up for the booklaunch (as seen in the last blog entry). On a scale of self obsession, staring at it ranks (hopefully) significantly lower than googling myself and I'm simply in love with the acid blue. Our designer Judith Banham started with the so-called smiley, a simplistic logo that was around on coffee mugs and as a jeans sticker for more than two of decades before it got taken hostage by the rave culture in the late 80s. The broad and somewhat pointless smile became symbol for the profound and seemingly everlasting happiness caused by a new drug called ecstasy. Later came the stories of pill-popping people dying in clubs of dehydration and a guy in England took so much ecstasy that years later he suffered from depression and memory loss. Also his jaw muscles were so stiff, that he could hardly open his mouth (see "Alleged maximum doses, survived").

2. A photo of Andy Warhol taken by his companion Christopher Makos. The artist is wearing a white Farrah-Fawcett-wig, heavy make-up and lipstick. Warhol was a so-called narcovoyeur. He enhanced his performance in the early days by taking speed but later his main vice was watching other people getting messed up. "I wonder if Edie will commit suicide", he said about his former muse Edie Sedgwick. "I hope she lets me know so I can film it". When Steve Rubell, the owner of Studio 54, gave him Quaaludes, Warhol kept them and considered selling them. His most efficient drug after all was money.

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Why this book now?

Drugs seem to be a rather timeless subject (check the opium recipes of the ancient Romans in our book) but lately there were a lot of celebrities struggling with substance use and abuse. The craze and hypocrisy surrounding these stories caused a) an unsurpressable curiosity regarding the effect of drugs on people, politics and culture and b) an urge to take a sober look on drugs: nonjudgmental, bipartisan and thorough.

Where does this book come from?

The idea was born in a bar in Berlin/Mitte - probably one of the most likely places to come up with such a concept given the reputation of Berlin as one of the world capitals of recreational excesses. Right after agreeing on form and subject of the book I moved to New York and my co-author Ingo Niermann climbed Mount Kilimandjaro. The Curious World of Drugs and Their Friends was written between Kathmandu, Damascus, Fire Island and San Francisco. This required a lot of e-mailing and a few bouts of jetlag. But even our friendship endured.

Is this a confessional book?

Not really. Even our generous advance would not have been sufficient to try all the substances mentioned in our book.

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Adriano Sack and Ingo Niermann are our guest bloggers during the week of September 29th. If you have any questions for them, add a comment to any of their posts. Here is some more information about The Curious World of Drugs and Their Friends: A Very Trippy Miscellany:

“Curiouser and curiouser” —fun and fascinating facts from the world of drugs.

Following in the tradition of The Ultimate Book of Useless Information, The Curious World of Drugs and Their Friends is a wry potpourri of interesting information about every conceivable kind of drug. Readers can feed their heads with anecdotes, facts, lists, statistics, and illustrations, including:

• The test results of animals on LSD—cats lose their fear of dogs, and goats walk in geometric patterns
• Drugs found in nature, from magic mushrooms to St. John’s wort to beaver secretions
• Celebrities who overdosed at age 27—Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones, and Jean Michel-Basquiat
• Imaginary drugs in literature and film, from spice the mélange in Dune to Moloko plus in A Clockwork Orange
• Nicknames for a joint—from doobie to giggly stick to Mr. Boom Bizzle
• The global percentages of adults who have used cannabis—.004 percent in Singapore and 12.6 percent in the United States
• The uses of opium in ancient Rome—from treatments for insomnia and epilepsy to colic and deafness
• The most glamorous rehab clinics and their celebrity alumni
• Mini-biographies of the biggest drug kingpins around the world