On Drugs

Giramondo Publishing Company, 2019. Good secondhand condition.

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.