Diary of a Drug Fiend was Aleister Crowley's first published novel, and is also reportedly the earliest known reference to the Abbey of Thelema in Sicily. The story is widely thought to be based upon Crowley's own drug experiences, despite being written as a fiction. This seems almost conclusively confirmed by Crowley's statement in the novel's preface: "This is a true story. It has been rewritten only so far as was necessary to conceal personalities."

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

Announcing a major new comic talent -- from dancing in S+M clubs to snorting Viagra, a brilliant, unflinching, and uproaurious set of stories from the edge of sex. It all starts when "Lolita," Jayson Gallaway's nineteen-year-old girlfriend, delays their connubial bliss by deciding to alphabetize their CD collection. Little does she know, however, that Gallaway has recently ingested Viagra to see what happens. Well, the entire city of San Francisco can see what's happened -- for God's sake, it's hard to miss. But by the time the CDs have been arranged, the light of morning isn't the only thing that's soft. So Gallaway does what any self-respecting lover would do: He crushes the last little blue pill and snorts it. Though it "burns like nothing I've ever snorted in my life," the moment of madness leads to " a physical congress that is indeed the stuff of legend." And so begins Jayson Gallaway's hilarious ride around his libido, a titillating, tumultuous, and downright funny trek with stops on the TV show 20/20, quality time with the San Francisco fire department and their metal cutter, at Burning Man, and in a slew of sex and S+M clubs. By the time we reach his attempt to donate sperm (for financial gain, you understand), we're almost expecting his mom to call. And then she does so, right in the mid-tug. "Be a good boy and God Bless," she says, before hanging up. With unmatched candor and an eye for side-splitting one-liners, Jayson Gallaway proves himself to be a sort of David Sedaris of the bedroom. Diary of a Viagra Fiend is a stupendously funny debut from a passionately outspoken humorist.

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.

Diary of a Drug Fiend was Aleister Crowley's first published novel. To the reader of 1922 it presented a shocking look at a little know phenomenon. Today, while we are more familiar with drugs because of their widespread use in our culture, Diary of a Drug Fiend remains one of the most intense, detailed and accurate accounts of drug addiction and the drug experience.

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.