Narcotics - writings on drugs by Witkacy

Narcotics: Nicotine, Alcohol, Cocaine, Peyote, Morphine, Ether + Appendices by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz / ISBN 9788086264486 / 200-page hardcover from Twisted Spoon Press A top notch production. *** In the vein of the well-known drug writings of De Quincey and Baudelaire from a century earlier and those of his contemporaries Walter Benjamin and Jean Cocteau –- and foreshadowing the later writings of Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castaneda on psychoactive drugs –- Witkacy composed Narcotics in 1930 to discuss and document not only his own experimentation with different substances but the nature of addiction itself and the prevailing social attitude toward drugs, particularly those that were considered “acceptable.” As life became increasingly mechanized, Witkacy felt that a sense of the metaphysical could only be achieved by artificial means, and like Henri Michaux, he produced an extensive oeuvre of singular visual art while under the influence of a variety of substances. Meandering, ace