CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER

Describing the surreal hallucinations, insomnia and nightmarish visions he experienced while consuming daily large amounts of laudan um, Thomas De Quincey's legendary account of the pleasures and pains of opium forged a link between artistic self-expression and add iction, and paved the way for later generations of literary drug-takers from Baudelaire to Burroughs.