"Although serious in purpose, The Pursuit of Oblivion contains a dazzling array of strange, amusing and macabre stories. It reveals the intimate drug habits of Sir Christopher Wren, Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Gladstone, Freud, George IV, Queen Victoria, Marilyn Monroe, John Kenneth Galbraith, W.H. Auden and Anthony Eden (to name just a few); the role of enterprises such as the East India Company, Jardine-Matheson and Glaxo in distributing drugs (especially opiates); the part played by war in expanding drug use; the origins of the different policies of Britain and the United States, Holland and Switzerland, Thailand and Indonesia; the routes by which narcotics are transported around the world (including a brilliant account of the murderous career of the Colombian cocaine warlord, Pablo Escobar); and the evolution of attitudes towards, and taboos about, illicit substances."--Jacket.