In this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London-and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey-under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum. Forging a link between artistic
self-expression and addiction, Confessions seamlessly weaves the
effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory, and imagination. First published in 1821, it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs, and anticipated
psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious.
It's a classic of course, but not very readable as pure entertainment.Probably the parts about his opium addiction, which are pages 44-88, are of most interest today. To be frank, most of the rest is…
