Books about addiction

I think I was 13 or 14 when I first read Wir Kinder from Bahnhof Zoo from Christiane F. It’s a true story about a German girl in the seventies who starts to experiment with marihuana, moves on to try different pills and by the time she is 14 she is a heroin-addict and a prostitute behind the train station (Bahnhof Zoo) in Berlin. I found it fascinating that someone who was my age at the time had such a different life, and I was most intrigued by the fact that drugs could make you do things that I thought no one would ever have to do. After this book I read a couple other books about addicts and addiction of which I cannot find the English versions online anywhere. And for mandatory English reading in high school I read Trainspotting from Irvine Welsh. Both of these books are films too, if you don’t like reading.

I love reading about drug addiction, because I find it fascinating how drugs can change someone’s sense of what is important in life. The main reason though is that I’m curious what it feels like to take drugs but at the same time I am reluctant to try it for myself (okay I have tried a few things myself, but that is nothing compared to the people in these books). So I love the detailed descriptions of what it feels like to shoot up heroin so that I never have to try that myself. I live my junkie-life vicariously through these books.

  

Currently, I have almost finished reading Memoirs of an Addicted Brain by Marc Lewis, who is a neuroscientist himself. I’ll soon tell you what I thinkabout it!