"A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world's oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery. natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu . But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin's every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction from quitting cold turkey to taking the cure at a Buddhist
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