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Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 By Martin Torgoff ( Simon & Schuster )
Release Date: 2005-05-03
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Product Description
From the narcotic allure of the bebop and Beat generations to the psychedelic 1960s, Vietnam, the cocaine-fueled disco era, the crack epidemic, and the ecstasy-induced rave culture, illegal drugs have profoundly shaped America's cultural landscape. In Can't Find My Way Home, journalist and filmmaker Martin Torgoff chronicles what a long strange trip it's been as the American Century became the Great Stoned Age.Weaving together first-person accounts and historical background, Can't Find My Way Home is a narrative vast in scope yet rich in intimate detail. Torgoff tells the stories of those whose lives became synonymous with the drug culture, from Charlie Parker, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and John Belushi to ordinary people who felt their consciousness "expanded" or who plumbed the depths of addiction. He also examines the broader impact of drugs on society and politics, from the war on drugs to the recovery movement, and the continuing debate over drug policy. A vivid work of cultural history that neither demonizes nor romanticizes its subject, Can't Find My Way Home is a provocative and fascinating look at how drugs have entered the American mainstream.
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Amazon.com Review
Martin Torgoff came of age just about the same time as the drug boom, a circumstance that informs his overview of America's "Great Stoned Age." Chronicling the irrepressible onslaught of mind-altering substances from the end of World War II through the close of the century, Torgoff (whose previous publishing efforts have centered around rockers Elvis Presley and John Cougar Mellencamp) intersperses the personal with the historical. Laying the groundwork with his own recollections of indulgence beginning in the late 1960s, the author flashes back to the Beat era, which he asserts opened the door for all that followed. Interviews with the obscure and celebrated add color and detail to the chronicle. Here's Herbert Huncke, the unapologetic hustler and heroin addict who lurked on the periphery of '50s bohemian scene and turned up as a character in William Burroughs' pulp memoir Junkie. Into the 1960s, there's acid guru Timothy Leary, poet Allan Ginsburg, record producer Paul Rothchild, Woodstock MC Wavy Gravy, and others caught up in a wave of revolutionary experimentation and excess. The '70s leads to the cocaine craze (embodied here by party girl Suzie Ryan), which begets drug wars (with plenty of casualties on both sides), Just Say No, the crack epidemic, and rave culture. While Torgoff's tome is too capricious to serve as the final word on America's drug obsession, it's eminently readable and entertaining, thanks to its expansive, pop-culture-informed tone. There's an almost insane momentum to this tale, with dozens of astonishing twists and turns. Imagine Jimmy Carter's drug czar, Dr. Peter Bourne, snorting cocaine at a party thrown the by pot legalization group NORML. Then picture George H.W. Bush's point man on drugs, William Bennett, remarking in an interview that it would be "morally plausible" to behead drug dealers. So much for moderation. --Steven Stolder
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 Brutally Honest Look at the American Drug Culture!!
A highly entertaining academic work that attempts to bust out of the classroom. With using the authors lifeline as the 1945-2000 period choice, to his interview with a true-life unrepentant lifelong drug user, to even sprinkling his personal experiences with illicit treats, the author makes the myriad of information accessible to us all. Can't Find My Way Home covers the whole of drug usage and combines, or rather, mirrors the various regions and times of America with the variable popular culture of music, film, art and literature. What did Charlie Parker like to take with his Heroin? What was Andy Warhol and the Chelsea Girls drug of choice. How much did cocaine abuse affect the making of Scarface? These and all kinds of delicious tid-bits are woven throughout this powerful and entertaining tome!!PILATE: A Brutal Bible Tale
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Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 ( tp2r )
An excellent and very detailed history of drugs and its impact on our society. The book is thoroughly researched. It's entertaining and very readable. It's not only a review of the history of drugs in American society but also covers a number of individuals and the effect narcotics had on them. I found it fascinating and scary. Having lived through those turbulent times it brought back many memories.
Pictures and a summary of the cast of characters would have enhanced the book. All in all a good read.
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So what is the answer? ( rmathewriter )
If you have been there then you know the answer. The question is: Why did we travel there in the first place. Addictions are sneaky. Sometimes we write about them, other times we fight them. Addicted movie stars are just addicts. Hard drugs have no respect for who we are.
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 California Al
I wanted to be interested in this book, but it became pretty boring ater a while. There is an undercurrent of romanticism that pervades the authors purpose. He claims to be neutral, yet his descriptions and conversations with many of the people slant towards idol worship. Although the author claims to be in recovery, I did not get the sense of how drugs and alcohol can ruin peoples lives. I felt that his narrative was self serving, and glorifying the wonders of drugs and experimentation. There is a price to pay. What was good was hearing his father's take on the whole down side of watching his son grow up loaded. That was interesting. I'm getting weary of the proselytizing about how epochal the 1960's, 70's and 80's were. I didn't like his picture either.
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GREAT BOOK FOR UNIVERSITY COURSES!!!
I'm reading this book a bit at a time. Each part is like a little history lesson - full of specific people, places and things that I've heard a lot of stories about - usually from folks who didn't have a great deal of clarity when they were either living through them OR speaking about them. Torgoff has that clarity and there's humor in his prose that gives it a certain kind of bop. Yes, it's a long book. Most people who write long books these days write them as if they are "afraid of going to hell" for having done so - there's no ease, things get really claustrophobic in such books. Torgoff sails through this material not so much like a man who's afraid of going to hell...but as a man who's been there. There's a kind of ease, a kind of compassion and a sense of spaciousness to Torgoff's style in this work. The length of the book doesn't seem that long. Maybe it would SEEM LONGER if Torgoff attempted to adapt his style to the demands of the market...some kind of a weekly reader version of the lifes, legends, loves (and drugs) of the times he's telling us about. Thank GOD he didn't cave into that. Can't Find My Way Home makes me want to listen to a hell of a lot of music, see some movies again and read more books about the myriad folks who inhabit this book. I see this book as a definite college text for classes focusing on the the history of jazz, rock and roll, film and literature in the last sixty years of American culture. The fact that Torgoff weaves his own story into this piece communicates to me that he's not of those people who goes around chanting phrases like "If you remember the 60's you weren't there". Torgoff indicates to the reader that he was "there" and that he managed to extricate himself from the oblivion of those times through either the grace of God, or his own luck, karma or whatever. Thus, Torgoff's writing in this book is infused with a kind of all pervasive sharpness, like the razor edge of a hatchet, that only comes from the words of those who have lived...and survived. I have a sense that Torgoff has been swinging this blade for some time...I suspect he's cut through a great deal of his own personal reference points in order to find the patience and perseverance to not only deliver this work...but to have the humility to title the work as he has. Bravo!!
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Addiction
