Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience

•An anthology of writings by some of the most influential women in history on the often misunderstood and misrepresented female drug experience.

•With great honesty, bravery, and frankness, women from diverse backgrounds write about their drug experiences.

Women have been experimenting with drugs since prehistoric times, and yet published accounts of their views on the drug experience have been relegated to either antiseptic sociological studies or sensationalized stories splashed across the tabloids. The media has given us an enduring, but inaccurate, stereotype of a female drug user: passive, addicted, exploited, degraded, promiscuous. But the selections in this anthology--penned by such famous names as Billie Holiday, Anais Nin, Maya Angelou, and Carrie Fisher--show us that the real experiences of women are anything but stereotypical."

Sisters of the Extremeprovides us with writings by women from diverse occupations and backgrounds, from prostitute to physician, who through their use of drugs dared cross the boundaries set by society--often doing so with the hope of expanding themselves and their vision of the world. Whether with LSD, peyote, cocaine, heroine, MDMA, or marijuana, these women have sought to reach, through their experimentation, other levels of consciousness. Sometimes their quests have brought unexpected rewards, other times great suffering and misfortune. But wherever their trips have left them, these women have lived courageously--if sometimes dangerously--and written about their journeys eloquently.

Women Writing on the Drug Experience

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Images of Women and Drugs in Myth and History

Opium and the Victorian Imagination

Expatriates and Vagabonds

Mainline Ladies

Psychedelic Pioneers

Beats and Hippies

Choosers and Abusers

Shaman Women at the End of the Millennium