Jason Pine - The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition Audiobook

Written by The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition
Read by Jason Pine
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 96 Kbps

The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition
By Jason Pine
Narrated by Jason Pine
Release date: 01-28-20
Language: English
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Categories: Health & Wellness

About this listen

Meth cooks practice late industrial alchemy – transforming base materials, like lithium batteries and camping fuel, into gold

Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life”.

The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialization meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes methlabs possible. The Alchemy of Meth connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalized speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative.

By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a livable present - or even the hope of a future.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Jason Pine (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing