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Review [published July 2003]
Stuart Walton: Out Of It
Chris Mitchell
Given the jacket cover emblazoned with dayglo euphemisms
for getting altered and the obligatory chortling
review quotes from numerous lad mags, you’d be forgiven
for wondering at first glance if Stuart Walton’s
book is a paragon of research sobriety. But rather than
being another cheap cash-in on the still-burgeoning UK
drug scene, Out Of It proves to be a radical and challenging
rethink to current day perceptions about drugs
and their usage, whether legal or not.
Instead of making any sort of pretence towards argumentative
objectivity, Walton firmly states his case
early on by declaring his own experience and interest
in taking drugs and his contention that becoming intoxicated
is a fundamental human drive rather than an
optional experience, as strong as the primal needs for
food, water and sex. Indeed, Out Of It is partly written
in reaction to the censure from government and medical
establishments which continually attempt to restrict
the populace’s intake of anything which might bring
them pleasure.
This is a refreshingly honest approach to a subject
about which most writers have pretended they have no
BUY Stuart Walton books online from and
first hand knowledge, and Walton’s narrative feels similarly
unfettered. There is a distinct academic rigour at
work in the structure of the book, but Out Of It remains
eminently readable whilst drawing on a huge range
of sources, both historical and contemporary, for and
against, to indicate the lengths (and depths) to which
humans have always been impelled to find ways to
change their reality and the fallout of doing so. Indeed,
it becomes difficult to argue with Walton’s thesis that
we are impelled towards intoxication, however much
society might attempt to stop us. Or maybe that’s just
the predilections of this particular writer.
The numerous political and practical arguments concerning
the hypocrisy and ultimate failure of the War
On Drugs are well-rehearsed and well-rehearsed here,
but the half-baked theories of drug culture luminaries
such as Terence McKenna and Aldous Huxley do not
get an easy ride either. While being convinced of the
intoxication imperative is one thing, whether the reader
will go along with Walton’s advocacy of legalisation
for all drugs is a different matter, because the fallout of
doing so is so difficult to predict.
529
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