In this absorbing book Henri Michaux investigates the operation of the human mind under drugs. The analysis of the author's own experiences links the disturbance induced by drugs with parallel states of mind afflicting the mentally alienated. His observations illuminate and dissect the machanics of human thought and feeling in the normal and abnormal states. Michaux has an extraordinary capacity to remain outside himself, to record, to annotate, to recall and to analyse, and his sustained awareness brings control and discipline to the experience of chaos. Reports from this territory of the mind have tended to be couched in exstatic meanderings verging on the inarticulate. Monsieur Michaux brings to bear in this mericulous survey the subtlety, the power and the vision of a poet. [Taken from the inside cover]