Viper - Raymond Thorp

THE TRUE AND TERRIFYING STORY OF A DRUG ADDICT

WDL BOOKS T.S.891

FIRST PRINTING 1960

LONDON, UK

FIRST PUBLISHED IN HARDBACK BY ROBERT HALE 1956

The Confessions of a Drug Addict

For the first time in this country since de Quincey, a drug addict has written his astounding confessions; a documentary that horrifies yet compels the reader to walk with Thorp into the half-light of London's drug world.

The author, a young clerk from suburbia, haunts the jazz clubs of Soho and finally begins to smoke Indian hemp - or marijuana. It is the first step on the road to prison and to a living death. Soon he is a "pusher" - agent for a drug ring selling hemp and heroin. He tells how London's two big dealers obtain their supplies, how they are distributed and where they are sold. Thorp holds nothing back. He writes of clubs and cafes where addicts gathered until Scotland Yard's vice squad, by raiding them, split up the gatherings. At one time he is living in a luxury flat, bought from the proceeds of illegal sales, but slowly he begins to slide to degradation.