Chasing the Scream The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs - Book Review

Taking pages from Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism and Mark Twain’s storytelling, Johann Hari’s first book, Chasing the Scream, is a poignant and gripping read from cover to cover. Delving into one of the most controversial topics in modern politics, Johann Hari made sure his scream was heard. Hari’s research and arguments can all be consolidated into one big message: ending the merciless war on drugs.

The book was both criticized and praised by critics, the public, and even scientists. Hari’s take on the war on drugs was relentless in showing not just the political discrepancies, but the capitalistic and political agendas ensuring that the gears of war stay oiled.

Johann’s journalistic instincts drove him to 9 different countries, conducting interviews with addicts, lawmakers, previous Mexican cartel members, police officers, scientists, and more. The book took about 3 years to be written due to the vast amount of research that had to be done on such a close level to forbidden and uncharted territories.

Johan made sure to mention big names highly relevant to the narrative of the drug war in the last 100 years. His focus was on early figures like the musician Billie Holiday, mob boss Arnold Rothstein, and the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger.

The first half of Chasing the Scream is full of shocking interviews and meetings with sidelined members of the society that were in the first lines of the war on drugs. Recordings of many interviews were made available by Johann online, in addition to over 60 pages of documentation in the form of notes on his sources and interviews.

From a transsexual drug dealer looking for their lost mother to a Mexican gang member looking to escape a life of misery, Johann manages to paint a portrait of the true extent of the radical war on drugs.

Hari used the “Rat Park” studies as a focal point in the narrative to show the major problems associated with addiction and how society stigmatizes it.

The Canadian psychologist Bruce K. Alex designed a series of experiments that tried to further elaborate on his hypothesis that drugs do not cause addictions. The experiment was mentioned at length in the book. The short version was that rats were categorized into 4 groups, and each group lived under different conditions, all exposed to morphine-laced water.

The stressful environment of certain groups made its rats lean towards drinking the morphine water, sometimes to the point of death. The more their environment improved, the more they were avoiding morphine water.

Many critics and other psychologists criticized the nature and results of the experiment, which the book had made even more popular.

The results of the experiment were rejected by Science and Nature, two major academic publishers, but were later on published in Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior. Johan’s main approaches to the treatment of addiction and curbing overdoses revolved around the hypotheses that suggested that the surrounding environment in all its stresses was the leading cause of people turning to drugs as a resolution. Many recovering addicts shone in on the topic and reinforced the conclusion of Alexander’s experiments.