There is a special relationship between writers and drugs. From De Quincey to Huxley, Baudelaire to Burroughs, writers have fused stimulants with the creative urge; blurring experimentation with need and desire with addiction.

Recent times have seen a significant upsurge in stimulant-based writing. Intoxication features some of the best of this new fiction from both British and American writers like Irvine Welsh, Lynne Tillman, Jeff Noon and Gary Indiana, fictions which explore themes closely related to the preoccupation of the 'chemical generation'. Whether as user, observer or reformed cynic, the writer's response in the anthology is astoundingly eclectic. Offering a rollercoaster ride with all the hedonistic highs and paranoid poignancy of a drug itself, intoxication is a stand-out gathering of some of the most innovative and entertaining writers of the 1990s.