Dope in the Age of Innocence

Ibiza 1960: an unknown and unspoiled Mediterranean outpost destined to become the most famous party island in the world. No tourists, no rules. For a bunch of near-penniless artists, beautiful people, beat-generation bohemians, bums, it offers freedom, free love, cheap booze, bennies, Moroccan grass, American jazz. Aged 20, Enright was in the heart of it. Early to take to the road, he'd dropped out of middleclass Irish life and gone to London. By chance, he hears about Ibiza, goes there and then returns with his wife and their twin sons hoping to live a year on two hundred pounds. They love it. The foreign bar, a cellar down steps on the unlit waterfront, is the genesis of all that is to come, "After dark, the door was like a hole blasted in the wall by sound. Out of it, into the silent night, poured the wildest, freest, most innovative music most of us had ever heard." But, soon, for her, another lover: for him, Heartbreak Hotel. He licks his wounds in London, returns with another partner, another child.Together and alone, they take LSD. Inspired by visions of a brave new world, they move to nearby timeless Formentera. When their money's gone, he and two desperado friends head to London in his rattletrap car and do travellers-cheque scams. Back in Formentera, restless for more adventure, he swaps the car for a beat-up VW van and, with an American pal, embarks on a trip to Turkey in the depths of winter to buy hashish for himself and the small Formentera tribe. They make it back to Spain, but things go badly wrong. Enright finds himself a fugitive from the law, at the mercy of unreliable friends lost in their own opium-induced euphoria. Dope in The Age of Innocence is a road story and a love story. It has the pace of a thriller and is a parable about drug 'enlightenment' and the loss and rediscovery of love.