The Dope Trail

"You see, I needed to go to hell," begins Nick Tosches' account of his search for the last best place. And my heart sank. Why? Because when Hemingway's protagonist Nick Adams sets off with his adored and adoring kid sister for the last good country, you know it's going to be beautiful and perfect the way they live on fish and berries; and when the surfers in that movie The Endless Summer seek the perfect wave, tranquil gratificationas syncopated by the Beach Boyswill be the order of the day; and when somebody decides to smoke a little opium, it's not because...