Adam Zmith analyzes the cultural forces and connections underlying the practice of inhaling poppers and its links to identity, capitalism, and sex.
Three, two, one… take a deep breath! From Victorian hospitals to 1970s sex clubs, popper vapor has unleashed the queer potential in many of us.
This is the surprising story of how poppers went from the laboratory to gay bars, corner shops, bedrooms, and porn films. Combining historical research with ironic observation, Adam Zmith explores the cultural forces and unlikely connections behind the power of poppers.
But the book in your hands is not just a story of pub raids, viral phobias, and massive chests; it is a collection of fresh and provocative ideas about identity, sex, utopia, capitalism, law, freedom, and the bodies through which we experience the world.
In fact, Deep Inhalation. History of the popper and queer futures, which begins as an investigation into poppers, becomes a necessary manifesto in favor of pleasure.
“Absorbing, unrestrained, deeply documented, and absolutely festive, Deep Inhalation is exactly the kind of queer history we need right now” (Richard Scott, author of Soho)
“A fascinating and joyful story, sociological and personal, of an underrated drug. Zmith manages to capture not only the history of poppers and their role in queer life but also some of their ineffable chemical pleasure” (Huw Lemmey, author of Unknown Language)
“A long-overdue book about poppers and their extended pleasures. Deep Inhalation is a dizzying, shameless high that doesn’t need to be refrigerated after opening” (Mark Simpson, author of Saint Morrissey: A Portrait of This Charming Man by an Alarming Fan)
“A pharmaco-nursery of sensory pleasures” (So Mayer, author of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing)
