Transcript
Adam Zmith writes: The thing I’m asked most often about my book on ‘poppers’ is why did I start looking into this drug that you sniff. Even though I am not an academic researcher, my answer is probably the same as theirs would be: because no one else was doing it. That’s the thing about research and writing, whatever the final output: you’re driven to do it because there are things to be found out. And when it comes to poppers and their place within queer subcultures, I discovered plenty.
The book is called Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures. It is very much a history, rather than the history, because there is nothing definitive about any history, ever. I’m not sure if academic historians agree with that or not, but that’s my view. The fact is that I found the story of poppers to be full of dead ends and stealthy stories. Poppers is an incredibly popular drug, especially in rich countries like the UK and the USA, and especially among gay men. And yet, there’s hardly any broad cultural awareness of it. Even people who never touch cocaine know a lot about that drug, and have seen it featured a lot in films and music.
I assume poppers are less well known beyond the groups who use them because we’ve kept our use on the downlow. As with our sexuality, for most of the twentieth century, and up to today: queer sex and queer bodies trouble some people, and we don’t talk about them or represent them as much as we do other types. In earlier decades in the UK, the police actively persecuted men for having sex with each other. Poppers, then, are a bit of a secret because keeping secrets has kept us safe.
And yet, this and so many more stories about poppers, are the things that got me into looking into it. Like an academic on an uncharted path or a detective with a lead, I had to investigate. I traced a history of poppers back to 1844, when the first substance was synthesised, and 1867, when it was first used on an angina patient. Some time in the twentieth century poppers moved over from pain relief to pleasure, and thus became a huge part of sex culture. It’s funny what you find when you start looking.
Deep Sniff: A History of Poppers and Queer Futures is out from Repeater Books on September 14th and can be purchased here.
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