One of the major theoretical and empirical challenges in social drug research is to capture and understand the variety of meanings attached to taking drugs and to being intoxicated. The purpose of this book is to further those research efforts. The central theme is the meaning of high and the authors address this from different professional perspectives, using different methods and different samples. The result is a kaleidoscopic picture. No single generic meaning of high emerges, but a whole range of meanings come under scrutiny.
All the authors of this volume help to build a better understanding of the meaning of high, but whereas some are mainly interested in fundamental biomedical questions or in contributing to theory development in the social sciences, others want to give a voice to particular groups of drug users. These varying perspectives also echo, some more explicitly than others, differing viewpoints on the relationship between research and policy.

Marije Wouters is an assistant Professor at the Bonger Institute of Criminology, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Jane Fountain is a research consultant and an Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom.
Dirk J Korf is a professor in Criminology and director of the Bonger Institute of Criminology at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.