Tweakerworld · Zodiac · Scientology

Friends, it’s hard when a memoir portrays a period that resides in recent memory. Such was my initial reaction to Tweakerworld, a book from former San Franciscan Jason Yamas, a self-described “meth lord” who dealt drugs in the city’s gay clubs in the long-ago days of the 2010s.

Right now, SF is in the news every day as a place overrun with folks with substance use disorder, with fentanyl as the drug du jour. (This media portrayal is false, but you don’t need me to tell you that and, tbh, if it means rent goes down it’s not the worst PR we can get, so…) But it wasn’t that long ago that meth ruled the game, not just for folks who relied on daily use to maintain, but for a sizable percentage of people who were out to have a good time.

It’s that latter population that Yamas served: he wasn’t a dealer a tourist might pass going to or from a Union Square hotel, one of those guys muttering “chiva” as you walk by. The writer moved to San Francisco in 2015 from L.A., a former NYU film student who fell into SF’s party and play scene of sex parties that involve drugs.