Author Wendy Chapkis will be reading from her new book "Dying to Get High: marijuana as medicine" at Bluestockings Bookstore in the East Village. The New York Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be officiating at the free event.

"Dying to Get High" is an account of seriously-ill patients -- many of them people living with AIDS -- fighting the federal government for the right to use physician-recommended marijuana. This moving account of what is at stake in the ongoing debates over medical marijuana draws not only on abstract argument but also on the much messier terrain of how people actually live, suffer and die.

“This is a most important book about the medical marijuana movement; lively and engaging, it will have broad appeal, not only to folks interested in the medical potential of cannabis, but also to those interested in an end to the drug war and those interested in grass roots activism.” - Paul Krassner Editor of Pot Stories for the Soul (High Times)

"Dying to Get High provides a human element to the history, pharmacology, psychology, and politics of medical marijuana in a way that no other work has. The book is as riveting as a detective novel, as informative as a textbook, and as moving as a romance." - Mitch Earleywine Author of Understanding Marijuana (Oxford University Press)

About the author:

Wendy Chapkis is professor of Sociology and Women & Gender Studies at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, ME. She is the author of the award-winning book Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor and Beauty Secrets: Women and the Politics of Appearance.

For more information about the book (including book reviews): http://dyingtogethigh.net