In the spirit of Alex Garland's The Beach, Decca Aitkenhead travels around the world in search of the perfect E and the perfect clubbing experience, 10 years after her first clubbing days in Manchester. Her journey links downtown Detroit with the townships of Cape Town, and beatnik San Francisco with Thailand's beach parties. While searching for the perfect pill, unintended encounters with dubious characters sometimes reveal she has travelled far from transcendence. While in Cape Town she meets the most notorious South African gangster and finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun in the hands of a dealer who is neither sober nor sane.