TWEAKERWORLD JASON YAMAS

Publication date: March 07, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-951213-70-1

Dimensions: 5.5x8.5

Pages: 288

Pre-sale $28.00

World English Rights (including UK):

Unnamed Press

Other rights: Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, Inc.

Meet Jason: a college educated documentary film producer, cat parent of two and one of San Francisco’s top drug dealers.

After Jason’s world falls apart in LA, he moves to Berkeley for a fresh start with his kid brother. Just one problem: his long-closeted Adderall addiction has exploded into an out-of-control crystal meth binge. Within weeks, Jason plunges into the sprawling ParTy n’ ’Play (PnP) subculture of the Bay Area’s gay community. It is a wildly decadent scene of drugs, group sex, and criminals, and yet it is also filled with surprising characters, people who are continually subverting Jason’s own presumptions of the stereotypical tweaker.

Soon Jason becomes a dealer on the pretense of researching this tweaker world for a project that will carry him, like a life raft, back to the shores of a normal life. But his friendly entrepreneurial spirit and trusting disposition disarm clients and rival dealers alike. The money begins to roll in as demand increases to frightening levels. Suddenly, Jason is in control of the entire crystal meth market for San Francisco’s gay community, even as he finds himself nodding off behind the wheel of his car or while walking down the sidewalk. As friends and family frantically work to steer him towards recovery, Jason resists, chasing something else: a sleepless nirvana fueled by sex, drugs, and the Tweakerworld.

With painful honesty, Jason Yamas has crafted a landmark narrative that is not just a personal account of addiction, but a portrait of a vulnerable, largely undocumented community of people who, for many reasons, have been marginalized to the point of invisibility.

Praise for Tweakerworld

“Reading Jason Yamas’s memoir of crystal meth addiction—and, yes, of hope, can itself be a redemptive act. But it is also in some odd, even troubling way, a pleasure which one realizes is what it feels like to be addicted.”

—Kevin

Sessums, Bestselling author of Mississippi Sissy and I Left It on the Mountain

“Tweakerworld is a profound examination of our worsening crystal meth crisis, its intersectionality with trauma and gay culture, and how one man fought to define— and love—himself amidst harrowing circumstances. At once heartbreaking and triumphant, Jason Yamas is unflinchingly brave with the lens he points at himself, addiction in its many forms, and the path to healing.”

—Reema Zaman, author of I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir

“There are few people brave enough to tell this story—and it’s one the world needs to hear—so what Jason Yamas has done with Tweakerworld is both groundbreaking and important. He traces the forces that lead a person into the world of PnP, captures the horror that lies in the wait, and the pathway out. This isn’t a story that would only appeal to those within this world, but one full of big themes that many will relate to—and all wrapped in powerful, distinct, first hand experience. Tweakerworld is a revelation.”

—Patrick Strudwick, BuzzFeed UK Journalist & Host of Audible’s Original Ed Buck Podcast

Jason Yamas is a queer writer producer, director, and actor. With the publication of Tweakerworld, he intends to shine a bright light on the worsening epidemic of crystal meth in the LGBTQ+ community. He holds a BFA from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts and is currently working on his first novel.