Playing Chicken With Thanatos

The long-awaited debut book from Díre McCain, editor of Paraphilia Magazine.

Playing Chicken With Thanatos tells a hard-hitting yet sympathetic tale of a precocious forgotten child who sought refuge in self-annihilation, and ultimately had to choose between doom and survival.

Set primarily in Southern California in the 1980s and 90s, the narrator takes you headlong on an intensely revealing and turbulent odyssey through the abysses of madness and junkiedom to the peaks of liberation and personal evolution.

Born from the author’s harrowing formative experiences, Playing Chicken With Thanatos transcends autobiography, evades the niche of vicarious voyeurism, and reaches out an empathetic, nonjudgmental hand to anyone who’s ever teetered over that ineffable precipice.

“Díre McCain has given us a mesmerizing, startling, lyrical addition not just to the literature of drugs and madness, but to literature itself.” — Nick Tosches