Party Time

Shaun Attwood left a small English industrial town for Phoenix, Arizona, with little money and a business degree. Within ten years he had made himself a millionaire trading stocks, yet he was living two lives at once. His route into that second life began with a first Ecstasy tablet, taken as a shy student at a Manchester rave, and the party culture it opened up soon reshaped his ambitions.

Years later, in the Arizona desert, he was pulled into a criminal underworld. He organised parties that drew thousands of revellers and ran an Ecstasy operation that competed with the Mafia, including the mass murderer Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano. Along the way he crossed paths with contract killers and users of crystal methamphetamine, spent wild nights with famous DJs and the women who followed the scene, and consumed enough narcotics to fell a herd of elephants.

The account traces how money and excess gradually consumed his life, moving from the British rave scene to the American desert and the dangers that came with it.