Bob Arctor stays in a house where he and his roommates are all drug users, but he is in fact an undercover police agent assigned to spy on his own household. Moreover, based on the laws of the time, he hides his identity from his police colleagues as well as his roommates. While posing as a drug user, he gets addicted to a dangerous narcotic called Substance D that he obtains from his girlfriend Donna, while at the same time, he is also investigating the high-level dealers of Substance D.
If this is confusing, the dissociation for Bob is far worse. He is unable to even reconcile to the fact that he is, indeed, Bob Arctor. His superior even suggests that this may be the case, but he rejects it outright. In an ironic twist, it turns out his girlfriend Donna is also an undercover agent, investigating a rehabilitation centre called New-Path, and enrols Bob into the centre.
At the centre, Bob is subject to some cruel group games intended to break the will, and suffers from some serious neuro-cognitive issues because of this former addiction. After discharge, he works at a commune farm, and notices that the the main “crop” is actually the source of substance-D, closing the whole loop.
The story is a fictionalized account of Dick’s own experiences in the 1970’s drug culture, and his experience with amphetamines and herion addiction and recovery from the same. While I personally was not greatly impressed with this book, it was reviewed very favourably by many critics. I still prefer Dick’s short stories, and he remains the absolute master of mind-bending science fiction where he examines the nature of the mind and effortlessly subverts expectations.