Addictions Books

College-level students of social and health issues will find DRUNK THE NIGHT BEFORE: AN ANATOMY OF INTOXICATION provides a strong cultural history of convivial drinking before the idea of drink as an addiction overcame alcohol's reputation as a creative and even a spiritual force. DRUNK THE NIGHT BEFORE focuses on the overall human history of drink from ancient times to the 20th century, following its treatment in the arts, religion, and through society. Alcohol holds a mixed history, being viewed as both miracle potion and as a poison: DRUNK THE NIGHT BEFORE reveals both aspects of alcohol's history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

What a great book, It realy teaches you all you need to know about physicall and psychologicall addiction. Did you know that all it takes to turn yourself into a nonsmoker are 2 weeks?. This book's reading I highly recommend.

"Every culture and subculture gets the drugs that it deserves," writes Douglas Rushkoff in his forward to Tim Pilcher's e: The Incredibly Strange History of Ecstasy, "In fact, almost every major cultural movement in history can be traced back to the chemicals it did or did not have." This is a profound point -- it makes sense that the Thirty Years War was fought by people who had beer soup with a side of beer from breakfast, lunch and supper from the time they were three, and that the English Romantic poets were drowning in opium dreams, and that today's Los Angeles scenesters are enjoying a Molotov cocktail of ketamine and crystal meth. The human hunger for altered states of consciousness runs the gamut from beautiful to destructive, with a good dose of the pathetic and banal thrown in along the way.

e isn't a strange history at all, but it is a surprisingly comprehensive one. e traces methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) from its roots in a Merck research lab in Darmstadt, Germany in 1912 (when a chemist who was trying to stop bleeding from wounds accidentally created a happy pill instead), through its rave culture heyday, to its embattled present moment, demonstrating how the same substance can be feared as a devil drug, revered as a therapeutic tool, adored as a mind-expander, used to inspire a music scene and the cause of a moral panic. Ecstasy isn't the first drug with this complicated and powerful social effect -- Roman herbalists were sent to the mines for peddling magic plants -- but the details of its celebration and censure reveal all sorts of juicy truths about late 20th century media and culture.

It's not the first time people have scrambled around for an instant fix, for magical transformation without meditation practices or moral struggles or scholarship or effort, but by 1988, the "second Summer of Love," life had become so hyper-instant, and so contrived, that every spiritual or experiential hope and dream seemed to be contained in that little yellow (or pink or purple) pill. Rabbi Zalman Schachter's take on it is oddly sweet: "When God saw that people, instead of turning to God, were turning to the medicine cabinet, God made himself available in the medicine cabinet." Tim Pilcher, a pop culturalist who writes mostly on cannabis and comic books, is clearly a "Generation Ecstasy" insider. Yet somehow his treatment of the subject stays balanced and nuanced. He avoids getting druggie or scene-y, and he also avoids the strange, academic stiffness that mars other recent work on youth culture and raves.

Also, e is a delicious candy necklace of a book, with textured pills on the glossy black cover, blazing yellow sunbursts featuring first-person "serotonin stories," good pictures, and pages devoted to quotes from Keith Haring, George Michael, and former drug czar Barry McCaffrey. My friends were jealous that I had it, and I had to hide it in my bag at diners. Like many artifacts of MDMA culture, this history brings up a happy feeling.

Why is ecstasy the drug "deserved" by eighties and nineties rave culture? According to an organic chemistry professor who tried a "rhubarb and custard" with his girlfriend, it brings up the waves of euphoria associated with tai chi and other martial arts and practices of deep meditation. But unlike those lifelong practices, it has a "honeymoon period," feeding on excitement and novelty. After a while, the brain assimilates the MDMA experiences of oneness with the universe, euphoria, and "overwhelming feelings of well-being," and starts to get cranky. People start to compare their early, "perfect" trips with their later ones. However wonderful it felt, that feeling goes away, and you have to start the search for a new quick fix, a happier happy pill, or else you face a "crushing disappointment." Yes, there are police breaking up the rave, and yes, there are ever tougher laws banning "spiritual" or mind-altering drugs. But the real end of the party comes from within.

by ELIZABETH BACHNER

e-mail trouble: love and addiction @ the matrix, is a miraculous missive from the late S. Paige Baty. Part autobiography, part fiction, part theory, this book is unlike any other. I should note that I am not only a reader and reviewer of e-mail trouble, I am also a character: Sitting in a bar in Northern California, Paige and I began to write a comic book. Where previously we had played at being Maggie and Hopey of Love and Rockets, we re-invented ourselves as Dr. Rocket and Fly-bi-nightly in a world of our own. E-mail trouble is about trying to live, to love, to be in the world. The book is a love letter to Paige's many friends, but it is also an important theoretical work, one that draws on Camus as well as Foucault, on Kierkegaard and Norman O'Brown, Emerson and Pynchon, Louisa May Alcott and bell hooks, Kerouac and Plato. In addition to illuminating the work of past thinkers, she also sheds light on our tired and wired culture, the difficulty of inhabiting a female body, the importance of time and place, of communication and community. Paige was truly an original thinker, a gifted teacher, and one of the best writers I've ever read. Reading e-mail trouble made me laugh, cry and realize how much Paige is a part of me--and how wonderful that is. There is no one I know to whom I would not give this book, I can think of few gifts as great. Paige and I often spoke of addiction--we tried to define it, understand it, conquer it. It often seemed that we came to different conclusions, and we often pursued different paths, but we continued to talk, and to love. I miss my friend. This book is a posthumous present, a tangible reminder of Paige for those that knew her, but also a gift to those that never had the chance. I only wish that there were more picnics in the future.

This book contains meditations to help you through each moment of each day. I truly believe in the power of daily meditations and their usefulness for recovery and a successful life in general. Highly recommended.

As an internist, I am a little closer to the obesity side of things but I found the entire book informative and very easy to comprehend. The chapters are purposefully short to facilitate the episodic reading that is often the only reading possible in a busy practice. I particularly like Dr. Brownell's public health and environmental approach to the problem of obesity. This textbook is a great way for the uninitiated to "catch up" on the current concepts of obesity and eating disorders.

This is quite possibly the best book written on the subject of ecstacy and the problems it creates for the international club going youth. I can't wait for the next book by this brilliant author.

I have had the pleasure(if you want to call it that) of being on the so called state addiction for almost 12 years, and in my opinion we were made to be their lab rats to test this so called wonder drug on,and let me tell you this right from the outset IT DOES NOT DO WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO DO. They tell you that there is no side effects-WRONG there are plenty,but I'll let you find this out for yourselves.No, I'm not being cruel, but if you end up being put onto methadone,my advice to you is to get off it as quickly as you possibly can. There is also a good side to it,that being no more stealing, no more injecting with other people's tools, and you get your fix for nothing eveyday without fail.But you must sign a Contract telling them that you will become a slave to their every whim etc. Me myself have been on 200mls for almost 4 years,and I must pick this up and drink it in front of the chemist and whoever else happens to be there at the time. To be truthful I wish they had gave me the choice of Heroin in cigarettes,I would have jumped at the chance. A) Because it is a lot easier to come off than methadone B) The withdrawel period is not anything like what it is coming of green ginger. C) Their seems to be a lot more help coming off heroin than there is coming of the juice. D) There is no need to become an expert liar just to get what you actually need, and not what they think you need. E) There is a big difference between what you actually need and what you end up getting. Well this was just a few words from someone who has been down the rocky road of METHADONE>see yous all later surf dudes@

Se puede considerar un clásico, muy buen estudio sobre hombres maltratadores en el contexto de pareja y familia. Tiene una clasificación de hombres que ejercen violencia, estudios de casos y a partir de ellos elabora hipótesis sobre factores que inciden en la configuración de la violencia masculina.

Great book!! It really hits the nail on the head on why you smoke and what you should and could do. I have tried a series of stuff before and nothing had worked.
Give it a try...