Drugs Books

"It's easy to quit smoking, I've done it thousands of times." - Mark Twain

In 1984, after a dozen failed efforts to end my ten-year addiction to Marlboro's I figured that there was something missing in my strategies. Cold Turkey, Stop Buying Them, Low Nicotine and Smoke The Other Stuff had not worked. I went to the library looking for real science, not fad or propaganda, and found Smoking: Psychology and Pharmacology.

The book explains the neurochemistry involved in smoking in terms of axons and dendrites and catecholamines and such. High school chemistry or biology are probably enough to follow the science, but the scientific details are not needed to understand the conclusions.

I learned there are three obstacles to quitting smoking.
1) Nicotine is physically addictive,
2) Smoking is a habit, and
3) The damn things work. They relieve anxiety and regulate emotions.

The first two obstacles are easy to beat. The physical addiction is gone after 2 weeks. You can tough it out cold turkey. The nervous habit can be replaced with chewing gum or a Rubik's Cube or rolling steel balls in your hand. No problem. Number 3) is the only real tough one. Nicotine administered in cigarette form is an extremely effective drug for the relief of anxiety and is self-administered in precise doses. There is no effective alternative. Nicotine patches and gum work too slowly to provide the psychological effect and can only relieve the physical addiction. Tranquilizers have a psychological effect but also act slowly, cannot be self-regulated, and remain active for days. The effect of cigarettes wears off within a few minutes. Some people who are less vulnerable to the physical addiction can smoke a few cigarettes each day as needed to relieve anxiety. Better than Valium.

Cigarettes are beneficial in other ways. Typists who smoke are faster than those who do not.

Cigarettes work very fast. When you inhale the smoke into your lungs, the nicotine passes into your blood. The blood is pumped through your heart and into your head. The nicotine passes from the blood into your brain and affects nerve activity. This all happens in the time it took you to read this paragraph.

Armed with my new knowledge of smoking I developed a 20-day plan to quit smoking. I smoked 20 cigarettes the first day, 19 cigarettes the next and so on. Each day was as hard as the one before. The urge to smoke was nearly constant and emotions came from surprising directions. One day, maybe the 5-cigarette day, I was driving on the freeway when some Mozart came on the radio. The music was so beautiful that I started to cry and had to stop in the emergency lane until the music stopped. To deal with the emotions I used another substance that the book said was effective. Food. I gained 15 pounds. Deep breathing helped as well. On May 24, 1984, I pulled a Marlboro from a pack labeled "1" and smoked my last cigarette.

This book worked for me and maybe it will work for you. It is written at a level sufficient to reveal the science of smoking, be interesting to doctors and scientists and still be accessible to the public. It describes the health risks of smoking and honestly reveals the surprising psychological benefits that must be replaced in order to quit. In the 25 years since I quit I have not found a better book on the subject. Now I just have to find an equally good book on losing weight so I can get rid of those 15 pounds.

Douglas Flegal

This is a wonderful book. I read it in 1982 when I quit smoking. It was the only book I found at the time that really laid it out there about cigarettes. It told you the good, the bad, and the ugly. I was particularly interested in the good. I wanted to find out why it was so hard to quit smoking. So many of the things people said about smokers and smoking were just so amazingly WRONG. Such as: "It's just a habit." JUST a habit? Like habits are EASY to break? Give ME a break. Such as: "It's an oral fixation--people who smoke just want something in their mouths." Really? Then why don't we take toothpick breaks or search through wastebaskets for half of a used toothpick? Such as: "Nicotine isn't addicting." Then, why can cigarettes be used all over the world as a universal currency for barter and trade? Such as: "It's something for to do, to keep our hands busy when we're out with other people." Then why don't people light up toothpicks or pea pods or ANYTHING ELSE after dinner with friends? Such as: "People smoke to look sophisticated." Then why do we still smoke through the hole in our throats after a laryngectomy?
I had never read anywhere else that nicotine could be useful. It helps control emotions by dampening them down (not always a good thing). I had never read anywhere that nicotine is a stimulant--people think faster and stay awake when they smoke. I had never read anywhere that nicotine helps people do boring jobs longer and more accurately--an example is people who study radar screens on shipboard looking for underwater hazards, or in wartime, watching for submarines. All this made some of the difficulties of quitting smoking understandable, finally.
This is a British book. In my experience, the British can write down- to-earth prose without talking down to the reader. Their prose is likely to be straightforward, without circumlocutions, without avoiding the more difficult aspects of a subject, without trying to manipulate the reader. They let the facts convince. Another curious thing--British authors seem to anticipate questions the ordinary reader might have as he reads. Then they address those questions. It's wonderful. It's like someone scratched an itch that you didn't really know you had. When you read American textbooks do you often come away bored and unsatisfied, as though you didn't get some kind of information you really needed? Do you sometimes feel that somehow the whole thing just didn't make sense, its raison d'etre was undiscernable. When we in America against the odds produce a really good textbook it's a wonderful thing. An example is the book "Between Pacific Tides" by Ed Ricketts, about the oceans' intertidal zones. Another is a textbook called "Biology" by Neil A. Campbell. They are classics.
This book I'm reviewing is just a small book, a modest book. It doesn't reach the level of a classic. In 1982 I was looking for a book that didn't try to manipulate my opinion, that let the facts about cigarettes speak for themselves, that anticipated its reader's questions and then devoted its pages to answering them. In those days, it was rare. And I was lucky to find it.

This is the Powerful true life memoirs of Elizabeth Hudson, a drug addicted heroin addict who turned to prostitution on the Mean Streets of Calgary and Vancouver in the early seventies to support her drug habit. We only have to look at what has been happening in Vancouver's downtown eastside with the disappearances and murders of 69 women in the sex trade to know that violence against women has increased dramatically. This is Beth's journey through those mean streets of addiction and prostituion. It is a one of kind book that actually details the minute to minute, day to day life of a drug addicted prositute who in the end triumps over adversity through the strength of her human spirit. Beth's openness and honesty dealing with such a taboo subject is refreshing and this book Snow Bodies is a must read for anyone wanting to understand life on the streets. Elizabeth Hudson has survived life on these means streets, to go on to live a constructive and meaningful life, so many women do not.

Snow Bodies-Elizabeth Hudson attended Mount Royal College where she was awarded the Lorraine Hill Award and the George Kirby Scholarship. Her poems have been published in Tower Poetry, Other Voices, Pottersfield Portfolio and Amethyst Review. She has also written articles published in Macleans. Hudson's two sons have both graduated from university, and now she lives in the deep suburbs of Calgary with her husband, three dogs and a cat.

This is the Powerful true life memoirs of Elizabeth Hudson, a drug addicted heroin addict who turned to prostitution on the Mean Streets of Calgary and Vancouver in the early seventies to support her drug habit. We only have to look at what has been happening in Vancouver's downtown eastside with the disappearances and murders of 69 women in the sex trade to know that violence against women has increased dramatically. This is Beth's journey through those mean streets of addiction and prostituion. It is a one of kind book that actually details the minute to minute, day to day life of a drug addicted prositute who in the end triumps over adversity through the strength of her human spirit. Beth's openness and honesty dealing with such a taboo subject is refreshing and this book Snow Bodies is a must read for anyone wanting to understand life on the streets. Elizabeth Hudson has survived life on these means streets, to go on to live a constructive and meaningful life, so many women do not.

Snow Bodies-Elizabeth Hudson attended Mount Royal College where she was awarded the Lorraine Hill Award and the George Kirby Scholarship. Her poems have been published in Tower Poetry, Other Voices, Pottersfield Portfolio and Amethyst Review. She has also written articles published in Macleans. Hudson's two sons have both graduated from university, and now she lives in the deep suburbs of Calgary with her husband, three dogs and a cat.

This book is as real as it gets. Accurate, and moving.

This is a frighteningly real story that delivers a message that all should read and consider.
The book paints a true to life picture of the dilemma faced by all societies of the world in finding a solution to the destruction rooted in drugs.
The subject of alternate avenues to the unsuccessful "War on Drugs" is one that has not been given due debate by this nation's media.

Reading Gene Mason and John Wong's book, SOS, brought back a lot of memories for me. I am what people refer to as an enabler. This is a must read for all, but especially those of us who have been there.

From the moment I began reading I slipped back into the past-I laughed, I cried, but most of all, I thanked God for helping me through some pretty hard times, and for people like Gene Mason who have shared their experiences.

This is an informative look into what the 12 step system is all about, as seen through the eyes of participants in that program. Powerful and moving quotes - that share thoughts and experiences of what is it really like to struggle through the recovery process. Really helpful for family members and friends of people in recovery from any type of addiction. Easy to read, useful for students and teachers courses that deal with addiction or drug use.

Anyone who reads a sports page will love this book. Teen or boomer, this is a book to be read. It belongs in athlete's lockers, coaches' desks, doctor's waiting rooms recovery centers and family rooms everywhere addiction and love of sports exist. As a recovering person and sports enthusiast, I appreciated Dieden capturing my attention by offering a novel beat-the-odds game plan not only in facing formidable alcohol/drug addiction but for daily living. Sports lover, participant in or spectator around addiction problems need to read this book. However, the book does not confine its attraction to sports alone.

Dieden artfully weaves his his own painful tale of addiction and eventual recovery along with the memorable quotes from coaches and athletes and their amazing stores of spirit, courage and victory over seemingly impossible odds and facing defeats. Dieden offers a simple plan, practical and spiritual strategies for living life a game at a time. It inspires me to get off the bench and stay in the game. This is an honest, humorous, heartwarming, hopeful book. A sports book for all seasons. A wonderful gift to be read, given, shared

Dieden is able to tackle the massive challenge of recovery with a sense of humor and wrap it in a metaphor that so many people can relate to. By using examples from sports and great figures in sports, Dieden lays a groundwork for managing addiction productively and realistically. This is a guy who's had his rock-bottom and come back from it. An entertaining and hugely informative read for recovering addicts and the people who love them.

How have Americans used drugs to establish and forge religious foundations? Stairways to Heaven provides a survey and analysis of the use of mind-altering substances as an aid to spirituality, with chapters considering the foundations of religious experience, the role of drugs in creating or altering such experiences, and links between religious freedom and the nation's war on drugs. An intriguing history.

Stairways To Heaven: Drugs In American Religious History is a unique, seminal work spanning Native Americas' use of tobacco for solemnizing oaths to the spread of New Age religious beliefs in Haight-Ashbury coffeehouses. Robert Fuller presents an important, overlooked aspect of American religious history -- the use of mind-altering substances as an aid to spirituality ranging from peyote, jimson weed, and hallucinogenic mushrooms, to LSD, marijuana, wine, and coffee. Stairways To Heaven explores many of the questions surrounding the use of drugs in religious life including drugs use to induce "authentic" religious experience; religious experience as an aberration in brain chemistry; how much drug use can be tolerated under the auspices of religious freedom; the legitimate role of mind-altering substances in the development of mature spirituality. Stairways To Heaven is "must" reading for students of spirituality, American religious history, and the ritual use of mind-altering substances.

Senn is a great writer. He has written an excellent text on cross-over trials that raises many issues about when such design can be used and what their limitations are. This book covers the gamut of issues in drug development concentrating on important and sometimes subtle issues in clinical trials including design and analysis, intention to treat principle, multiple testing, Bayesian and frequentist approaches and interpretations, meta analysis, regulatory issues and ethics. It also covers cross-over designs, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and pharmacoeconomics.
The introduction gives you a feeling for the approach in the book and how it splits into two parts. Part I, consisting of chapters 2-5, provides some history of the development of statistical methods and some introductory topics that are fundamental to the discussion in Part II.

Part II is the heart of the book where the practical statistical issues in clinical trials are raised. The text is intended for non-statisticians who work in the pharmaceutical industry but to quote part of Senn's preface he states "Although addressed to the life-scientist it is my hope that many statisticians, in particular those studying medical statistics or embarking on a career in drug development, will also find it useful. Above all I hope that it will help communication between the disciplines: a process by which the statistician stands to benefit as much as any other professional in drug development."

I can really appreciate what Senn has done. He explains the issues of intention-to-treat, washout, multiplicity and other problems that I have had to wrestle with and try to explain to MDs and clinical managers. But even more importantly to me than helping me communicate the many issues that I was aware of, he also raises many subtle issues that I was not aware of. This includes questions of bioequivalence, the use of baseline information and particularly percentage change from baseline versus covariate adjustment, problems of inference regarding measurements taken after titration and issuesw in N of 1 trials. I even learned a few new techniques (e.g. Taves minimiization and Atkinson's generalization of it for allocating patients to treatment groups).

The only complaint I can see is that there is not enough detail. However, remember the text was not designed for statisticians and so much of the mathematics and technicalities are deliberately left out.

But Senn does provides a detailed list of relevant references at the end of each chapter that allows the reader to find in texts and journal articles all the detail one might need. Also to aid with communication there is a large glossary of terms at teh back of the book.

This is a great reference for scientists and statisticians as well!

Senn is a great writer. He has written an excellent text on cross-over trials that raises many issues about when such design can be used and what their limitations are. This book covers the gamut of issues in drug development concentrating on important and sometimes subtle issues in clinical trials including design and analysis, intention to treat principle, multiple testing, Bayesian and frequentist approaches and interpretations, meta analysis, regulatory issues and ethics. It also covers cross-over designs, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and pharmacoeconomics.

The introduction gives you a feeling for the approach in the book and how it splits into two parts. Part I, consisting of chapters 2-5, provides some history of the development of statistical methods and some introductory topics that are fundamental to the discussion in Part II.

Part II is the heart of the book where the practical statistical issues in clinical trials are raised. The text is intended for non-statisticians who work in the pharmaceutical industry but to quote part of Senn's preface he states "Although addressed to the life-scientist it is my hope that many statisticians, in particular those studying medical statistics or embarking on a career in drug development, will also find it useful. Above all I hope that it will help communication between the disciplines: a process by which the statistician stands to benefit as much as any other professional in drug development."

I can really appreciate what Senn has done. He explains the issues of intention-to-treat, washout, multiplicity and other problems that I have had to wrestle with and try to explain to MDs and clinical managers. But even more importantly to me than helping me communicate the many issues that I was aware of, he also raises many subtle issues that I was not aware of. This includes questions of bioequivalence, the use of baseline information and particularly percentage change from baseline versus covariate adjustment, problems of inference regarding measurements taken after titration and issuesw in N of 1 trials. I even learned a few new techniques (e.g. Taves minimiization and Atkinson's generalization of it for allocating patients to treatment groups).

The only complaint I can see is that there is not enough detail. However, remember the text was not designed for statisticians and so much of the mathematics and technicalities are deliberately left out.

But Senn does provides a detailed list of relevant references at the end of each chapter that allows the reader to find in texts and journal articles all the detail one might need. Also to aid with communication there is a large glossary of terms at teh back of the book.

This is a great reference for scientists and statisticians as well!

This is a very new and unique book that covers the gamut of statistical issues through all phases of drug development. Shao is a distinguished professor from Wisconsin and Chow teaches at Duke University and formerly at Temple but is known for his long career in the pharmaceutical industry.
The book is good for biostatisticians and regulatory affairs specialists as a reference source. All the key statistical issues are addressed and the reader is given the perspective of the ICH and FDA guidance documents. The underlying statistical methodology that justifies the recommendations in the guidances is presented. This is a state-of-the-art book. Shao and Pigeot produced some of the recent research in individual bioequivalence that established a bootstrap procedure as an appropriate way to construct confidence intervals for the problem. Their method is recommended in an FDA guidance document.

But more than just this one example, all the key issues that have been the subject of FDA workshops over the past several years are addressed in this book. These topics include calibration, assay and assay validation, dissolution testing, stability analysis, shelf life estimation, bioequivalence, randomization and blinding, what constitutes substantive evidence in clinical development, therapeutic equivalence and noninferiority, Bayesian approaches in clinical trials, problems involving missing and incomplete data, longitudinal methods, meta-analysis, quality of life studies and instrument validation, and medical imaging.

Other prevalent issues in clinical trials include group sequential methods, hierarchical Bayesian models and multiple testing. These issues are not covered as much in this text as the others we have mentioned. But there is some discussion of multiplicity in the context of quality of life studies. An example of sequential testing is used to illustrate model selection in Chapter 2. The important issues of design and sample size requirements are presented throughout the book.

While not all topics are covered in sufficient depth, the book is remarkable in the breadth of material covered in just 350 pages of text. The authors also provide a very authoritative list of references and regulatory guidances and other documents.

This is a very new and unique book that covers the gamut of statistical issues through all phases of drug development. Shao is a distinguished professor from Wisconsin and Chow teaches at Temple but is known for his long career in the pharmaceutical industry.

The book is good for biostatisticians and regulatory affairs specialists as a reference source. All the key statistical issues are addressed and the reader is given the perspective of the ICH and FDA guidance documents. The underlying statistical methodology that justifies the recommendations in the guidances is presented. This is a state-of-the-art book. Shao and Pigeot produced some of the recent research in individual bioequivalence that established a bootstrap procedure as an appropriate way to construct confidence intervals for the problem. Their method is recommended in an FDA guidance document.

But more than just this one example, all the key issues that have been the subject of FDA workshops over the past several years are addressed in this book. These topics include calibration, assay and assay validation, dissolution testing, stability analysis, shelf life estimation, bioequivalence, randomization and blinding, what constitutes substantive evidence in clinical development, therapeutic equivalence and noninferiority, Bayesian approaches in clinical trials, problems involving missing and incomplete data, longitudinal methods, meta-analysis, quality of life studies and instrument validation, and medical imaging.

Other prevalent issues in clinical trials include group sequential methods, hierarchical Bayesian models and multiple testing. These issues are not covered as much in this text as the others we have mentioned. But there is some discussion of multiplicity in the context of quality of life studies. An example of sequential testing is used to illustrate model selection in Chapter 2. The important issues of design and sample size requirements are presented throughout the book.

While not all topics are covered in sufficient depth, the book is remarkable in the breadth of material covered in just 350 pages of text. The authors also provide a very authoritative list of references and regulatory guidances and other documents.

This is an excellent resource for those both in recovery and for those who should be (are willing to stop but who are struggling). It offers so many tools for finding the relief from addiction and clearly lays out the consequences of relapsing. A great resource.

Michael Z, Author The Wisdom of the Rooms A Year of Weekly Reflections

Put in precise wording, this book outlines exactly what the consequences would be if a person relapses into drug use. It also tells the steps to take to overcome falling back into old patterns. It is helpful not only to one who uses(or used)drugs but also to family members who have been involved with a user. I highly recommend this quick read.

Based on exhaustive research and interviews, this detailed and extensively footnoted history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics is both a fine reference work for scholars, and an eye-opening, exciting narrative for the general reader. The book itself is the highest quality, made to last for generations, and includes a section of rare photographs, and an appendix consisting of a rogue's gallery from the FBN's files. The FBN, headed by Harry J. Anslinger, was the precursor agency to today's DEA. The War on Drugs that has been waged for years now, with a price is no object mentality, is now being reconsidered by more and more people as either an ill-considered mistake, or perhaps even as a Big Government/Big Brother monkey on the public's fiscal back. The War has surely not stopped the supply of drugs, and if you have ever thought that it was never intended to, but wondered why that was so, The Strength of The Wolf, will provide some answers. There are many books about drug enforcement (or lack thereof) in the recent past, but this work is unique in that it looks at what might be called the dawn of drug enforcement.

Given how much money this country spends to fight drug dealers and to lock up drug dealers & users both, I am amazed how little I hear people question the War on Drugs.

This book provides the historical framework critical to understand this, with the War on Drugs beginning as an attempt to provide what equates to trade protection to the pharmaceutical companies (who competed with the real thing of the day, opium/heroin), and how later racism led to marijuana users being targeted as well (Black Americans in Harlem and Latinos in the SW and California), and of course the violence fueled by the cocaine/crack trade made it a national buzzword.

It is a crime that this assault on our own citizens continues today - one would think that after the dismal failure of Prohibition that we would have learned our lesson.

Hopefully this book can start raising a consciousness to question it, at the very least more public debate (without the hysteria) is long overdue.