Drugs

Over the Influence: The Harm Reduction Guide for Managing Drugs and Alcohol

Patt Denning, Jeannie Little, & Adina Glickman

Over the Influence (a play on the title, Under the Influence, a book proposing that whole populations inherit alcoholism due to their genetic predisposition to process the first metabolite of ethanol, acetaldehyde, inadequately) presents the idea that people who continue to use drugs require assistance. (This is in contrast to the standard American treatment protocol requiring total abstinence from those who wish to be treated). The assistance Denning and her colleagues outline may comprise instructions on how problem drug users may consume drugs better (e.g., which drugs not to mix, what safeguards to take to prevent accidents), how they may substitute preferable or less harmful drugs, how they may cut back or quit – or simply, for people to receive assurances that, just because they use drugs, even use drugs badly, they are still okay people. This book is well informed, especially about drug users, humane, and brave.

Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence

Mitchell Earleywine

Much continues to be written about the dangers of marijuana as drug warriors debate drug policy reformers. The focus is on marijuana as the most widely used illicit substance, and therefore as the leading edge for liberalizing laws about personal drug use. Is marijuana a relatively harmless substance that most people use in peace without negative consequences? Or is it an increasingly powerful chemical substance that more and more people are becoming addicted to, along with causing other health and emotional problems? Mitchell Earleywine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, reviews the broad evidence – experimental, epidemiologic, theoretical – in assessing the effects of marijuana. His book offers a sound basis for anyone to decide, individually or in regards to public policy, the likely consequences of allowing people to smoke marijuana legally. As the new century hopefully turns towards making these decisions rationally, this book is a marker for a new millennium of drug research and literature.

Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use

Jacob Sullum

Jacob Sullum is a libertarian with the courage of his beliefs. He is also the best-informed journalist in the U.S. on drugs and addiction. In this forthright book – one which very few media outlets will have the courage to discuss (in this regard, it resembles Norman Zinberg’s classic, Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use) – Sullum argues that drug use is as varied as involvements with any other compelling involvement or consumable. That is, there is nothing inherently, specially, or inexorably addictive about drugs, including heroin. Sullum cites for his evidence not only some standard research, but reports in the popular press of controlled heroin users whose behavior newspapers like the New York Times are not able to make sense out of – since they cannot recognize the truth of Sullum’s basic premise. Sullum links our understanding of addiction to drug policy. The premise that drugs capture people against their will justifies special laws forbidding drug use and availability. But if we recognize instead that drug use is simply one part of the ordinary spectrum of human behavior, then all such justification disappears.

Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs

Edited by Kalyna Bezchlibnyk-Butler & J. Joel Jeffries

Designed for clinicians, this is an objective, quick guide for anyone seeking to understand psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs you, friends, and family may be offered by your physician (or school). Indeed, with this independent source of information, you may know more than your physician (and certainly more than school staff and friends) about these medications. Sections include antidepressants, electroconvulsive therapy, antipsychotics, antiparkinsonian agents, anxiolytic agents, hypnotics, mood stabilizers, psychosimulants, cognition enhancers, sex-drive depressants, drugs of abuse, and drugs used in the treatment of substance use disorders. Coverage includes new unapproved treatments of psychiatric disorders such as calcium channel blockers and serotonin antagonists, and also information on herbal products. In spiral-bound form, at approximately $50, an invaluable purchase.

Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice

Craig Reinarman & Harry G. Levine (Eds.)

Crack in America reinterprets the crack story, and in doing so offers a new understanding of both drug addiction and drug prohibition. It shows how crack use arose in the face of growing unemployment, poverty, racism, and shrinking social services. It places crack in its historical context - as the latest in a long line of demonized drugs - and it examines the crack scare as a phenomenon in its own right. Crack and the crack scare offer a crucial window into America's drug and drug policy problems.

Important, authorative, comprehensive ... a must read.
—Ronald Dellums, Member of the U.S. Congress

Crack in America is a devastating, sad, angry, though always scholarly book about the many failures of our national drug policy. The contributors make a convincing case that America is unable to solve the many problems associated with crack because it is unwilling to deal with extreme economic and racial inequality except by stigmatizing and punishing the unequal. This book is of urgent importance—a powerfully persuasive and illuminating inquiry about America. I wish it could be required reading for the White House and all the agencies responsible for the country's drug problems.
—Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University

A penetrating analysis which explodes the government-propagated myths regarding crack cocaine.
—Joseph D. McNamara, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; former Chief of Police, San Jose, California

Drug Policy and Human Nature: Psychological Perspectives on the Prevention, Management, and Treatment of Illicit Drug Abuse (The Language of Science)

Warren K. Bickel & Richard J. DeGrandpre (Eds.)

A psychological analysis of the relationship among drugs, culture, and human nature, examining abuse within larger societal context in which it occurs. Sections cover the psychological assumptions behind drug policy and the social and cultural factors influencing it, as well as the contribution psychology can make to understanding and changing drug use, and informing policy. Contains Stanton's Assumptions About Drugs and the Marketing of Drug Policies.

Ecstasy. Dance, Trance & Transformation

Nicholas Saunders with Rick Doblin

A comprehensive and level-headed source of information about Ecstasy and the dance culture. It deals with questions like "what is Ecstasy", "is Ecstasy addictive," "does Ecstasy use lead to other drug use," and "how dangerous is Ecstasy"?

Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine

Lester Grinspoon & James B. Bakalar

In this important book, two eminent researchers describe the medical benefits of marihuana, explain why its use has been forbidden, and argue for its full legalization to make it available to all patients who need it. Highly praised when it was first published in 1993, the book has been expanded to include new examples of the ways that marihuana alleviates symptoms of cancer chemotherapy, multiple sclerosis, osteoarthritis, glaucoma, AIDS, and depression, as well as symptoms of such less common disorders as Crohn's disease, diabetic gastroparesis, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Steel Drug: Cocaine and Crack in Perspective

Patricia G. Erickson, Edward M. Adlaf, Reginald G. Smart

This remarkable book was the first to show that cocaine ain't what it's cracked up to be, but is like other powerful expreriences to which people form a wide variety of relationships.