| View Larger Image | Romancing Opiates, Revised Paperback Edition: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy | Paperbackby Theodore Dalrymple (Author)
| List Price: | $17.95 | | Price: | $13.46 | | You Save: | $4.49 (25%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Encounter Books | | Edition: | First Trade Paper Editionth Edition | | Page Count: | 160 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 25, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 283,749rd |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
For hundreds of years, addiction to drugs has seemed dangerous but with a hint of glamour. Addicts are a mystery to those who have never been one. They are presumed to be in touch with profound enlightenments of which non-addicts are ignorant. Theodore Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists, and social workers have always known these drug addictions to be false! They have created these myths to build lucrative method of expensive quasi-treatment. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 30 reviews)
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Just because people are in jail doesn't mean they should have incompetent shrinkss by KarmaPolice  1 Stars
September 13, 2009
Ludicrous arguments. Hard to tell if the prison walls or his perception and understanding is thicker. There's some semblance of an actual critique of the addiction industry, but it's thin, sloppy, it misses the crucial issues or completely misrepresents them.
It'd have been really welcome from a clink shrink to tell us where all these drugs are coming from, and how they are trafficked in there and if not who, then to what extent high ranking officials worldwide are pocketed with mythical amounts of money by the traffickers. And consequently why are drugs yet to be legalized as they should be. Instead he takes pot shots at the helpers.
Great staff. Your establishment buddies will be very pleased with you I am sure. Have another drink on us with them.
A multitude of biochemical studies have shown time and again the tremendous addiction potential and the staggering biochemical disruption in the brain for both booze and drugs. Who do you think you are to negate this. Just because portions of the population can be resistant to a substances addiction potential, i.e. the craving are not effected as quickly or profoundly, that doesn't mean squat.
The cravings are real and to some extent they are very well understood right now in terms of their biochemical basis by (to oversimplify to an immense extent) shrinking the hippocampus yet enlarging the amygdala thus rendering past memories of the events that can act as deterrents much weaker yet the emotions themselves much stronger, and by messing up so badly dopaminergic and other neurotransmitter systems that they become less transmissive (and thus pleasurable) for everyday living, and ultra transmissive and highly pleasurable for the substance in question. The fact that heavily addicted people quit both booze and opiates doesn't make it easy and self evident that others will too. Perhaps due to predisposition, another largely untouched topic in this mess, they have not been as addicted, or other centers of the brain can take stronger hold under the right therapeutical or otherwise circumstances (the proverbial hitting of the rock bottom) overcame the problematic areas.
Boy what a tough break to go in and then have to suffer through this callous guy in jail. I'd risk escaping just to avoid his pathetic rhetoric. So little understanding so much judgment. Some shrinks are known to be controlling, misanthropic creeps (but most are the most decent doctors around) and this guy is a poster child. Who cares if you have no sensitivity or intelligence to actually understand the intra psychic forces involved, keep taking the high road of the self appointed moral arbitrator. Always contemptuous of addicts, always crass, what an odious person.
As an aside from wikipedia:"Regarding his pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, Daniels says he "chose a name that sounded suitably dyspeptic, that of a gouty old man looking out of the window of his London club, port in hand, lamenting the degenerating state of the world."[2]"
Keep drinking that port and typing away and being oblivious of the degenerative state of your coarse and highly unintelligent diatribes.
And next time Mr. Daniels, or whatever name you go by these days, next time you quote Aristotle, try quoting him correctly. You are how old, seventy? Seventy something and you can't get a quote from Aristotle right? And yet you make yourself the moral authority on other peoples' life? What a sorry case you are...
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Fabulous writer and fascinating topics! by K. Strom (Northern California)  5 Stars
August 31, 2009
As a long time recovering alcholic and an observer of the decline in the culture of the USA, and also as a Conservative (politically and personally), I am happy to add my name to the list of folks that recommend Dalrymple's books!
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THIS EXPLAINS THE VIETNAM VETS by D. Liebert (New York, NY United States)  4 Stars
March 18, 2009
So this book stunningly overturns a lot of what I thought that I know. I always wondered why the massive use of heroin by US troops in Vietnam late in the war didn't lead to a huge heroin problem back in the states. Once out of the war situation, most of the former heroin users in 'Nam, simply dropped the drug use - for one thing, it was no longer dirt cheap.
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Biased View by Jason Wallach (PA) 1 Stars
December 14, 2008
All his theories are based off of English male prisoners. Thus his views are extensively biased to say the least. Additionally he makes the mistake that most do and assumes that opiates are morally wrong and thus punishing the users is necessary and should be the norm. In actually opiate use has been made into the monster that it is because of prohibition. Crime, overdose, disease are results of prohibition and are perpetuated by prohibition. The only thing innate to the opiates themselves is that they are addictive as are many other things in life to some individuals. Taking an egocentric "moral" view is not what is needed for progression. Prohibition always fails. The only way to effectively deal with substance use is through government regulation in which case the price, purity, availability, safety and age limits can be effectively controlled.
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Eye-Opener by Haim (NYC) 4 Stars
February 22, 2008
A must-read if you want to know something about addiction and about the politico-medical complex. In general, my personal policy is that if Theodore Dalrymple wrote it, I read it. That said, however, this book is not his best effort in terms of his usually elegant, witty, and engaging writing style. It is repetitive and there are unusual mistakes, from punctuation to grammar, as if he was in a rush to be done. That is why I give the book only four stars instead of the five stars and two thumbs up this man usually deserves.
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SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
by Theodore Dalrymple (Author)
A searing account of life in the underclass and why it persists as it does, written by a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England.
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| In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas (Brief Encounters)
by Theodore Dalrymple (Author)
Today, the word prejudice has come to seem synonymous with bigotry; therefore the only way a person can establish freedom from bigotry is by claiming to have wiped his mind free from prejudice. English psychiatrist and writer Theodore Dalrymple shows that freeing the mind from prejudice is not only impossible, but entails intellectual, moral and emotional dishonesty. The attempt to eradicate prejudice has several dire consequences for the individual and society as a whole.
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| Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses
by Theodore Dalrymple (Author)
A book that restores our faith in the central importance of literature and criticism to our civilization. In the twenty six pieces, Dr. Dalrymple ranges over literature and ideas, from Shakespeare to Marx.
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| Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline
by Theodore Dalrymple (Author)
Theodore Dalrymple's new book of essays follows on the extraordinary success of his earlier collections, Life at the Bottom and Our Culture, What's Left of It. No social critic today is more adept and incisive in exploring the state of our culture and the ideas that are changing our ways of life. In Not with a Bang But a Whimper, he takes the measure of our cultural decline, with special attention to Britain-its bureaucratic muddle, oppressive welfare mentality, and aimless youth-all pursued...
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| We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism
by John Derbyshire (Author)
To his fellow conservatives, John Derbyshire makes a plea: Don't be seduced by this nonsense about "the politics of hope." Skepticism, pessimism, and suspicion of happy talk are the true characteristics of an authentically conservative temperament. And from Hobbes and Burke through Lord Salisbury and Calvin Coolidge, up to Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn in our own time, these beliefs have kept the human race from blindly chasing its utopian dreams right off a cliff.
Recently, though,...
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