Addiction by prescription by Joan E. Gadsby

One Woman's Triumph and Fight for Change

They are the most widely-prescribed drugs in the world. Benzodiazepines-including such tranquillisers and sleeping pills as Ativan, Dalmane, Librium, Restoril, Rivotril, Serax and Valium-are the best-selling drugs in the history of medicine, with annual world-wide sales of an estimated $21 billion. With such a lucrative market at stake, high-powered promotional campaigns have convinced millions that tranquillisers and sleeping pills are needed to cope with life's everyday challenges. Thousands of prescriptions-close to two-thirds for women, and almost 75 percent for refills-are written each day, despite known and often serious physical, cognitive and emotional side-effects. Dependency is not uncommon, and withdrawal can be lengthy and frightening. The bottom line? Millions of people throughout the world are becoming addicted by prescription.

In 1966, when Joan Gadsby's four-year-old son died of brain cancer, her doctor prescribed a 'chemical cocktail' of tranquillisers, sleeping pills and anti-depressants. It was the first step in a twenty-three year addiction to benzodiazepines - an addiction which threatened her family relationships, financial security, career and personal health. Gadsby has emerged from her addiction to become a tireless advocate in the area of prescribed sedative and hypnotic drugs, and formed the Benzodiazepine Call to Action Group. Its objective is to create awareness and lobby for systemic and legislative change that will hold physicians, drug manufacturers, pharmacists, health authorities and political decision makers to a higher standard of ethics and accountability.

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Alcohol: The Ambiguous Molecule by Griffith Edwards

Alcohol gives many people pleasure. Yet over-indulgence with this same substance can lead to accidents, illness and social impairment. As a consequence alcohol has always had a complex and ambiguous relationship with society. Its use is integral to many aspects of popular culture, but it is also a substance which has at times been preached against and even prohibited.

Griffith Edwards's fascinating survey deploys history and science to explore the whole issue of alcohol. Why do different people behave differently when drunk? Is alcoholism a disease? What is 'safe drinking'? Is alcohol good for the heart? Does treatment work? Does Alcoholics Anonymous have the answer? Can alcoholics ever go back to social drinking? How for the future might society better handle this ambiguous drug? This book will be of interest to everyone who likes to drink, who is happy or worried about their drinking, or who chooses personally to abstain.

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Beating the Dragon by McIntosh & McKeganey

The use of illegal drugs is widespread in many societies. In much of the media coverage an impression is often conveyed that the use of illegal drugs other than cannabis is a one way street leading inevitably to addiction, destitution, family breakdown and death. The perception of addiction as a fixed end point characterized by personal and social dissolution fails to recognize that many dependent drug users nevertheless still manage to overcome their dependence upon illegal drugs. This process of recovery, either with or without the assistance of helping agencies, has been variously described by researchers, drug counselors, clinicians and others.

We still lack much of an understanding of the process of recovery as seen from the addict's own viewpoint. Beating the Dragon describes in detail the road from addiction as experienced by 70 ex-addicts. All the people interviewed had been using major illegal drugs for many years and yet managed to overcome their addiction through a variety of means. By looking in detail at the experiences of this group of recovering addicts the authors aim to produce a ground-breaking ethnography of the recovery process.

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Crack in America Edited by Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine

Demon Drugs and Social Justice

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 problems associated with crack because it is unwilling to deal with extreme economic and racial inequality except by stigmatising 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

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Cocaine: An unauthorized biography by Dominic Streatfield

Last year a United Nations report estimated that the global cocaine trade generated $92 billion per year - $20 billion more than the combined revenues of Microsoft, Kellogg's and McDonald's.

Dominic Streatfeild examines the story of cocaine from its first medical uses to the worldwide chaos it causes today. His research takes him from the arcane reaches of the British Library to the isolation cells America's most secure prisons; from the crack houses of New York to the jungles of Peru and Colombia. Along the way he speaks to those involved in the trade: economists, scientists, botanists, lawmen, historians and traffickers. And Balham's most bombed-out dope dealer, Magic Eddie.

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Dancing on Drugs by Fiona Measham and colleagues.

The last decade has seen the transformation of recreational drug use from minority activity into a widespread increasingly 'normalised' leisure activity. Each weekend millions of young and not-so-young fill the floors of night clubs and dance clubs. Most drink alcohol, many take stimulant drugs, some do both. What are the gains and losses of such psychoactive nights out? Is it hedonism versus health? Is it well calculated risk-taking by a drugwise generation or is it dangerous illegal excess with physical and psychological costs?

Dancing on Drugs is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary exploration of dance drug use in Britain. It looks at all aspects of drug use - including the socio-cultural context in which they are used, effects on health, attitudes to drug use, issues of safety and security in clubland - and concludes with important policy recommendations.

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Drugs in Sport from the British Medical Association

The pressure to perform

Drug use in sport is a complex, deeply entrenched, constantly shifting problem amongst both elite and non-elite athletes. This BMA report explores the many factors that combine to increase the pressures faced by sports people and members and their entourage. The physician's role is and responsibilities in this highly sensitive area are discussed, and information given to assist prescribing for sports people and highlight the potentially serious consequences and powerful adverse effects of drug use for non-medical purposes in sport.

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HOOKED by Lonny Shavelson

Five Addicts Challenge Our Misguided Drug Rehab System

Hooked is a gripping and unprecedented journey into the lives of five addicts struggling to get clean in a drug rehab system that is tragically flawed. Called a 'terrific read and a refreshing challenge to traditional drug rehab programs' by Director of Addictive Behaviours Research Centre G. Alan Marlatt, Hooked highlights the link between drug addiction, mental illness, and trauma-including child abuse-and argues for an integrated approach to treatment that addresses the root causes of drug abuse, not just its outward behaviours.

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Illegal Leisure by Howard Parker and colleagues.

Fifty per cent of adolescents have tried illegal drugs, and one quarter use them regularly. Based on a five year study following typical young people who have grown up as the 'chemical generation', Illegal Leisure explains how young people make decisions about whether or not to try drugs and how some become regular drug users. Whatever their decision nearly all today's adolescents must become drugwise. This accessible and authoritative text explains why, despite parental angst, universal prevention programmes and a determined war on drugs, all efforts to ban illegal leisure have failed. It will be of importance to those concerned with understanding British youth culture and the role of alcohol and drugs among today's adolescents.

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Legalise This! The case for decriminalising drugs by Douglas Husak.

Recreational drug users (other than those who take harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco) are regularly imprisoned. Nearly half a million drug offenders are incarcerated in US jails, more than the total number of prisoners in 1980 and more than the entire EU prison population. In some states more is spent on maintaining the prison system than on education. Current drug policies lead to immense personal suffering, as well as police corruption, organised crime, and contempt for the law, and make drugs more dangerous because they are illegal and thus not subject to proper controls. Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum are beginning to ask: is it worth it?

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Living with Drugs by Michael Gossop

"Dr Michael Gossop is in a good position to discuss the problem, working on the Drug Dependence Clinical Research and Treatment Unit at the Maudsley Hospital in London. His book Living with Drugs gives an historical perspective of drug taking, and discusses the common drugs in use today from tea, coffee, alcohol and tobacco through cannabis and LSD to 'hard' drugs like heroin. He develops his theme that the total effect of drug taking is an interaction between the drug and the personality and expectations of the user. He also attempts to give a more accurate picture of drug addiction…and outlines ways in which the control of drugs may actually promote the effects they seek to prevent…It is an enjoyable book, well written, richly illustrated from published reports and official documents, easy to read, and giving a balanced perspective." - British Medical Journal

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Street Drugs by Andrew Tyler

The Facts Explained, The Myths Exploded.

The rise and rise of drug use in our society is not to be doubted. What can be challenged is the understanding most people have of what each drug is, the likely effect it will have upon the user, and what help is available to both users and their families.

Street drugs offers sane, balanced, impartial advice and information; what is known about each drug, its history and how it is used. The legal and medical status of each drug is considered, and in each case the facts are sifted out form the hysteria. Jargon-free, it is a book for users, their friends and family, as well as for drug workers.

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The Heroin Users by Tam Stewart

If you take heroin you're a hopeless junkie. A thieving smackhead and a lost cause. Right?

Wrong. This book, the inside story of the people who take heroin, tells you how it really is. Author Tam Stewart was part of the heroin scene in Liverpool for years, and in The Heroin Users she reveals with great insight and unprecedented honesty what kind of people really take heroin, why they do it, how it changes lives.

Heroin is portrayed as an evil and invincible force at large in our society-try it once and you are consigned to perdition. Tam Stewart moves beyond the tabloid screamers and TV shock images, and in doing so provides informed and realistic hope, not just for addicts, but for all those around them.

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The Pursuit of Oblivion by Richard Davenport-Hines

Richard Davenport-Hines's landmark book draws on a dazzlingly wide range of sources to show how narcotics such as opium, morphine, cannabis, heroin, cocaine, amphetamine, LSD and ecstasy came to have such an impact on Western society and how each came into use as a licit medicine only to be later outlawed as an illicit drug.

Spanning centuries, continents and empires, wars and revolutions, immigrants and aristocrats, The Pursuit of Oblivion neither celebrates nor condemns the use of narcotics. It concludes with an assessment of why, despite increasingly harsh sanctions, illegal drug use continues to increase and considers where law-makers go from here. The result is a heady brew by one of this generation's master storytellers.

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