Romancing Opiates by Theodore Dalrymple

Romancing Opiates by Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple believes that almost everything people know about opiate addiction is wrong. Most flawed of all is the notion that addicts are in touch with profound mysteries of which non-addicts are ignorant. Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed literary myths (drugs are creative and intense) in constructing an equal and opposite myth of quasi-treatment. Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not the serious medical condition, but a relatively trivial experience and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE is a British cultural critic, prison doctor, and psychiatrist. He has practiced medicine in a number of sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the East End of London and in Birmingham. He is a contributing editor to City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute, where he is the Dietrich Weismann Fellow. His work has also appeared in The British Medical Journal, The Times (London), The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, and National Review, among others.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781594032257
ISBN 10	1594032254
Title	Romancing Opiates
Author	Theodore Dalrymple
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Encounter Books,USA
Year published	2008-09-25
Number of pages	160
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable