My name is Brett. I'm a college educated man who once was a husband of 26 years with two children, three businesses, and a large home with an actual white picket fence. I'm also a drug addict. And I have a tale to tell. My story has everything: sex, death, pain, atheism, God, jail, marriage, divorce, heresy, homosexuality, physics, traffic fatalities, computer science, video games, cinnamon toothpicks, Barry Manilow, Nine Inch Nails, pornography, breasts, used tampons, strippers, venereal disease, abortion, prostitutes, AIDS, racism, suicide, infidelity, public nudity, anti-Semitism, marijuana, alcohol, pawn shops, drug dealers, needles, acid, ecstasy, crack, heroin, pain pills, withdrawal, interventions, rehabs, product tampering, road rage, vandalism, elderly abuse, grave desecration, arson, identity theft, burglary, armed robbery, and murder. But more importantly, it's about the despair of addiction and the absolute certainty that it can be overcome. Recovery is not simply abstinence, but a process of growing up. I spent my entire life searching for the key to long-term sobriety. I would like to share with you what I have learned

The American Drug Culture uses sociological and other perspectives to examine drug and alcohol use in U.S. society. The text is arranged topically rather than by drug categories and explores diverse aspects of drug use, including popular culture, sexuality, legal and criminal justice systems, other social institutions, and mental and physical health. It covers alcohol, the most widely used drug in the United States, more extensively than other texts on this subject. The authors include case studies from their own field research that give students empathetic insights into the situations of those suffering from substance and alcohol abuse.

Providing an indispensable resource for undergraduate students, graduate students, and policymakers interested in the prescription drug abuse crisis in the United States, this book summarizes the current state of prescription drug abuse and its growth over the past 20 years. The Prescription Drug Problem analyzes the growth of the prescription drug abuse problem from 1994 to 2014 and includes comparisons to marijuana and hard drug use during the same period. Specific attention is given to prescription opiate abuse and the transition from prescription opiates to heroin. The book begins with a broad overview of the prescription drug problem in the U.S., while the text presents stories of celebrities who have struggled with prescription drug abuse, highlights a handful of ordinary Americans who are battling prescription drug abuse, and examines as case studies a few communities that have been ravaged by prescription drug abuse. Drawing upon demographic patterns of abuse to identify causes of and factors contributing to prescription drug abuse as well as possible solutions to the problem, the book is designed to provide a broad overview of the prescription drug abuse problem in the U.S. and stimulate additional research.

Based on the innovative premise that addiction is not limited to drugs or alcohol, but is truly about the over-the-top, out-of-control lifestyles that have detached Americans from each other and their spiritual Connections (with a capital “C”). Dr. Carol Clark looks at addiction as something in and of itself, a condition rather than a substance abuse or behavioral problem. She then offers practical strategies for change that will ground and Connect the readers so they may find happiness and fulfillment in their daily lives.Covering this topic from the addictive process of disconnection - whether from use of technology or gambling, drugs or sex - through recovery and Connection, Clark's strategies provide the tools necessary to create fulfilling and truly intimate relationships in every facet of life by shifting the root of the addictive behavior patterns to a place of clarity and acceptance.Describing and defining how repetitive, addictive behavior affects the human brain and causes the disconnections we experience with our families, friends, and co-workers in a profound, eye-opening manner, Dr. Clark's new book takes current addiction theory down a new, groundbreaking path. Addict America: The Lost Connection uses simple, personal language to make the complexity of the condition and the human brain understandable. Focused on the systemic nature of the problem, this book is a tour de force of personal change, offering instruction on how addictions fracture Connections in daily life and then providing solutions on how to rebuild them from within for maximum effect.

“Hart’s argument that we need to drastically revise our current view of illegal drugs is both powerful and timely . . . when it comes to the legacy of this country’s war on drugs, we should all share his outrage.” —The New York Times Book Review From one of the world's foremost experts on the subject, a powerful argument that the greatest damage from drugs flows from their being illegal, and a hopeful reckoning with the possibility of their use as part of a responsible and happy life Dr. Carl L. Hart, Ziff Professor at Columbia University and former chair of the Department of Psychology, is one of the world's preeminent experts on the effects of so-called recreational drugs on the human mind and body. Dr. Hart is open about the fact that he uses drugs himself, in a happy balance with the rest of his full and productive life as a researcher and professor, husband, father, and friend. In Drug Use for Grown-Ups, he draws on decades of research and his own personal experience to argue definitively that the criminalization and demonization of drug use--not drugs themselves--have been a tremendous scourge on America, not least in reinforcing this country's enduring structural racism. Dr. Hart did not always have this view. He came of age in one of Miami's most troubled neighborhoods at a time when many ills were being laid at the door of crack cocaine. His initial work as a researcher was aimed at proving that drug use caused bad outcomes. But one problem kept cropping up: the evidence from his research did not support his hypothesis. From inside the massively well-funded research arm of the American war on drugs, he saw how the facts did not support the ideology. The truth was dismissed and distorted in order to keep fear and outrage stoked, the funds rolling in, and Black and brown bodies behind bars. Drug Use for Grown-Ups will be controversial, to be sure: the propaganda war, Dr. Hart argues, has been tremendously effective. Imagine if the only subject of any discussion about driving automobiles was fatal car crashes. Drug Use for Grown-Ups offers a radically different vision: when used responsibly, drugs can enrich and enhance our lives. We have a long way to go, but the vital conversation this book will generate is an extraordinarily important step.

Why do the vast majority of heroin users live in cities? In his provocative history of heroin in the United States, Eric C. Schneider explains what is distinctively urban about this undisputed king of underworld drugs. During the twentieth century, New York City was the nation's heroin capital—over half of all known addicts lived there, and underworld bosses like Vito Genovese, Nicky Barnes, and Frank Lucas used their international networks to import and distribute the drug to cities throughout the country, generating vast sums of capital in return. Schneider uncovers how New York, as the principal distribution hub, organized the global trade in heroin and sustained the subcultures that supported its use. Through interviews with former junkies and clinic workers and in-depth archival research, Schneider also chronicles the dramatically shifting demographic profile of heroin users. Originally popular among working-class whites in the 1920s, heroin became associated with jazz musicians and Beat writers in the 1940s. Musician Red Rodney called heroin the trademark of the bebop generation. "It was the thing that gave us membership in a unique club," he proclaimed. Smack takes readers through the typical haunts of heroin users—52nd Street jazz clubs, Times Square cafeterias, Chicago's South Side street corners—to explain how young people were initiated into the drug culture. Smack recounts the explosion of heroin use among middle-class young people in the 1960s and 1970s. It became the drug of choice among a wide swath of youth, from hippies in Haight-Ashbury and soldiers in Vietnam to punks on the Lower East Side. Panics over the drug led to the passage of increasingly severe legislation that entrapped heroin users in the criminal justice system without addressing the issues that led to its use in the first place. The book ends with a meditation on the evolution of the war on drugs and addresses why efforts to solve the drug problem must go beyond eliminating supply.

A gripping, ultimately triumphant memoir that's also the most comprehensive and comprehensible study of the neuroscience of addiction written for the general public. FROM THE INTRODUCTION: "We are prone to a cycle of craving what we don't have, finding it, using it up or losing it, and then craving it all the more. This cycle is at the root of all addictions, addictions to drugs, sex, love, cigarettes, soap operas, wealth, and wisdom itself. But why should this be so? Why are we desperate for what we don't have, or can't have, often at great cost to what we do have, thereby risking our peace and contentment, our safety, and even our lives?" The answer, says Dr. Marc Lewis, lies in the structure and function of the human brain. Marc Lewis is a distinguished neuroscientist. And, for many years, he was a drug addict himself, dependent on a series of dangerous substances, from LSD to heroin. His narrative moves back and forth between the often dark, compellingly recounted story of his relationship with drugs and a revelatory analysis of what was going on in his brain. He shows how drugs speak to the brain - which is designed to seek rewards and soothe pain - in its own language. He shows in detail the neural mechanics of a variety of powerful drugs and of the onset of addiction, itself a distortion of normal perception. Dr. Lewis freed himself from addiction and ended up studying it. At the age of 30 he traded in his pharmaceutical supplies for the life of a graduate student, eventually becoming a professor of developmental psychology, and then of neuroscience - his field for the last 12 years. This is the story of his journey, seen from the inside out.