Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy

by Theodore Dalrymple

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594032254
• ISBN13: 9781594032257
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Fabulous writer and fascinating topics!

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!

Food for thought for any college level health collection.

ROMANCING OPIATES: PHARMACOLOGICAL LIES AND THE ADDICTION BUREAUCRACY analyzes the psychology of heroin addiction - and refutes many common ideas in the process. How? It maintains heroin is not highly addictive, withdrawal from it isn't medically serious, and addicts don't become criminals to feed their habit - but it is a moral or spiritual problem. Dr. Dalrymple's experience as a prison doctor and psychiatrist in a large general hospital in a British slum backs his contentions: food for thought for any college level health collection.

Nannygate

This is not so much a book about opiate addiction as it is a mirror to the nanny society. Romancing Opiates is a continuation of Dr. Dalrymple's long, well-documented, incisive illumination of the decline of our culture. His decades' long observation of society and its ills has produced another gem. His books, this one included, notice what many other commentators have missed, i.e., the nihilism of our society has much to do with the lack of something to live for. This absence of meaning has as much to do with a loss of classical education as it does with the increasing "freedom" sans responsibility wrought by the 60's cultural revolution. As with much of his work, he sees links in literature and follows those leads through generations. One reads Dalrymple with a quiet shake of the head as he points out what most of us know but refuse to see. As Cicero once observed, "One falsehood easily leads to another", Dr. Dalrymple has been in a position to observe the results of the Beat Generation's promise that happiness is possible in a pill. Wishing the good life does not make it happen. And perhaps as important, trying to legitimize, support, and sustain personal failings as society's responsibility only makes them worse. Thanks again, Dr. Dalrymple.

One of the Best Books on the "Treatment" Industry

Finally, a book that university students in my course, Drugs and Society, can read that exposes the myths surrounding addiction and treatment. Beautifully written and compellingly argued, Dr. Dalrymple's newest book is his best yet. The engaging narrative has already captured students' attention and helped them begin to question what they had taken for granted about the value of the treatment industry. While the course supplements Romancing Opiates with additional readings on the "other side," many students have found the arguments expressed in this book to make the most sense.

Leftists better sit down reading this book.

To those who reject the concept of personal responsibility in life, this book is likely going to make you apoplectic. Those who worship at the altar of government will likely break out the torches and nooses in search of Dr. Dalrymple because of his heresy. To those honest therapists who have a compulsive desire to parent adult-children, you'll probably need therapy yourself after reading it. A bureaucratic ox has been so thoroughly gored with with this book that it deserves mandatory reference in treatment manuals. Having assessed and treated addicts for many years, I found Dr. Dalrymple's descriptions of addicts and their panoply of using excuses to be stunningly accurate. Except for the very few mentally ill people who abuse substances to assuage their pain, addicts are frightened Peter Pans who resist the maturation process at all cost and that, to themselves or others. To help clarify this, his clear and simple explanation of the existential angst construct illuminates the foundation of the opium-eater's personality. The willfully ignorant and headless addiction treatment bureaucracy provides both the dysfunctional parents and the chemistry to perpetuate the drug addict's misery. "Romancing Opiates" provides full disclosure of this self-serving and parasitic relationship. An honest and courageous work.