Everyone knows what intoxication and drunkenness are, what they look like, how to define and measure them and what their consequences are. At least we might assume so given the ways these words are used by the media, by politicians and policy makers and by various medical, educational and legal experts in Australia and around the world. A whole variety of concerns about young people, individual and public health, road safety, sexual assault and violence are connected to these taken-for-granted understandings of intoxication and drunkenness. Drawing on an extensive review of research from biomedicine, psychology, sociology and legal studies, and from news media reporting, the authors reveal a far more complex picture. This is a picture marked by little agreement on how to define intoxication and drunkenness, how to measure intoxication, what getting drunk means to those who drink (including young people, men and women and people from different cultural and national backgrounds), and where responsibility lies for many of the individual, social, medical and legal consequences of intoxication and drunkenness. Smashed! presents an overview of the history of these concerns and an extensive account of the many meanings of intoxication and drunkenness at the start of the 21st century. It provides a valuable resource for researchers, policy makers, the media and members of the community who are involved in these ongoing, often emotive, debates.

Despite the stereotype of older adults primarily abusing alcohol, clinical practice insights indicate that the baby-boom generation frequently abuses the same substances as younger adults-including alcohol, benzodiazepines/z-drugs, cannabis, opioids, tobacco (nicotine), and neurostimulants. Old and High exposes this hidden epidemic and emphasizes the importance of understanding psychotropic substance abuse as a community health problem. Further, the book identifies the unique cultural values, social values, and risks that baby-boom adults have with respect to substance abuse and misuse to give students and clinical professionals in psychology, social work, gerontology, nursing, and medicine a foundation for working with this population. Readers will learn how to integrate current neuroscience findings with contemporary psychotherapy techniques and harm-reduction interventions to help older adults achieve successful recovery from substance abuse problems. Considering that we will likely observe an increase in rates of substance abuse as the baby-boom generation continues to age-and live longer than previous groups-there will be a major need to better understand the unique risk factors and treatment approaches for working with older adults.

The Hidden Super Power of Addiction is based on 45 years of professional and lived experience and looks at the 'Celebration of the addictive brain' and the tremendous inherent skills of people with this particular wiring. Sue Cox explains the way to harness and embrace that exceptional wiring and shows how amazing it can be for a person who has left behind their 'drugs of choice' to divert and transform that relentless drive, and become empowered. More than anything, this is a hopeful book of transformation and empowerment. Sue uses a cross-pollination of skills to explore this positive approach, from Chinese medical theories to neuro-science. The Hidden Super Power of Addiction explains how the human brain works, how life events influence us and how the two interact to make us who we are. It spotlights some outdated and false assumptions, and explodes some of the long held negativity that is levelled at addiction and how some addiction services focus is self-serving not on the addicted person. Sue is constantly frustrated by the mis-information on addiction including why the concept of seeing an addicted person as 'ill' is disempowering and limiting to real recovery and rather than continually concentrating on the individual's 'defects' and trying to find where they are at fault, she suggests that it is our quickly moving society where the problem lies and addicts themselves are just born in the wrong century!

Racialism, Drugs, and Migration: Contemporary Issues in Latin America and the Caribbean provides students with a collection of curated readings that focus on modern challenges within these regions. The anthology is divided into three distinct sections. Section I features a focus on ethnicity and racialism, with readings that address the nationalization of ethnicity, Black politics in Latin America, Mexico's indigenous resistance to globalization, and the myth of racial democracy in Brazil. In Section II, students read articles about the history, production, and trade of drugs within Latin America, as well as the effects of the War on Drugs on Latin American females and the environment. Section III speaks to issues related to migration and transnationalism, including the migration of indentured Indians from India to the Caribbean, return migration to the Caribbean, issues related to poverty and inequality in Mexico, and more. Designed to encourage discussion, critical thinking, and reflection, Racialism, Drugs, and Migration is an ideal resource for courses in ethnic and cultural studies.

David Nutt regularly hit the headlines as the UK's forthright Drugs Czar (Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs), not least when fired by the Home Secretary in 2009 for his 'inconvenient' views. In Nutt Uncut he explains how he survived ill-judged political and media vilification to establish the respected charity Drug Science, with the aim of telling the truth about drugs. The book describes his life, distinguished career and scientific achievements, including his research into the human brain and the effects that both lawful and criminally illegal substances (including psychedelics) have on the brain and behaviour. It also catalogues with expert precision the risks of harm to drug users and others of a range of well-known drugs. Surveying the state of medical knowledge around various currently prohibited substances - from hard drugs to LSD, cannabis, ecstasy, magic mushrooms and poppers - Professor Nutt ranks their potential harms and benefits (e.g. in treating anxiety, depression or pain) leading him to challenge the distorted logic of a blanket ban on anything psychoactive except alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. Nutt Uncut contains far, far more about the usually hidden world of drugs, their use, abuse and role as a political bargaining counter - making it of interest not just to the many experts and others who already support the author's campaign for a frank, evidence-based approach to drugs but also anyone who wishes to learn about what he describes in Chapter 11 as 'policy madness.'

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Practice: A Casebook on Co-occurring Disorders provides readers with illuminating, complex cases that shed light on how experienced practitioners think about practice, struggle to resolve practice dilemmas, and make clinical decisions to meet the needs of clients with co-occurring disorders. The opening chapter presents the Advanced Multiple Systems (AMS) approach, gleaned from the editors' 80 years of combined professional experience and providing readers with a series of guiding practice principles to use while reading the evaluating cases. In following chapters, cases are presented in the form of in-depth narratives. Through an informative storytelling, readers learn about individuals struggling with substance abuse, mental health disorders, racial identity, trauma, and parental rights. In additional chapters, readers are provided with standard assessment forms and challenged to make clinical sense of clients' information and their complex lives. The final chapter reviews best practice methods in the field of co-occurring disorders. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Practice is part of the Cognella Casebook Series for the Human Services, a collection of textbooks that challenge students to learn through example, build critical competencies, and prepare for effective, vibrant practice.

Prescription, illicit, and recreational drugs touch all of our lives yet a basic understanding of these chemicals is largely absent among Americans. Jerrold Winter offers a comprehensive account of psychoactive drugs, chemicals which influence our brains in myriad ways. Manifestations of their influence on the brain are quite varied. There may be the comfort provided by opioids to those who are dying or in pain or, in everyday life, the surge of contentment for the users of caffeine, nicotine, heroin, alcohol, or marijuana upon the taking of their drug of choice. Turning to the more exotic, a drug such as LSD may alter the way the world looks to us; it may even inspire thoughts of God. Adding to the purely scientific questions which confront us are the ways in which our society chooses to respond to the presence of psychoactive drugs. Should they be banned and their users sent to prison, tolerated as a reflection of man's eternal search for an escape from anxiety, pain, and the monotony of daily life, or celebrated as therapeutically useful agents? Our Love Affair with Drugs is written for experts and novices alike. There are stories of, for example, how Timothy Leary caused the repeal of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. Readers will learn of the transformation by Sir Charles Locock of a drug intended to dampen female sexual activity into the first effective drug for the treatment of the ancient disease of epilepsy. Alexander Shulgin's love of psychoactive drugs and his unconventional research practices illuminate the story of methylenedioxymethamphetamine, a.k.a. Ecstasy, a drug now likely to find value in treating veterans and others suffering post-traumatic distress disorder. Winter links the excitement of drug discovery with the very practical matter of balancing the benefits and risks of these drugs.

'Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans – our willingness to experiment; our ability to become addicts; our pursuit of money. This book tells us more than about opium; it tells us about ourselves.' - Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

‘The only thing that is good is poppies. They are gold.’

Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the ‘Milk of Paradise’ for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain – and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport and refine, and subject to an insatiable global demand.

No other substance in the world is as simple to produce or as profitable. It is the basis of a gargantuan industry built upon a shady underworld, but ultimately it is a farm-gate material that lives many lives before it reaches the branded blister packet, the intravenous drip or the scorched and filthy spoon. Many of us will end our lives dependent on it.

In Milk of Paradise, acclaimed cultural historian Lucy Inglis takes readers on an epic journey from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America and Afghanistan, from Sanskrit to pop, from poppy tears to smack, from morphine to today’s synthetic opiates. It is a tale of addiction, trade, crime, sex, war, literature, medicine and, above all, money. And, as this ambitious, wide-ranging and compelling account vividly shows, the history of opium is our history and it speaks to us of who we are.