Drug users are no longer a mad, bad or immoral minority. Using drugs is normal for the chemical generation, and the drug that defines them is ecstasy. This book about ecstasy users' lives is based on one of the biggest government-funded projects ever undertaken and gives voice to the chemical generation for the first time. The effects of the manufacture, distribution and use of ecstasy are now being felt across much of the globe. In the UK, where the study was conducted, over fifty per cent of young people use drugs, a quarter of them regularly. The people in this book are ordinary, decent, family-loving people, with normal lives, normal problems and normal aspirations. Through their own words we hear how they first started using ecstasy, how they use it in different ways, why clubbing and raving are so important, how good sex is on ecstasy, how they chill out, how they come down, what problems they encountered and why they quit. And what happened to these normal people when they used ecstasy? Nothing. Yet. This path breaking book ends by trying to answer the questions on the lips of every member of the chemical generation: what are the long-term effects of ecstasy? Because we can't answer them, the authors claim, we are failing in our duty to our children: telling them not to take ecstasy is alienating and pointless.

Drug users are no longer a mad, bad or immoral minority. Using drugs is normal for the chemical generation, and the drug that defines them is ecstasy. This book about ecstasy users' lives is based on one of the biggest government-funded projects ever undertaken and gives voice to the chemical generation for the first time. The effects of the manufacture, distribution and use of ecstasy are now being felt across much of the globe. In the UK, where the study was conducted, over fifty per cent of young people use drugs, a quarter of them regularly. The people in this book are ordinary, decent, family-loving people, with normal lives, normal problems and normal aspirations. Through their own words we hear how they first started using ecstasy, how they use it in different ways, why clubbing and raving are so important, how good sex is on ecstasy, how they chill out, how they come down, what problems they encountered and why they quit. And what happened to these normal people when they used ecstasy? Nothing. Yet. This path breaking book ends by trying to answer the questions on the lips of every member of the chemical generation: what are the long-term effects of ecstasy? Because we can't answer them, the authors claim, we are failing in our duty to our children: telling them not to take ecstasy is alienating and pointless.

This practical guide to the psychology of effective communication is suitable for anyone for whom communication in groups is a key part of their job. No previous knowledge of psychology is assumed and the emphasis is on exercises, key point summaries, assessment and improving your skills in everyday situations like committees, project teams, seminars and focus groups.
Suitable as an introduction for psychology students, it will be invaluable for students of business, medicine, allied health, social work and probation, whether studying on a short course or attending an intensive training session as part of their continuing professional development.

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Richard Hammersley is a health psychologist who had a long university career and still practices from his family home in the Scottish Borders. He has been writing poetry since he was 13, in parallel with his academic career, which took him to the USA and Canada and then to various universities in Scotland, England and Wales. He has published and performed in various places over the years, occasionally even getting paid, and he has never stopped writing. This book is his selected poems. Are they 'psychological'? You decide. The poems are dry, accessible and sometimes funny. They are often about when things go slightly, or seriously, wrong, but are also about love and values, as well as about politics and policies. The book includes Borders which contains poems about place and nature written living in the Scottish Borders. Haiku, mostly written just before and during the Covid-19 pandemic and The Fear of Winter which is a long poem sequence about social collapse.