Download or read book Opium Fiend written by Steven Martin and published by Villard. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world’s oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery. A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu. But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction—from quitting cold turkey to taking “the cure” at a Buddhist monastery in the Thai countryside. At once a powerful personal story and a fascinating historical survey, Opium Fiend brims with anecdotes and lore surrounding the drug that some have called the methamphetamine of the nineteenth-century. It recalls the heyday of opium smoking in the United States and Europe and takes us inside the befogged opium dens of China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. The drug’s beguiling effects are described in vivid detail—as are the excruciating pains of withdrawal—and there are intoxicating tales of pipes shared with an eclectic collection of opium aficionados, from Dutch dilettantes to hard-core addicts to world-weary foreign correspondents. A compelling tale of one man’s transformation from respected scholar to hapless drug slave, Opium Fiend puts us under opium’s spell alongside its protagonist, allowing contemporary readers to experience anew the insidious allure of a diabolical vice that the world has all but forgotten.

Download or read book Eight Years in Cocaine Hell written by Annie C. Meyers and published by Dean Street Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To the sensitive (cocaine) is soothing, to the stupid it is enlivening, to the exhausted it gives strength and mental vigor. To the sufferers from pain it gives peace..." Dr. T.D. Crothers, 1899 "I never used any other drug but the clear cocaine and I believe that I am the only living person in the world to-day who ever took two hundred grains in twenty-four hours and survived." Annie C. Meyers The autobiographical Eight Years in Cocaine Hell (1902) recounts in shockingly straightforward style the transformation of Annie C. Meyers, affluent and well-connected Chicago widow, to junkie, thief, forger, inventor of the 'Cocaine Dance', and ultimately authoress of the first drug confessional written by a woman. It was 1894. Annie Meyers had a bad cold, and her lawyer advised her to try Birney's Catarrh Powder, in which then-legal cocaine was a principal active ingredient. She rapidly became addicted to the drug, ran through her money and travelled the USA shoplifting, house-breaking and writing forged checks to support her habit. Arrested repeatedly, miraculously escaping a custodial sentence, Annie finally tried safe-blowing and was collared for the final time: 'homeless and friendless, degraded and frenzied, insane, a broken-down and pitiful wreck of what I had once been.' She had lost most of her teeth (one gold tooth she had extracted herself and sold), her upper jaw was eaten away and ulcers covered much of her body. She was down to about five and a half stones in weight. Remarkably, and happily, she recovered, with the help of her long-suffering sister and the St. Luke Society, who encouraged and originally published this concise, ground-breaking memoir. "Her book established a literary genre, and her case helped to outlaw cocaine." Stuart Walton, Intoxicology

Download or read book Victorian Drug Fiends written by Charles Baudelaire and published by . This book was released on 2008-02-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of infamous classics of drug literature: short stories, More than 200 large-format pages! Hours of giddy entertainment: journalism, medical reports, poetry, visions, with dozens of vintage 19th-century illustrations (prints, photos, postcards...), capturing the heady essence of Victorian drug culture. From the Romantic opium-eaters, to the Bohemian hashish fanatics, intrinsically linked to the underground art and literature of the era. Narcotics, opium dens, bhang, cannabis, hasheesh eaters, water pipes, halluncingens and hallucinations, dreamy afternoons and hedonistic nights of absinthe, reefer cigarettes and sex. Entertaining, often erotic... dare we say addictive? A literary anthology of authors including Aleister Crowley, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Richard Burton, de Quincey, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Bayard Taylor, Baudelaire, Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott! 224 pages of giddy entertainment!

Download or read book The Art of Opium Antiques written by Steven Martin and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores an aspect of opium that has largely been ignored--the art and accoutrements associated with opium smoking that reached a pinnacle in nineteenth-century China and in Chinese communities abroad, from Saigon to Singapore to San Francisco.

Download or read book Drug Nation written by Martin Plant and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans have been using psychoactive (mind-altering) drugs since ancient times, and barely a day goes by without a drug related issue reaching the headlines. This book provides an accessible and lucid introduction to some of the main health and social issues related to illicit drugs and their use.

Download or read book Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture written by Louise Penner and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays explores the rise of scientific medicine and its impact on Victorian popular culture. Chapters include an examination of Charles Dickens's involvement with hospital funding, concerns over milk purity and the theatrical portrayal of drug addiction, plus a whole section devoted to the representation of medicine in crime fiction. This is an interdisciplinary study involving public health, cultural studies, the history of medicine, literature and the theatre, providing new insights into Victorian culture and society.

Download or read book Playing Sick written by Meredith Conti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-27 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few life occurrences shaped individual and collective identities within Victorian-era society as critically as witnessing or suffering from illness. The prevalence of illness narratives within late nineteenth-century popular culture was made manifest on the period’s British and American stages, where theatrical embodiments of illness were indisputable staples of actors’ repertoires. Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine reconstructs how actors embodied three of the era’s most provocative illnesses: tuberculosis, drug addiction, and mental illness. In placing performances of illness within wider medicocultural contexts, Meredith Conti analyzes how such depictions confirmed or resisted salient constructions of diseases and the diseased. Conti’s case studies, which range from Eleonora Duse’s portrayal of the consumptive courtesan Marguerite Gautier to Henry Irving’s performance of senile dementia in King Lear, help to illuminate the interdependence of medical science and theatre in constructing nineteenth-century illness narratives. Through reconstructing these performances, Conti isolates from the period’s acting practices a lexicon of embodied illness: a flexible set of physical and vocal techniques that performers employed to theatricalize the sick body. In an age when medical science encouraged a gradual decentering of the patient from their own diagnosis and treatment, late nineteenth-century performances of illness symbolically restored the sick to positions of visibility and consequence.

Download or read book The Victorian Book of the Dead written by Chris Woodyard and published by Kestrel Publications (OH). This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Macabre tales of death and mourning in Victorian America.

Download or read book The American Disease written by David F. Musto and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1999 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Disease is a classic study of the development of drug laws in the United States. Supporting the theory that Americans' attitudes toward drugs have followed a cyclic pattern of tolerance and restraint, author David F. Musto examines the relationz between public outcry and the creation of prohibitive drug laws from the end of the Civil War up to the present. Originally published in 1973, and then in an expanded edition in 1987, this third edition contains a new chapter and preface that both address the renewed debate on policy and drug legislation from the end of the Reagan administration to the current Clinton administration. Here, Musto thoroughly investigates how our nation has dealt with such issues as the controversies over prevention programs and mandatory minimum sentencing, the catastrophe of the crack epidemic, the fear of a heroin revival, and the continued debate over the legalization of marijuana.

Download or read book The Stigma of Addiction written by Jonathan D. Avery and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the stigma of addiction and discusses ways to improve negative attitudes for better health outcomes. Written by experts in the field of addiction, the text takes a reader-friendly approach to the essentials of addiction stigma across settings and demographics. The authors reveal the challenges patients face in the spaces that should be the safest, including the home, the workplace, the justice system, and even the clinical community. The text aims to deliver tools to professionals who work with individuals with substance use disorders and lay persons seeking to combat stigma and promote recovery. The Stigma of Addiction is an excellent resource for psychiatrists, addiction medicine specialists, students across specialties, researchers, public health officials, and individuals with substance use disorders and their families.

Download or read book Diary of a Drug Fiend written by Aleister Crowley and published by Blurb. This book was released on 2018-09 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of Aleister Crowley's own experience with drugs.

Download or read book Smoke Signals written by Martin A. Lee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author, an investigative journalist, traces the social history of marijuana from its origins to its emergence in the 1960s as a defining force in an ongoing culture war. He describes how the illicit marijuana subculture overcame government opposition and morphed into a multibillion-dollar industry. In 1996, Californians voted to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes. Similar laws have followed in several other states, but not without antagonistic responses from federal, state, and local law enforcement. The author draws attention to underreported scientific breakthroughs that are reshaping the therapeutic landscape: medical researchers have developed promising treatments for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes, chronic pain, and many other conditions that are beyond the reach of conventional cures. This book is an examination of the medical, recreational, scientific, and economic dimensions of the world's most controversial plant.

Download or read book The Diary of a Drug Fiend written by Aleister Crowley and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Fortunes of Grace Hammer written by Sara Stockbridge and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grace Hammer lives a sweet enough life with her four children in London's dank and dirty East End, dipping into the pockets of wealthy strangers foolish enough to venture there. She keeps a clean house and a tight hold on her magpie nature, restricting her interests to wallets and pocket watches - at night she dreams of shiny things. Unbeknown to Grace, her most audacious crime will soon return to haunt her and old enemies come knocking. Out in the dark countryside Mr Blunt rocks in his chair, grinding his teeth, vowing furious retribution. He has never forgotten his scarlet treasure, or the harlot that stole it from him. At night he dreams of slitting her lily-white throat...

Download or read book Opium for the Masses written by Jim Hogshire and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Opium. Known as 'The Mother of All Analgesics,' it's probably the greatest pain killer ever discovered. Opium is the parent of morphine, heroin, laudanum, Darvocet, Darvon, and many other pain relievers. Opium causes poets to rhapsodize and nations to go to war. 'Religion... is the opium of the people,' said Karl Marx, but some people insist on the real thing. In Opium for the Masses, Jim Hogshire tells you everything you want to know about the beloved poppy and its amazing properties [...] As he reveals the secrets of the seductive opium poppy, he tells the sad story of prescription drugs: doctors, drug makers and governments prohibiting natural remedies in favor of harsh synthetic derivatives. Opium for the Masses includes rare photographs and detailed illustrations that bring this magnificent plant to life."--From cover.

Download or read book The Case of the Murderous Dr Cream written by Dean Jobb and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chilling true-crime story of the Victorian era’s deadliest doctor “When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most puzzling murder investigations. Incredibly, at the time the words of the world’s most famous fictional detective appeared in print in the Strand Magazine, a real-life Canadian doctor was stalking and murdering women in London’s downtrodden Lambeth neighbourhood. Dr. Thomas Neill Cream had been a suspect in the deaths of two women in Canada, and had killed as many as four people in Chicago before he arrived in London in 1891 and began using pills laced with strychnine to kill prostitutes. The Lambeth Poisoner, as he was dubbed in the press, became one of the most prolific serial killers in history. In this fascinating book, Dean Jobb reveals how bungled investigations, corrupt officials and failed prosecutions allowed Cream to evade detection or freed him to kill, again and again. The first complete account of Dr. Cream’s crimes and his many victims explores how the stifling morality and hypocrisy of the Victorian era allowed this monster to poison vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help. It offers an inside account of Scotland Yard’s desperate search for a killer as brazen and efficient as Jack the Ripper.

Download or read book Revision Notes for MCEM Part B written by Victoria Stacey and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the only book that MCEM candidates will need to pass the MCEM Part B exam. This revision guide is framed around the most recent CEM syllabus, focusing on all the components of the exam. Each section of the book is tailored to match different elements of the syllabus, allowing candidates to revise efficiently and comprehensively. This concise revision tool is completely up-to-date, reflecting the latest developments in the examination. High quality artwork and a bullet-point style help candidates to absorb information quickly. It also includes over 35 short answer questions enabling candidates to gain invaluable exam practice. Exam tips are included throughout the book to help candidates improve their exam technique.