Download or read book Opium Regimes written by Timothy Brook and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-09-18 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opium Regimes draws on a range of research to show that the opium trade was not purely a British operation, but involved Chinese merchants and state agents, and Japanese imperial agents as well.
Download or read book Opium written by John H. Halpern and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a psychiatrist on the frontlines of addiction medicine and an expert on the history of drug use comes the "authoritative, engaging, and accessible" history of the flower that helped to build (Booklist) -- and now threatens -- modern society. Opioid addiction is fast becoming the most deadly crisis in American history. In 2018, it claimed nearly fifty thousand lives -- more than gunshots and car crashes combined, and almost as many Americans as were killed in the entire Vietnam War. But even as the overdose crisis ravages our nation -- straining our prison system, dividing families, and defying virtually every legislative solution to treat it -- few understand how it came to be. Opium tells the "fascinating" (Lit Hub) and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an epidemic of addiction. Throughout, Dr. John Halpern and David Blistein reveal the fascinating role that opium has played in building our modern world, from trade networks to medical protocols to drug enforcement policies. Most importantly, they disentangle how crucial misjudgments, patterns of greed, and racial stereotypes served to transform one of nature's most effective painkillers into a source of unspeakable pain -- and how, using the insights of history, state-of-the-art science, and a compassionate approach to the illness of addiction, we can overcome today's overdose epidemic. This urgent and masterfully woven narrative tells an epic story of how one beautiful flower became the fascination of leaders, tycoons, and nations through the centuries and in their hands exposed the fragility of our civilization. An NPR Best Book of the Year"A landmark project." -- Dr. Andrew Weil"Engrossing and highly readable." -- Sam Quinones"An astonishing journey through time and space." -- Julie Holland, MD"The most important, provocative, and challenging book I've read in a long time." -- Laurence Bergreen
Download or read book Pain Management and the Opioid Epidemic written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2017-09-28 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.
Download or read book Modern China and Opium written by Alan Baumler and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intriguing historical examination of China's widespread opium epidemic
Download or read book Milk of Paradise written by Lucy Inglis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 an agricultural product 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.
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 Confessions of an English Opium Eater written by Thomas de Quincey and published by Gottfried & Fritz. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about opium usage and the effects of addiction on the authors life.
Download or read book A State Built on Sand written by David Mansfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oscillations in opium poppy production in Afghanistan have long been associated with how the state was perceived, such as after the Taliban imposed a cultivation ban in 2000-1. The international community's subsequent attempts to regulate opium poppy became intimately linked with its own state-building project, and rising levels of cultivation were cited as evidence of failure by those international donors who spearheaded development in poppy-growing provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar and Kandahar. Mansfield's book examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and he scrutinizes how prohibition served divergent and competing interests. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in rural areas, he explains how these bans affected farming communities, and how prohibition endured in some areas while in others opium production bans undermined livelihoods and destabilized the political order, fuelling violence and rural rebellion. Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in rural Afghanistan. Far from being the passive recipients of violence by state and non-state actors, Mansfield highlights the role that rural communities have played in shaping the political terrain, including establishing the conditions under which they could persist with opium production.
Download or read book The Opium War written by Julia Lovell and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “crisp and readable account” of the nineteenth century British campaign sheds light on modern Chinese identity through “a heartbreaking story of war” (The Wall Street Journal). In October 1839, a Windsor cabinet meeting voted to begin the first Opium War against China. Bureaucratic fumbling, military missteps, and a healthy dose of political opportunism and collaboration followed. Rich in tragicomedy, The Opium War explores the disastrous British foreign-relations move that became a founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism, and depicts China’s heroic struggle against Western conspiracy. Julia Lovell examines the causes and consequences of the Opium War, interweaving tales of the opium pushers and dissidents. More importantly, she analyses how the Opium Wars shaped China’s self-image and created an enduring model for its interactions with the West, plagued by delusion and prejudice.
Download or read book Opium s Long Shadow written by Steffen Rimner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, created in 1920, culminated almost eight decades of political turmoil over opium trafficking, which was by far the largest state-backed drug trade in the age of empire. Opponents of opium had long struggled to rein in the profitable drug. Opium’s Long Shadow shows how diverse local protests crossed imperial, national, and colonial boundaries to gain traction globally and harness public opinion as a moral deterrent in international politics after World War I. Steffen Rimner traces the far-flung itineraries and trenchant arguments of reformers—significantly, feminists and journalists—who viewed opium addiction as a root cause of poverty, famine, “white slavery,” and moral degradation. These activists targeted the international reputation of drug-trading governments, first and foremost Great Britain, British India, and Japan, becoming pioneers of the global political tactic we today call naming and shaming. But rather than taking sole responsibility for their own behavior, states in turn appropriated anti-drug criticism to shame fellow sovereigns around the globe. Consequently, participation in drug control became a prerequisite for membership in the twentieth-century international community. Rimner relates how an aggressive embrace of anti-drug politics earned China and other Asian states new influence on the world stage. The link between drug control and international legitimacy has endured. Amid fierce contemporary debate over the wisdom of narcotics policies, the 100-year-old moral consensus Rimner describes remains a backbone of the international order.
Download or read book Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right written by Karl Marx and published by Newcomb Livraria Press. This book was released on with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new 2023 translation of Marx's 1844 "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie" from the original manuscript. This edition includes a new introduction by the translator and reference materials including a Glossary of Philosophic and Economic Marxist Terminology, an Index of Personalities Associated with Marx and a Timeline of Marx’s Life and Works. This is Volume III in The Complete Works of Karl Marx by NL Press. In "Towards the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" Marx's argument is that Hegel's political philosophy is an abstraction that fails to take into account the concrete reality of human existence and the class struggles that shape it. He contends that in order to understand the state, civil society, and the concept of alienation, one must take into account the economic relations that underlie it and the material conditions of society. The central argument of Marx's critique is that the state is not a neutral arbiter of justice, but is rather an instrument of class warefare and exploitation. This is a mimicry of Feuerbach’s argument nearly word-for-word. Marx's critique serves to demonstrate the importance of a historical and materialist perspective in understanding the nature of human freedom and morality. It serves as a precursor to his later theories of historical materialism and dialectical materialism, which continue to be influential in the modern world. Marx's critique in this work centers around the idea that Hegel's philosophy is an abstraction that fails to take into account the concrete reality of human existence and the class struggles that shape it.
Download or read book Opium written by Martin Booth and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2013-09-24 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known to mankind since prehistoric times, opium is arguably the oldest and most widely used narcotic. Opium: A History traces the drug's astounding impact on world culture--from its religious use by prehistoric peoples to its influence on the imaginations of the Romantic writers; from the earliest medical science to the Sino-British opium wars. And, in the present day, as the addict population rises and penetrates every walk of life, Opium shows how the international multibillion-dollar heroin industry operates with terrifying efficiency and forms an integral part of the world's money markets. In this first full-length history of opium, acclaimed author Martin Booth uncovers the multifaceted nature of this remarkable narcotic and the bittersweet effects of a simple poppy with a deadly legacy.
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 History of the Opium Problem written by Hans Derks and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 851 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering a period of about four centuries, this book demonstrates the economic and political components of the opium problem. As a mass product, opium was introduced in India and Indonesia by the Dutch in the 17th century. China suffered the most, but was also the first to get rid of the opium problem around 1950.
Download or read book Imperial Twilight written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.
Download or read book For the Love of Opium written by W. E. Simmons and published by SVDC InDUSTries. This book was released on 2022-10-01 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book that could end the opioid epidemic, For the Love of Opium, begins with a historical account of Opium use in polite society prior to its criminalization. Author W. E. Simmons examines its influence on history, art, and literature, including how it inspired the most famous monsters of the horror genre. We learn what Opium is, the alkaloids that produce its effects, and how they work together and independently. We also learn why science has failed to make a safer and less addictive version of nature’s strongest medicine. The author delves into his personal experiences with opiates as we learn of the history of Opium, where it came from, its use by animals, Neanderthals, and early humans, Opium in religion, early medicine, and the first failed drug laws. Side effects of Opium and how to remedy them are explained. The science and psychology of addiction, endorphins, and the dark side of Opium and addiction are covered. Simple instructions for how not to get addicted to opium are laid out. Where and how to purchase Papaver Somniferum and its seeds is explained along with a step-by-step guide to growing poppies and harvesting your own Opium, how to make poppy tea and an extract of Opium from poppy straw, methods of ingestion, and Opium potentiators. The history of the legal status of Opium is debated, as well as the problem with the current drug scheduling system, and the absurdity of criminalizing plants. The citizens of the world are dying from Fentanyl and other deadly synthetic opioids that are secretly hidden in the drugs they take, and they take these drugs because the natural and safer alternative is against the law.
Download or read book Opium Poppy Cultivation and Heroin Processing in Southeast Asia written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
