The author is Michael Stein and this is possibly the most interesting and engaging book I have read this year. The subtitle is “One Patient, One Doctor, One Year.” The ongoing dialogue between a doctor and his addicted patient defies excerpt but here is one small (non-dialogic) bit:
There is violence inside hospitals, and I am often surprised there isn’t more. In my experience it breaks out most often in the emergency room, the airport terminal of the hospital, the site of comings and goings, of transience, the stopover for travelers, the first landing for the already hurt. There is pain and fear, there is the anger and frustration that comes with bad luck’s arrival, compounded by the delays — for blood work and X-ray results — where it is clear that the staff is taking care of many people, where you aren’t the only one, just the one they are slowest to assist.
This book covers the notion of rational addiction, how and why people kick addiction, whether addicts are different in the first place, self-deception, the motivations of doctors, what doctors really do, how platonic yet romantic bonds develop, and many related issues. It is a memoir rather than formal science and it reads as well as masterful fiction, while being thought-provoking on many levels. Here is one very good review.
The bottom line: I just bought his other non-fiction book.
Thank you for yet another (excellent, I’m sure) book recommendation. You consume large amounts of new work. How on earth do you afford all of it? I’d love to hear you estimate how much of your disposable income is consumed by book purchases (in relative terms, no dollar sums of course).
Perhaps you ask the GMU library to purchase them? (entirely appropriate, in my view) Or maybe as an occasional book reviewer, you are on the right lists to receive complimentary volumes?
I admire and envy your ability (and preference) to consume lots of new books, then tell me about them.
What is the problem with being addicted? Many addicts are high function, able to accomplish a great deal. Clearly, not all addicts function well, but how many function well when not using drugs? It seems that few functioned better before addiction, and few function better by merely ending addiction.
I am told I need to faithfully take the drugs prescribed, and the data I have tells me I am being given very good advice. Studies clearly indicate that the failure to faithfully take the drugs prescribed is one of the major causes of unnecessary health system costs. So, dependency on drugs is clearly not a bad thing.
The issue is how well people function in society, and what can society do to maximize the actually functioning of those within it, not how dependent individuals are on drugs.
Tyler, you might also like The End of My Addiction by Olivier Ameisen. It’s a about a doctor who cures himself of alcoholism by self-experimenting with different doses of obscure drugs.
If you think drug addicts have never contributed anything to society, you should throw out all of your music and most of your books.
Yes, alcoholics cheat, lie and steal for their addiction. Do you really not know any alcoholics? You are in denial.
Should alcohol be made illegal? Where did your straw man come from? My point was about the immorality, not just amorality, of addicts. I didn’t change the subject to legality–why did you?
That artists claim they need drugs for their creativity indicates that they just aren’t that good in reality. Bach and Beethoven were better. Go read Romancing Opiates by Dalrymple.
It’s a interesting question, if addicts are the same person they were before? Sometimes the answer is no and there is need for addiction treatment. But these people are so changed that they refuse help and there is not much you can do for them.
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