*Never Enough: the neuroscience and experience of addiction*

That is the new and fascinating book by Judith Grisel, unlike most neuroscientists on these topics she has been addicted to many of the drugs she writes about, or at least has tried them “for real,” furthermore her book integrates her personal and scientific knowledge in a consistently interesting manner.

Here is one bit from early on:

The very definition of an addictive drug is one that stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, but there are three general axioms in psychopharmacology that also apply to all drugs:

1. All drugs act by changing the rate of what is already going on.

2. All drugs have side effects.

3. The brain adapts to all drugs that affect it by counteracting the drug’s effects.

And a tiny bit from the middle:

Excessive use of alcohol now results in about 3.3 million deaths around the world each year.  In Russia and its former satellite states, one in five male deaths is caused by drinking.  And in the United States during the period 2006 and 2010, excessive alcohol use was responsible for close to 90,000 deaths a year…

And finally:

…primates given ecstasy twice a day for four days (eight total doses) show reduction in the number of serotonergic neurons seven years later.

Definitely recommended, this will make my list for the year’s best non-fiction.