Best Drugs Books
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BEST DRUGS BOOKS BLAINE STOTHARD 50 PART 2 DRUGLINK REVIEWS EDITOR TREATMENT AND WORKING How Clients Make Therapy Work: WITH USERS The Process of Active Self-healing Arthur C. Bohart & Karen Tallman, American Psychological Association, 1999. The great psychotherapy debate: Turns the therapy tables typically models, methods, and findings oriented to the therapist being the active force ‘delivering’ therapy. Instead the Bruce E Wampold, Lawrence Erlbaum authors argue that psychotherapies all Associates Inc., 2001 have the same outcomes because it is Key text and synthesis of research the client who co-opts the therapy and supporting the ‘common factors’ model does the work of self-healing. “Clients’ of therapy. Relegating the brand of the self-healing capacities are potent therapy and its distinctive methods enough to make use of whatever (within to minor status, solidly grounded limits) they are offered in psychotherapy, in evidence, the book instead turns as long as they are willing to invest the spotlight on factors such as the themselves in their use.” The implication therapeutic relationship, the helping is that “The most important thing context, and optimism linked to a therapists can do to be helpful is to convincing schema of the origins of the find ways of supporting, stimulating, client’s problems and ways out of them. and energizing client investment and “My position is not that technique is involvement.” A book which truly places irrelevant to outcome. Rather, I maintain the patient at the centre of therapy that ... the success of all techniques for drug and alcohol problems and depends on the patient’s sense of psychological problems in general. alliance with an actual or symbolic healer. This position implies that ideally Mike Ashton, Drugs and Alcohol therapists should select for each patient Findings. the therapy that accords, or can be brought to accord, with the patient’s personal characteristics and view of the Ghodse’s Drugs and Addictive problem.” Behaviour: A Guide to Treatment A. H. Ghodse, Cambridge University Mike Ashton, Drugs and Alcohol Findings. Press, 4th edition, 2010. This title provides an excellent and accessible textbook on practical and evidence-based approaches for all aspects of managing addiction and substance misuse. It has proved to be an invaluable text book for students of addiction, and for those working in clinical settings. It is written in a clear and objective manner. Christine Goodair, Programmes Coordinator (Substance Misuse) Population Health Research Institute, St. George’s University of London. The text for this entry was incorrectly printed in Part One. 22 | DRUGLINK NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 THE SUBSTANCES Drugs of Dependence: the role of medical specialists BMA Board of Science, 2013. A Primer of Drug Action (12th Ed.) Raises issues relating to health harms R M Julien, C D Advokat, J E Comaty, of drug misuse in a clear and objective manner. A very useful reference tool Worth Publishers, 2010. for those wanting to understand the There are many good textbooks terms used in addiction and the role of which provide a useful introduction to medical specialists. The appendices on pharmacology, psychopharmacology, the nature of addictiveness of commonly and clinical prescribing practice but used illicit drugs, and the health harms A Primer of Drug Action provides an of emerging, licit and illicit drugs are excellent general overview to those excellent reference tools to have to hand readers wanting to know how drugs on your desk. work in the body and brain. This is a very popular undergraduate level textbook Christine Goodair, Programmes and it covers the major therapeutic and Coordinator (Substance Misuse) recreational drug classes likely to be Population Health Research Institute, St. encountered in drugs services, and lays George’s University of London. out the foundations for more detailed investigation and self-learning. HISTORICAL Harry Sumnall, Professor in Substance Use at the Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University. Tackling drugs to build a better Britain Novel Psychoactive Substances: UK Government, 1998 Classification, Pharmacology and Toxicology A reminder of a time when there was P Dargan & D Wood, Academic Press, genuine government commitment in the UK and there was a real energy in the 2013. field. One of the few academic textbooks dedicated to Novel Psychoactive David MacKintosh, Policy Adviser, Substances (NPS). In such a rapidly London Drug and Alcohol Policy Forum. changing field, there is the danger that printed textbooks quickly become out of date, but this edited collection Opium and the People: Opiate not only provides an overview on the Use and Drug Control Policy in pharmacology, toxicology, epidemiology, Nineteenth and Early Twentieth and policy response to NPS, but perhaps Century England more importantly, sets out the principles Virginia Berridge, Allen Lane, 1981, that should be the foundation of investigation into these compounds. re-printed by Free Association Books 1999 Harry Sumnall, Professor in Substance Did you know that opium was being Use at the Centre for Public Health, produced in the UK in 1576 in much Liverpool John Moores University. the same way as in 21st century Afghanistan? Berridge provides a wealth of evidence regarding the everyday use of opium in the 19th century. From the early 1830’s, when Mitcham was the main market place for opium poppy heads, to later in the century when tincture of opium had found its way into a plethora of cure-alls such as Collis Brownes, Atkinson’s Infant Preservative, Kendal Black Drop and the omnipresent laudanum. She also looks at its popularity among the middle and literary classes. The latter developed the myth of the Chinese-run opium den, written about by Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Berridge examines the NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 DRUGLINK | 23 professionalisation of opium supply and young men and women whose lives were the emergence of the disease model altered and damaged by their encounters of addiction alongside an anti-opium with heroin. They were just ordinary movement with the eventual emergence people who happened to live in deprived of a centralised government drug policy parts of the North of England hit by what in the 1920’s, with opium, and its alkaloid we now know to have been a major and derivatives morphine and heroin, only permanent transformation of the British being available from licensed doctors. economy. Another reason to recommend this book is that, like all Geoff Pearson’s Peter Simonson is a Support Worker for books, chapters and articles, it is a Health Advocacy Project in Camden. beautifully written with insightful social commentary. Addicts Who Survived: An Oral Susanne MacGregor, Professor of Social History of Narcotic Use in America Policy at the London School of Hygiene 1923-1965 and Tropical Medicine; Associate Editor, David Courtwright, Herman Joseph, International Journal of Drug Policy. Don Des Jarlais, Claude Brown, University of Tennessee, 1989 An illuminating oral history of what were Dope Girls termed the classic years of heroin use Marek Kohn, 1992 between 1923 and 1965. The participants were in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s when This immensely readable history is the interviewed. They described the tough perfect foil for anyone who thinks that laws enforced under the auspices of ‘mad for it’ stimulant-fuelled hedonism Harry Anslinger, appointed as the first was invented in the latter part of the 20th commissioner of the Federal Bureau of century. For me, it remains unsurpassed Narcotics, with the ever present threat as an account of the era. In it, Kohn of imprisonment or a mandatory stay in documents aspects of London’s party America’s first Drug Prison in Lexington, scene in the aftermath of the Defence Kentucky. They also describe the first of the Realm Act (1914) through to the Methadone Maintenance Treatment in 1920s. He particularly discusses this New York City under the auspices of Dr with reference to the death of actress Vincent Dole and Dr Marie Nyswander. Billie Carlton that was (mis)attributed Some of the respondents are still living to cocaine. Media-fuelled moral panics, happy and fruitful lives as pensioners on racist stereotypes of evil dope dealers, MMT. celebrity drug scandals: anyone reading this will gain a new appreciation of the Peter Simonson is a support worker for way these tropes have persisted for a Health Advocacy Project in Camden. almost as long as people have been partying. Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Neil Hunt, freelance researcher and Report trainer; Honorary Senior Research UK Government, 1894. Associate, University of Kent. An example of people in another century trying to grapple with the same issues Living with Heroin: the impact of that face us today. a ‘drugs epidemic’ on an English community John McCracken , Programme Manager Parker, H, Bakx K & Newcombe, R., Drugs, Department of Health Open University Press, 1998. This book reports on a 2-year research The New Heroin Users project on the use of heroin and other Geoffrey Pearson, Blackwell, 1987. drugs in the mid-1980s in the Wirral, a borough of Merseyside in the UK. The As the 1980s’ heroin epidemic reached research was a pioneering multi- into parts of Britain previously method study of drug use in an English untouched and was viewed with alarm community, and was one of the first such by the authorities and public alike, projects to recommend a harm reduction Pearson’s account revealed its personal approach to drug use. consequences through the voices of users themselves. He emphasises that Russell Newcombe, 3D Research his informants are perfectly ordinary 24 | DRUGLINK NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 The Drugtakers subtle and often go unrecognised. Peter Jock Young, McGibbon and Kee/ Adams is one of the very few to have articulated these dangers at any length. Paladin, 1971. It is the academic research community This book was part of my initial reading that one hopes would be least likely list when I started at ISDD in 1977 to be drawn in to a position in which and I’m very grateful to the thoughtful independence was compromised.