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. The colleague who pushed it my way. Even independence of research is just too back then in post-punk days the cover important for that to be allowed to of the hardback edition with its mosaic happen. It is crucial to democracy itself, of snapshots of late 60s/early 70s Adams argues, that universities remain young and old drug takers looked a sufficiently independent to be able to little past tense but the main messages challenge received wisdom wherever of Young’s book resonated then and that comes from. Although gambling is have stayed with me for the last forty the focus of this book, his arguments years. The subtitle of the book was The apply equally in other areas where those Social Meaning of Drug Use and it was representing powerful commercial this perspective that was so carefully interests, in the tobacco and alcohol unpicked in the book and I found so industries for example, have attempted rewarding. I’m no criminologist but I to co-opt researchers to support findings realise Young’s work has been influential consistent with the promotion of their in this field and his analysis remains interests, and to distort and discredit relevant. researchers’ findings which run counter to those interests. John Witton, Addictions Review Co- ordinator, National Addiction Centre. Jim Orford, Emeritus Professor of Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Birmingham A History of Drugs: Drugs and Freedom in the Liberal Age Toby Seddon, Routledge, 2010 ALCOHOL AGAIN... Seddon uses the tools of French post- structuralist Michel Foucault in looking at the genealogical construction of the Caitlin, Life with Dylan Thomas “drug problem” which then comes under Thomas C & Tremlett G; 1986, Secker varying modes of governance. As stated in his conclusion “...fundamental ideas and Warburg like ‘addiction’, or the very category People who experience adversity on of ‘drugs’ have been pulled apart and account of a close relative’s addiction – their ‘universal’ or ‘timeless’ status the ‘concerned and affected others’ are unravelled.” an enormous constituency of people– likely to be in excess of 100 million Peter Simonson is a Support Worker for worldwide–which is comparatively a Health Advocacy Project in Camden. neglected in addiction treatment and research. Not so, however, in biography, autobiography and fiction. There are Gambling, Freedom and Democracy many contemporary or recent examples P J Adams, Routledge, 2008. but Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas, co- authored with George Tremlett, based In this book Peter Adams, of the School on tape-recorded interviews carried of Population Health at the University out with Caitlin, wife of the poet Dylan of Auckland in New Zealand, has Thomas, is one of the very best. It has the pointed out how, in an era of gambling appearance of an extended qualitative liberalisation and normalisation, the interview report. Like other wives, Caitlin independence of individuals and bodies had a lot to put up with and the book which should remain objective and describes this and her dilemmas about independent is in serious danger of how to cope in detail. being compromised. It is only too easy to become complicit in the liberalisation Jim Orford, Emeritus Professor of and expansion of gambling, and conflicts Clinical and Community Psychology at of interests can easily arise. This applies the University of Birmingham to governments which try to combine a number of not easily compatible roles as well as to service providers. The processes involved are many and

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 DRUGLINK | 25 WOMEN AND DRUGS Drug Misuse and Motherhood: Klee, Jackson and Lewis: 2002: Routledge. Women and Substance use This research-based book, rather than providing an overview of the impact of Elizabeth Ettorre, 1992, Macmillan drugs on the developing baby, covers other relevant issues, such as the This book was published in the changing context of drug using women series Women in Society, edited by Jo when they get pregnant and setting up Campling, who noted that in the previous a family and concepts of motherhood. 20 years (1972-1992) there had been an It also gives advice on drug use and explosion of publishing by, about and for parenting, relapse and child protection women. Since this wave of feminism has issues and presents examples of good receded, contemporary readers could practice. Very useful in this book are learn from Elizabeth Ettorre’s account the case studies that enable the reader of women and substance use. Its central to understand what is going on in these theme is that for women there are two drug using women’s lives when they are dangerous dependencies – subordination pregnant, give birth and in particular the to men and addiction. The book also has period after the birth, what challenges current relevance in looking across use they face, how are they able to cope and of alcohol, tranquillisers, heroin, tobacco what supporting network they have. and food. It challenges the orthodoxies of clinicians and addiction researchers Lisa Luger, Director, LLC Consultancy (which remarkably persist to this day) CIC by giving full attention to women, seeing them as distinctive rather than as either subsumed within categories of ‘addicts’, ‘patients’, ‘individuals’, or stigmatised as YOUNG PEOPLE particularly bad or diseased.

Susanne MacGregor, Professor of Social Sex, alcohol and other drugs: Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Associate Editor, Exploring the links in young International Journal of Drug Policy. people’s lives Lynch and Blake, 2004, National Children’s Bureau/Sex Education The Essential Guide to Problem Forum. Substance Use during Pregnancy: A This book is a very helpful guide for resource book for professionals professionals who work with young Anne Whittaker, DrugScope 2011. people, or, like in my case, for training such professionals, their parents, This book is very useful for all teachers, social workers etc. The book professionals coming in contact with highlights the link between the use of pregnant women who are using drugs. alcohol and drugs and sexual activities The book is a must for midwives, doctors in the lives of young people. It explores and nurses but also provides very helpful young people’s opinions about what information to social workers, health support they need and what implications visitors, sexual health and drugs and this has for policy and practice. Again, alcohol workers. the most helpful in this book is that it It provides a detailed overview of offers very useful exercises, questions the drugs and their effects on the and quotes that enhance understanding developing baby and gives guidance on of young people’s context and that can be how to manage substance use during used when working with young people or pregnancy, Other areas that are covered training those who work with them. are maternity care, blood borne viruses and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. Lisa Luger, Director, LLC Consultancy CIC Lisa Luger, Director, LLC Consultancy CIC

26 | DRUGLINK NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 POLICY MAKING – HOW DID LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT WE GET HERE AND WHERE AND PAGE TURNERS MIGHT WE GO?

Queen of the South Count the costs: The Alternative Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Spain 2002, World Drugs Report: English edition, Penguin 2004. Transform Drug Policy Foundation: A novel by one of Spain’s most highly- 2012 regarded contemporary writers, The This annual report responds to the Queen of the South tells the story of United Nations’ World Drug Report by Teresa, a Mexican woman who thrives showing the gaps in government and UN and survives in the world of international assessments of global drug problems drug trafficking. Her survival is in part and drug policy, and providing evidence the result of some intense loyalties of the harmful and counter-productive with colleagues and fellow-dealers. Her consequences of a law-enforcement story takes the reader through districts, approach. This is undoubtedly the most regions and countries and across oceans, informed critique of international drug reflecting the international nature of prohibition, and alternative policies, the drugs trade and traders, from South available at the present time. America via North Africa to the European mainland, and the changing nationalities Russell Newcombe, 3D Research and ruthlessness of organised crime groups. It covers many aspects of the international drugs trade, including Narcomania: How Britain Got violence and corruption, and is, to coin a Hooked on Drugs phrase, a page-turner. My big question Daly M & Sampson S: Windmill Books: at the close of the book is: how true to reality is it – it sounds (or reads…) totally 2013. convincing and plausible. Narcomania provides an impressive overview of the ‘big picture’ of illegal Blaine Stothard, Prevention specialist drug use in the UK, presenting a and Druglink Book Reviews Editor. multiplicity of perspectives, roles and identities which straddle both the licit and illicit economies. It successfully manages to highlight both the commonalties and contradictions of the shadow-world of human intoxication.

Russell Newcombe, 3D Research

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 DRUGLINK | 27 HARRY SHAPIRO’S EDITOR’S PICKS:

I am making full use of my dictatorial powers as Editor to foist on you my own selection of the best drug books I have come across. ‘Best’ of course covers a multitude of sins, including most informative, most enlightening, most challenging, best written, most entertaining and so on. No detailed reasoning or attempt at thematic balance – just all good stuff in my humble opinion.

Drug, set and setting Dark alliance: the CIA the Contras, Norman Zinberg, Yale University and the crack cocaine explosion Press, 1984 Gary Webb, Seven Stories Press, 1998 Maybe one of the most important drug The cocaine equivalent of McCoy’s book, books ever written, explaining that drug Webb’s investigation ran in the San Jose use is not just about drug effects and Mercury News in 1996. The story caused individual pathology. a huge national and international outcry, but eventually the paper and fellow journalists turned against him. Webb killed himself in December 2004.

The politics of heroin Alfred McCoy, Lawrence Hill Book, 1991 Addicts who survived: an oral Despite the subtitle ‘CIA complicity history of narcotic use in America in the global drug trade’, this is no before 1965 rapid conspiracy tome, but a superbly David Courtwright, University of documented account of how America’s obsession with the red menace trumped Tennessee (reprint edition) 2012 ‘The War On Drugs’. We need something like for the UK – while there are still people around who remember the early days. See Pete Simonson review. Heroin addiction care and control: the British system 1916-1984 Bing Spear, DrugScope 2002 The only insider government account of this era of British drug policy by the iconic Home Office civil servant. And there probably aren’t many civil servants who could be dubbed ‘iconic’.

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