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| Category: Health |
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| About the Book | |
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An American morphine crisis in the 1860, cocaine in the 1890s, heroin in the 1910s, methamphetamines in the 1950s, another heroin crisis in the 1970s, back to cocaine in he 1980s, another trip back to meth in the 2000s, and a prediction for a return to meth and cocaine again after the current opioid crisis ebbs. Drugmakers, dope dealers and physicians didn't incubate crisis after crisis. Their hands aren't clean, but they're not as dirty as the public perceives. The public misinterpretation stems from its own love affair with the cheapest, easiest to get, most lethal drug: Alcohol. Every drug death from every crisis has one thing in common: They are all alcohol-related. Look What Dragged the Cat In takes a deep dive into the opioid crisis, the suspects, the failed solutions, and the way out.
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| Reviews | |
Want a frank discussion? Read the first sentence of the book. Healthcare will implode and keep pushing the wheel barrow to take on overdoses and the addicted. Then where will we be? Being 'uncomfortable' has become a disease to drug, usually to self-medicate. We romanticize and patronize our drugs of self medication - like tobacco/nicotine, alcohol, and other drugs - until the drugs take one of our own. Then we blame the doctors and the manufacturers, quickly shifting the blame so that our skivvies won't show our spots: 'It can't be me, you did it to me.' Stevens looks at the gateway drug we romanticize, the drug that has our blessing when it comes to experiencing another space and time, the drug culture accepts for escape from the moment, the drug we glorify as a treatment for the soul, spirit, body and mind. The solution to the opioid crisis isn't in the opioids. This crisis is driven by fear, 'not me,' diversion, protecting the gateway drug as sacred. Address the gateway drug, he says, and in his own fashion he is saying, 'find a better route to address the reasons we drink - the shame, the guilt, the uncomfortable - to stop the cycle of drug crisis after drug crisis in every generation'. Our society trains us to use the drug alcohol, only we don't call it a drug. It's beer. Or wine. Or malt beverages. We train people to self-medicate for relaxation which can only come from this drug: Weekends Were Made For Michelob. The drug alleviates what is in the way of having relaxation or what's making us uncomfortable. When people cannot get the escape from the moment, we need a new drug. (Thanks, Huey Lewis.) We up our dosage, we seek stronger, we go to the dealer or the doc. the conversation resonates with me,personally, and in my practice. It starts... "Dr, my head hurts." "Where does it hurt?" "Here, see?" "No I don't, so lets run some tests." The tests did not show anything. "I cant find anything wrong with yourhead. What else is going on?" "Nothing doc and my life is my own business. Give me something in the meantime..." How do you come back from here, the prison and illusion of the life you are leading? How did you get here, this great expanse from the real you? Weekends Were Made For Michelob.
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| About the Author | |
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Scott Stevens is the author of five award-winning addiction, health, and recovery titles since 2010. Among the honors earned by the journalist and 2015 SAMHSA Voice Awards nominee: Three USA Best Books awards, a Next Generation Indie Books award, and a Book Excellence award. Stevens was named Chair of the 2018 International Conference on Addiction Therapy and Clinical Reports. |