Reddit reviews High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society (P.S.)

A good read: Dr Carl Hart: High Price Regarding different drugs and their differences/similarties + an awesome biography of sorts.

My intuition tells me you are either a troll, or someone who is ignorant on the subject of drugs in modern society. I recommended the book "High Price" by pharmacologist Dr. Carl Hart.

*link: http://www.amazon.com/High-Price-Neuroscientists-Self-Discovery-Challenges-ebook/dp/B009NF75MY

I suppose this is a time to mention that Dr. Carl Hart's book High Price was pretty fucking life changing for me.

Obviously, to those that have read it, much of it is still about African American society and Dr. Hart trying to find his place within it as well as outside of it as he was growing up, but the way he speaks about it is still pretty universal. Most importantly though, and the part of the book that was very eye-opening for me was his writings on drugs, addiction in general and our policies on those topics.

His Ted talk is fucking amazing.

I think that was a paraphrase, but the quotes they do attribute to Thune are really in line with that philosophy. This is, BTW, contrary to what I understand is the best guidance from the medical community and from drug researchers.

You should really follow the example of one of my personal favorite neuroscientists, Dr. Carl Hart, who has dedicated his life to eliminating many of the myths regarding drugs so we can better formulate rational policy that treats the mental health issues (substance abuse).

I recommend his memoir, High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society, in addition to his Google talk and his Reason TV talk which both go over many of the main points of his book and general research into neuropharmacology insofar as debunking myths about the propensity to addiction with these drugs and the need for universal decriminalization and formulation of separate tracks for substance abusers and casual users (most of the using population).

Here is the mobile version of your link

Wow - that's fascinating. You're the first person I've met who has had experience with both SGI and Scientology - we've noted the similarities here on this subreddit. This one, "Parallels between SGI and Scientology", is a fine place to start if you don't have time to dig through the previous list.

Boy, "happy" is the cult hook of choice, isn't it?

Did you already tell me how long you'd been out? Yeah, it can take a while. I have to tell you, reading others' getting-out experiences and interacting with them has helped me so much. No, I wasn't wrong! Others noticed the same things I did, and their explanations helped me put words to my feelings and reactions and that odd sense of discomfort one can't quite put one's finger on. That's one of my goals here, is to provide the evidence, from as many different angles as possible, that you and the others like you were NOT wrong. You were exploited, and THAT's wrong! Everyone who joined did so because they were idealistic and/or suffering and so all that lofty blahblah about "happiness" and "world peace" really resonated with them. A shame the reality had nothing to do with the advertising, huh?

I really feel for you, going through this difficult untangling process while caring for 4 children on your own. This is you O_O

We walked out of SGI with nothing but the spiritual clothes on our backs - there was no support network, no meetings to help us, no services to facilitate our transition back to "normal", and if your experience was anything like the norm, you weren't able to continue any of the friendships you had inside SGI. "Us vs. them" means that if someone leaves, she becomes "them", not "us", and must be avoided. Besides, what would you talk about? One of the ways people process transitions is by talking about them, and what SGI members wants to listen to THAT???

On your observations re: your friend's 40-year practice. Still looking for the actual proof, are we? Welcome to the reality of the SGI. Nobody is doing better than their peers who don't chant. If they were, we'd be able to SEE it, because it's supposed to be "ACTUAL proof", not "IMAGINARY proof". Where are the leaders of industry and society and politics Ikeda promised us would arise from SGI ranks? There's been plenty of time - if it were going to happen, we'd be seeing it.

A book to add to your list for when you find yourself with an empty nest is Dr. Gabor Maté's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts". You'll no doubt recognize the Buddhist imagery. That's a link to the .pdf that's available online - sometimes those links don't work, so if you want to read it FOR FREE, just type in "in the realm of hungry ghosts pdf" and your search engine should take you right to it. As you might guess, it's about addicts and addiction and the related neurological research. We're discovering that the brain chemistry that predisposes people to chemical addiction is set during the 3rd trimester of pregnancy based on the hormones coursing through the pregnant woman's blood. As Dr. Maté put it, "Their brains never had a chance." In fact, that's the title of Chapter 17!

So your friend is self-medicating. It's quite possible that he's self-medicating with cocaine because he has undiagnosed ADD - Dr. Maté works with homeless addicts in Toronto, and he found that a great many of the cocaine addicts had undiagnosed ADD/ADHD:

>Cocaine is his other habit apart from narcotics, and like many others, he unwittingly began to use this chemical as self-medication for his undiagnosed and untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
...
>It took a Ritalin prescription to help Remy unburden his mind. He has severe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Never diagnosed before, he was dumbfounded when I told him about the lifelong patterns of physical restlessness, mental disorganization and impulse-regulation deficiencies that characterize the condition. “That’s me all over,” he kept repeating, hitting his forehead with his palm again and again. “How did you know that much about me? That’s been me since I was ankle high to a flea!”
...
>Now thirty-five, Remy has been an addict since his teenage years. His first drug of choice was cocaine. The heroin habit he acquired in prison is managed successfully with methadone, but he’s rarely been off cocaine since his discharge. After I diagnosed his ADHD, he agreed to stay away from it—at least temporarily, so we could give him a trial of methylphenidate, better known by the trade name Ritalin.

>He was astonished the first day he took this medication. “I’m calm,” he reported. “My mind isn’t going off like a machine gun. I’m thinking instead of just spinning. It’s not fucking going sixty different miles an hour, in twenty different directions. I’m going, ‘Hang on, I’ve gotta do one thing at a time here. Just let’s slow down here.”

I wish that signaled a "happily ever after" for Remy, but it didn't. Still, it provided a glimmer of hope and suggests a possible medical approach for other cocaine users to at least look into.

A high proportion of these individuals with these undiagnosed neurochemical deficiencies in their brains also smoke a lot. Cigarettes are a stimulant as well; they serve a function similar to Ritalin, only not as well. More self-medicating. Yeah, the tobacco, the cocaine, those are addictive in and of themselves, but they're addictive to the people whose brain chemistry is a match for the neurochemical compounds in the tobacco or the cocaine. I tried both in college the first time, never saw the appeal. You know, MOST people are exposed to opiates, yet few become addicted:

>Heroin is considered to be a highly addictive drug—and it is, but
only for a small minority of people, as the following example illustrates.

>It’s well known that many American soldiers serving in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s were regular users. Along with heroin, most of these soldier addicts also used barbiturates or amphetamines or both. According to a study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1975, 20 per cent of the returning enlisted men met the criteria for the diagnosis of addiction while they were in Southeast Asia, whereas before they were shipped overseas fewer than 1 per cent had been opiate addicts. The researchers were astonished to find that “after Vietnam, use of particular drugs and combinations of drugs decreased to near or even below preservice levels.” The remission rate was 95 per cent, “unheard of among narcotics addicts treated in the U.S.”

Isn't that funny? That's also the remission rate from SGI!! Ima gonna put up a topic about that - thanks!!

>“The high rates of narcotic use and addiction there were truly unlike anything prior in the American experience,” the researchers
concluded. “Equally dramatic was the surprisingly high remission rate after return to the United States.” These results suggested that the addiction did not arise from the heroin itself but from the needs of the men who used the drug. Otherwise, most of them would have remained addicts.

>As with opiates so, too, with the other commonly abused drugs. Most people who try them, even repeatedly, will not become addicted. According to a U.S. national survey, the highest rate of dependence after any use is for tobacco: 32 per cent of people who used nicotine even once went on to long-term habitual use. For alcohol, marijuana and cocaine the rate is about 15 per cent and for heroin the rate is 23 per cent. Taken together, American and Canadian population surveys indicate that merely having used cocaine a number of times is associated with an addiction risk of less than 10 per cent. This doesn’t prove, of course, that nicotine is “more” addictive than, say, cocaine. We cannot know, since tobacco—unlike cocaine—is legally available, commercially promoted and remains, more or less, a socially tolerated object of addiction. What such statistics do show is that whatever a drug’s physical effects and powers, they cannot be the sole cause of addiction.

Most people recovering from surgery or physical trauma are given opiates of some sort or another for the pain, but only a tiny, miniscule percentage ever become addicted.

So while your summary of your friend's situation clearly strikes me differently than it strikes you (I find the studies of addiction fascinating, as in Dr. Carl Hart's "High Price" (might also be available online in a .pdf, but I recommend "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" first!) - plus Dr. Hart is smmmmmokin' hot, kind of a cross between Bob Marley and Lennie Kravitz), I think that REAL "actual proof" would have been for your friend to get the medical diagnosis and intervention he needs in order to get onto some safer regular medication, if regular medication is what he actually needs. Like the way a certain type of diabetic needs insulin. Because I agree - there's no actual proof anywhere in sight here. And isn't that a tragedy?

Hey, have you read Carl Hart's book High Price, and if so what do you think about it?

Carl Hart's book High Price discusses the effect of the criminal justice system and the drug laws on black people. Perhaps it would give you some ideas.

I do not care that he spokes crack.

Did you know that most people that smoke crack are in fact high functioning individuals, like professors, doctors, lawyers etc and not some street hood? [link] (http://www.amazon.com/High-Price-Neuroscientists-Self-Discovery-ebook/dp/B009NF75MY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383254857&sr=1-1&keywords=high+price)

I am a libertarian. What he does with his own body is his own fucking business. I do not care whom people have sex with, whom they marry, what the smoke or eat, what they read, or anything they do with themselves. But liberals are not like that. They want you to conform to their own way of life. They are anti-freedom.