Download Chocolate to Morphine Understanding MindActive Drugs Andrew Weil Winifred Rosen 9780395331903 Books

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Product details Paperback 228 pages Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition (March 1, 1983) Language English ISBN-10 0395331900

Chocolate to Morphine Understanding MindActive Drugs Andrew Weil Winifred Rosen 9780395331903 Books Reviews

• This item arrived just as the seller described. An informative book on a majority of psychoactive drugs giving brief histories and anecdotal stories about these drugs and their uses, as well as alternatives to consuming drugs. It talks about the idea of how a drug is merely a combination of molecules forming chemicals that cause interesting effects on the body and mind, that these drugs are not in and of themselves bad or even evil, it is the intent of the person about to take a drug that can be positive or negative What does this person want to have happen after taking a drug, how healthy is this person both physically and mentally, even what stage of life are they in. This book is by no means complete, but with additional suggested reading provided in the back it can help one form new ideas about drugs that have been vilified and written off as having no value, medicinal or otherwise.
• This is a somewhat outdated book. Interesting as a historical document at this point. That we still do not have realistic public policies regarding drugs is in spite of Andrew Weil's mighty efforts to bring some sense and understanding to the issue.
• A good primer about all drugs. Says good and bad effects, altho not a use promoter. A must have for anyone even slightly interested in what is going on.
• W-R's "Chocolate to Morphine" is a clinically "libertarian," non-prescriptive sourcebook on psychoactive drugs. Written in 1983, the book presents a non-histerical, balanced, and normalizing discussion of civilization-old curiosity about one's own consciousness.
  
  Weil and Rosen are clear about their mandate "our intention is not to encourage drug use by any one, nor is to discourage drug use" (p. 175). The authors don't tempt, nor do they forbid. They calmly educate. With the existential humanism of the 60s cohort, they place the responsibility squarely on the consumer and only caution "there are no good or bad drugs, only good or bad uses of drugs... people must learn to look at and analyze their own and others' relationship with drugs" (p. 176).
  
  The book begins with an honest, non-patronizing, sobering review of the notion of "drugs." The openining line of "The drugs are here to stay" is not a pessimistic prognosis about the war on drugs, but a kind of conceptual de-toxification of the toxic connotations of the word "drugs." The book proceeds with a methodical, encyclopedic review of various classes of drugs, their psychoactive profiles, uses and misuses.
  
  Thematically, despite the official disawoval of a mandate, the book does articulate a value it takes the reader from chocolate to morphine and back to chocolate - i.e. from normalizing the human desire to experiment with consciousness to a review of legal and illegal ways of doing so to an eventual soft pitch of "natural highs." Here the book makes an important contribution - in the very last chapter entitled "Alternatives to Taking Drugs," we see a beaming photo of Weil (he's clearly happy and doesn't look stoned) and we read "being high doesn't mean being drugged" and "drugs don't contain highs... highs exist within the human nervous system; all drugs do is trigger highs." So there you go you don't have to go to the corner - the dealer is in your head...
  
  I agree. In my work with substance users (in correctional setting), I used Weil's and Rosen's ideas to design a "Natural Highs" group protocol. It was well received by the inmate clients it made sense. Normalize the desire to experiment, and offer a psychologically healthier, legally-safer, financially more palatable, and socially sanctioned "natural high" alternative - that seems to be W & R's educational formula.
  
  The book I read and own and came to love is the 1983 original edition. Have the authors toned down their existentially-"libertarian," harm-reduction stance to buffer against the antagonism of the abstinence paradigm? I frankly don't care to find out.
  
  Pavel Somov, Ph.D.
  Author of "Eating the Moment 141 Mindful Practices to Overcome Overeating One Meal at a Time" (New Harbinger, Nov. 2008) and of "Recovery Equation Motivational Enhancement/Choice Awareness/Use Prevention an Innovative Clinical Curriculum for Substance Use Treatment"
  
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