An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine

From acclaimed medical historian Howard Markel, author of When Germs Travel, the astonishing account of the years-long cocaine use of Sigmund Freud, young, ambitious neurologist, and William Halsted, the equally young, pathfinding surgeon. Markel writes of the physical and emotional damage caused by the then-heralded wonder drug, and how each man ultimately changed the world in spite of it—or because of it. One became the father of psychoanalysis; the other, of modern surgery.
 
Both men were practicing medicine at the same time in the 1880s: Freud at the Vienna General Hospital, Halsted at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. Markel writes that Freud began to experiment with cocaine as a way of studying its therapeutic uses—as an antidote for the overprescribed morphine, which had made addicts of so many, and as a treatment for depression.
 
Halsted, an acclaimed surgeon even then, was curious about cocaine’s effectiveness as an anesthetic and injected the drug into his arm to prove his theory. Neither Freud nor Halsted, nor their colleagues, had any idea of the drug’s potential to dominate and endanger their lives. Addiction as a bona fide medical diagnosis didn’t even exist in the elite medical circles they inhabited.
 
In An Anatomy of Addiction, Markel writes about the life and work of each man, showing how each came to know about cocaine; how Freud found that the drug cured his indigestion, dulled his aches, and relieved his depression. The author writes that Freud, after a few months of taking the magical drug, published a treatise on it, Über Coca, in which he described his “most gorgeous excitement.” The paper marked a major shift in Freud’s work: he turned from studying the anatomy of the brain to exploring the human psyche.
 
Halsted, one of the most revered of American surgeons, became the head of surgery at

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The Harder They Fall: Celebrities Tell Their Real Life Stories of Addiction and Recovery

Now in paperback with updated photos and additional interviews, The Harder They Fall reveals the intimate thoughts, feelings, regrets, and beliefs of celebrities in recovery. Among those profiled are comedian Richard Pryor; musicians Grace Slick, Dr. John, and Chuck Negron; actors Malcolm McDowell and Mariette Hartley; and athletes Dock Ellis and Gerry Cooney. Addiction devoured their pride and accomplishments until each found the courage to ask for help, the honesty to face their disease, and the strength--ultimately--to rebuild a life of extraordinary success. Here, legendary Los Angeles publicist, Gary Stromberg, gives readers an up-close look at fame and addiction, as told by the stars themselves. These are stories of greatness rebuilt--one day at a time.

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Genius and Heroin: The Illustrated Catalogue of Creativity, Obsession, and Reckless Abandon Through the Ages

What is the price of brilliance? Why are so many creative geniuses also ruinously self-destructive? From Caravaggio to Jackson Pollack, from Arthur Rimbaud to Jack Kerouac, from Charlie Parker to Janis Joplin, to Kurt Cobain, and on and on, authors and artists throughout history have binged, pill-popped, injected, or poisoned themselves for their art. Fully illustrated and addictively readable, Genius and Heroin is the indispensable reference to the untidy lives of our greatest artists and thinkers, entertainingly chronicling how the notoriously creative lived and died—whether their ultimate downfalls were the result of opiates, alcohol, pot, absinthe, or the slow-motion suicide of obsession.

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Howard Hughes: The Mysterious Billionaire (Titans of Fortune)

Howard Hughes was a mysterious billionaire, heroic, tragic, brilliant, mad, pathological and extraordinarily wealthy. He was a great businessman or a terrible one; the jury is still out. But his life was fascinating and disturbing.

Orphaned at 18 and inheriting millions from his father's estate, Hughes headed to Hollywood where he dallied with Hollywood's most beautiful women including Jean Harlow, Billie Dove, Lana Turner, Jane Russell, Ida Lupino, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Gene Tierney, Ava Gardner, Gloria Vanderbilt—only 17—and Kate Hepburn, the latter introduced to him by his friend, Cary Grant. He produced and directed many movies, including "Scarface," "Hell's Angels" and "The Outlaw," the latter a trailblazing sex-Western starring Jane Russell. He wanted a studio and purchased RKO from uber-financier Floyd Odlum.

At the same time Hughes was an industrialist and aviation pioneer. While his company Hughes Tool was generating hundreds of millions of dollars in profits annually, Hughes established aircraft companies and airlines, including TWA and Northeast Airlines. He was also a speed junkie who wanted to break world speed, endurance and altitude records. He crashed several times, one crash so severe he nearly died--and opiates administered during his lengthy recovery became a lifelong addiction.

When he sold TWA for $546 million he turned his attention to Las Vegas and began acquiring hotels and casinos the way a child plays the game of Monopoly. He bought the Desert Inn, the Sands, Castaways, New Frontier, Silver Slipper, Harold's Club, North Las Vegas Airport and all the surrounding lands—and nearly a fifth of all the gambling in Nevada. Many credited Hughes for wresting control of the city from the mob.

But the airplane crashes, the drug addiction and his childhood predilection for illness, real or feigned, turned him into a bizarre

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Born to Lose: Memoirs of a Compulsive Gambler

"My history of gambling really began before I was born." So opens Bill Lee's self-told story of gambling addiction, which is set in San Francisco's Chinatown and steeped in a culture where it is not unheard of for gamblers to lose their children to a bet. From wagering away his beloved baseball card collection in third grade to forfeiting everything he owned at blackjack tables in Las Vegas, every new and terrifying loss validated Lee's feelings of worthlessness. With gritty honesty and true humility, Lee describes what gambling addiction feels like and looks like from the inside. "Everything was a blur to me," Lee writes about a gambling jag that brought him to financial ruin. "I was in such a reckless and self-destructive frame of mind that I would have bet my life if required. In a way, thats what I was doing. I was that far gone from reality." In the end, however, Born to Lose is a memoir of hope as Lee reveals how recovery from his gambling addiction has been possible through the Twelve Step program.

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Shantaram: A Novel

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."

So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay's hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city's poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas---this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it

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The Gambling Addiction Patient Workbook

"The addiction field has long needed a comprehensive set of exercises counselors could use to guide patients through good treatment. The workbooks developed by Dr. Perkinson take the patient from the beginning of treatment to the end. They are written in such a manner that Dr. Perkinson is your mentor and is conversing with you, sharing with you his vast area of expertise and knowledge about recovery. These patient exercises meet the highest standards demanded by accrediting bodies."
--Dr. Bob Carr, Director Substance Abuse Program and Mental Health Services, Sioux Falls V.A. Regional Medical Center, South Dakota "I have used the exercises in The Gambling Addiction Patient Handbook for years. Patients have reported reduced levels of stress from having their assignments organized in this format. It is a challenge for the pathological gambler to slow down and learn in early recovery."
--Sue Van Doren, Nationally Certified Gambling Counselor "I have been working with compulsive gamblers and their family members for 12 years and find this work extremely rewarding and challenging. I have been utilizing Dr. Perkinson's workbooks for 10 years and have found them to be some of the most useful tools in helping addicts and gamblers identify the many ways that addiction has impacted their lives. Our clients benefit from the straightforward approach of the workbooks and the clear instructions of how to begin incorporating a 12-step recovery program into their lives. I highly recommend Dr Perkinson's workbooks."
--Lisa Vig, Licensed Addiction Counselor and Nationally Certified Gambling Counselor. Gamblers Choice, Fargo, North Dakota "I have been in the chemical dependency field for over 28 years. I have worked as a counselor, clinical supervisor and executive director in a number of treatment centers. These are the best exercises for alcoholics,

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Naked Lunch

Hustler-addict Bill Lee travels from New York to Tangiers, running from the police and searching for a place to take drugs, until he enters the hallucinatory fantasy world of Interzone, where individual freedom confronts the forces of totalitarianism. Reissue."He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's." Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America. Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol. Read it and see for

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