Brain-Robbers: How Alcohol, Cocaine, Nicotine, And Opiates Have Changed Human History (Praeger Series On Contemporary Health And Living)

A psychiatrist examines how the world's four most important mind-altering substances?alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and opiates?ave played a significant role throughout human history, and explains how these powerful drugs affect the brain and cause addiction. Alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and opiates have spurred some of the greatest human pleasure and pain across time. Providing information that ranges as widely as from ancient Egypt to modern times, this book comprehensively addresses the good, the bad, and the very ugliest aspects of these substances, examining their history, their effects on the brain and body, and on civilization itself. Frances R. Frankenburg, MD, employs accessible, everyday language to explain the neurology of addiction and describe how these "brain-robbing" substances work to hijack the brain's pleasure systems to create powerful addictions. The author also provides perspective into the intertwined, inescapable, and often uneasy relationship between these substances and human culture, economics, and politics?or example, how individuals become physically or psychologically addicted to alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and opiates, while governments become financially "addicted" to the revenue, such as taxes, that can be collected from the sale and use of these substances. 9781440829314 1440829314 0 Health & Fitness NOT_MATURE http://books.google.com/books/content?id=NNDCEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=5&source=gbs_api en

• • Author: Frances R. Frankenburg MD
• • Publisher: Praeger
• • Publication Date: Mar 31, 2014
• • Number of Pages: 368 pages
• • Language: English
• • Binding: Hardcover
• • ISBN-10: 1440829314
• • ISBN-13: 9781440829314