Brain-Robbers: How Alcohol, Cocaine, Nicotine, and Opiates Have Changed Human History

(Hardback)

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A psychiatrist examines how the world's four most important mind-altering substances alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and opiateshave 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 politicsfor 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.

Reviews

Brain-Robbers is an engaging overview of how individuals, governments, and societies have interacted with four major drugs of use, abuse, and trade over the course of human history. This . . . makes the book's scope unique. . . . comprehensive and engaging. The inclusion of numerous historical anecdotes and asides makes a potentially dry history relevant to a modern worldview. The writing is nontechnical . . . Overall, this is a useful introduction to the human history of drug use. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates and general readers. * Choice *
Brain-Robbers is a wonderful book of great importance. . . . [It] provides a splendid trip through the brain, culture, and pharmacology of addictions. * PsycCRITIQUES *

Author Bio

Frances R. Frankenburg, MD, is professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine and chief of inpatient psychiatry at the Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital in Bedford, MA.