Handbook On Opium

From a psychiatrist on the frontlines of addiction medicine and an expert on the history of drug use comes the "authoritative, engaging, and accessible" history of the flower that helped to build (Booklist) -- and now threatens -- modern society. Opioid addiction is fast becoming the most deadly crisis in American history. In 2018, it claimed nearly fifty thousand lives -- more than gunshots and car crashes combined, and almost as many Americans as were killed in the entire Vietnam War. But even as the overdose crisis ravages our nation -- straining our prison system, dividing families, and defying virtually every legislative solution to treat it -- few understand how it came to be. Opium tells the "fascinating" (Lit Hub) and at times harrowing tale of how we arrived at today's crisis, "mak[ing] timely and startling connections among painkillers, politics, finance, and society" (Laurence Bergreen). The story begins with the discovery of poppy artifacts in ancient Mesopotamia, and goes on to explore how Greek physicians and obscure chemists discovered opium's effects and refined its power, how colonial empires marketed it around the world, and eventually how international drug companies developed a range of powerful synthetic opioids that led to an epidemic of addiction. Throughout, Dr. John Halpern and David Blistein reveal the fascinating role that opium has played in building our modern world, from trade networks to medical protocols to drug enforcement policies. Most importantly, they disentangle how crucial misjudgments, patterns of greed, and racial stereotypes served to transform one of nature's most effective painkillers into a source of unspeakable pain -- and how, using the insights of history, state-of-the-art science, and a compassionate approach to the illness of addiction, we can overcome today's overdose epidemic. This urgent and masterfully woven narrative tells an epic story of how one beautiful flower became the fascination of leaders, tycoons, and nations through the centuries and in their hands exposed the fragility of our civilization. An NPR Best Book of the Year"A landmark project." -- Dr. Andrew Weil"Engrossing and highly readable." -- Sam Quinones"An astonishing journey through time and space." -- Julie Holland, MD"The most important, provocative, and challenging book I've read in a long time." -- Laurence Bergreen

Oscillations in opium poppy production in Afghanistan have long been associated with how the state was perceived, such as after the Taliban imposed a cultivation ban in 2000-1. The international community's subsequent attempts to regulate opium poppy became intimately linked with its own state-building project, and rising levels of cultivation were cited as evidence of failure by those international donors who spearheaded development in poppy-growing provinces like Helmand, Nangarhar and Kandahar. Mansfield's book examines why drug control - particularly opium bans - have been imposed in Afghanistan; he documents the actors involved; and he scrutinizes how prohibition served divergent and competing interests. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in rural areas, he explains how these bans affected farming communities, and how prohibition endured in some areas while in others opium production bans undermined livelihoods and destabilized the political order, fuelling violence and rural rebellion. Above all this book challenges how we have come to understand political power in rural Afghanistan. Far from being the passive recipients of violence by state and non-state actors, Mansfield highlights the role that rural communities have played in shaping the political terrain, including establishing the conditions under which they could persist with opium production.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world’s oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery. A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu. But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction—from quitting cold turkey to taking “the cure” at a Buddhist monastery in the Thai countryside. At once a powerful personal story and a fascinating historical survey, Opium Fiend brims with anecdotes and lore surrounding the drug that some have called the methamphetamine of the nineteenth-century. It recalls the heyday of opium smoking in the United States and Europe and takes us inside the befogged opium dens of China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. The drug’s beguiling effects are described in vivid detail—as are the excruciating pains of withdrawal—and there are intoxicating tales of pipes shared with an eclectic collection of opium aficionados, from Dutch dilettantes to hard-core addicts to world-weary foreign correspondents. A compelling tale of one man’s transformation from respected scholar to hapless drug slave, Opium Fiend puts us under opium’s spell alongside its protagonist, allowing contemporary readers to experience anew the insidious allure of a diabolical vice that the world has all but forgotten.

Known to mankind since prehistoric times, opium is arguably the oldest and most widely used narcotic. Opium: A History traces the drug's astounding impact on world culture--from its religious use by prehistoric peoples to its influence on the imaginations of the Romantic writers; from the earliest medical science to the Sino-British opium wars. And, in the present day, as the addict population rises and penetrates every walk of life, Opium shows how the international multibillion-dollar heroin industry operates with terrifying efficiency and forms an integral part of the world's money markets. In this first full-length history of opium, acclaimed author Martin Booth uncovers the multifaceted nature of this remarkable narcotic and the bittersweet effects of a simple poppy with a deadly legacy.

Handbook of Opium: History and Basis of Opioids in Therapeutics traces the history of poppy from its prehistory, its use in Greek and Egyptian medicine through the European Renaissance, and the opioid epidemic of the present day. The book explores the discovery of morphine and its alkaloids, reviews its biosynthetic process, and covers the evolution of synthetic opioids. Further, it reviews the biological effects of opium and the molecular basis of its actions, including future perspectives in clinical applications with therapeutic targets. The book is interspersed with numerous notes on the events and great minds in history and medicine who advocated, analyzed and advanced opium through history. The book is a comprehensive review on opium, covering a breadth of topics, including its history, botany, chemistry, trade, physiology, clinical use and molecular biology, with numerous references, tables, vignettes and illustrations included for additional understanding. Presents a comprehensive review on opium, covering a range of topics Filled with historical vignettes, tables and illustrations to aid understanding Authored by practicing clinicians who integrate clinical information in the context of history and pharmacology

Here is an in-depth examination of the opium poppy--the first medicinal plant known to mankind. In Opium Poppy: Botany, Chemistry, and Pharmacology, author L. D. Kapoor provides readers with a comprehensive resource on poppy production from seed to alkaloid. He explores the opium poppy?s origin, distribution, chemistry, and uses and abuses from ancient civilizations through the present day. He covers plant and seed production and crop improvement and explores in detail the chemical and pharmaceutical by-products of the opium poppy. The book begins with a historical overview of the origin and use of opium poppy in ancient civilizations such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. Chapters that follow contain detailed information on: botanical studies cytogenics and plant breeding agronomy, including insect and pest control measures physiological and anatomical studies chemical and pharmacological aspects of opium alkaloids biosynthesis and physiology of opium alkaloids the occurrence and role of alkaloids in plants the evaluation of analgesic actions of morphine in various pain models in experimental animals Opium Poppy: Botany, Chemistry, and Pharmacology is a useful reference for professionals and students of pharmacy, botany, chemistry, medicine, and pharmacology who need a better overall understanding of this ancient plant and its (potential) modern usage.

Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state. In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

'Lucy Inglis has done a wonderful job bringing together a wide range of sources to tell the history of the most exciting and dangerous plants in the world. Telling the story of opium tells us much about our faults and foibles as humans – our willingness to experiment; our ability to become addicts; our pursuit of money. This book tells us more than about opium; it tells us about ourselves.' - Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads ‘The only thing that is good is poppies. They are gold.’ Poppy tears, opium, heroin, fentanyl: humankind has been in thrall to the ‘Milk of Paradise’ for millennia. The latex of papaver somniferum is a bringer of sleep, of pleasurable lethargy, of relief from pain – and hugely addictive. A commodity without rival, it is renewable, easy to extract, transport and refine, and subject to an insatiable global demand. No other substance in the world is as simple to produce or as profitable. It is the basis of a gargantuan industry built upon a shady underworld, but ultimately it is a farm-gate material that lives many lives before it reaches the branded blister packet, the intravenous drip or the scorched and filthy spoon. Many of us will end our lives dependent on it. In Milk of Paradise, acclaimed cultural historian Lucy Inglis takes readers on an epic journey from ancient Mesopotamia to modern America and Afghanistan, from Sanskrit to pop, from poppy tears to smack, from morphine to today’s synthetic opiates. It is a tale of addiction, trade, crime, sex, war, literature, medicine and, above all, money. And, as this ambitious, wide-ranging and compelling account vividly shows, the history of opium is our history and it speaks to us of who we are.