The Urge

An authoritative, illuminating, and deeply humane history of addiction—a phenomenon that remains baffling and deeply misunderstood despite having touched countless lives—by an addiction psychiatrist striving to understand his own family and himself Even after a decades-long opioid overdose crisis, intense controversy still rages over the fundamental nature of addiction and the best way to treat it. With uncommon empathy and erudition, Carl Erik Fisher draws on his own experience as a clinician, researcher, and alcoholic in recovery as he traces the history of a phenomenon that, centuries on, we hardly appear closer to understanding—let alone addressing effectively. As a psychiatrist-in-training fresh from medical school, Fisher was soon face-to-face with his own addiction crisis, one that nearly cost him everything. Desperate to make sense of the condition that had plagued his family for generations, he turned to the history of addiction, learning that the current quagmire is only the latest iteration of a centuries-old story: humans have struggled to define, treat, and control addictive behavior for most of recorded history, including well before the advent of modern science and medicine. A rich, sweeping history that probes not only medicine and science but also literature, religion, philosophy, and sociology, The Urge illuminates the extent to which the story of addiction has persistently reflected broader questions of what it means to be human and care for one another. Fisher introduces us to the people who have endeavored to address this complex condition through the ages: physicians and politicians, activists and artists, researchers and writers, and of course the legions of people who have struggled with their own addictions. He also examines the treatments and strategies that have produced hope and relief for many people with addiction, himself included. Only by reckoning with our history of addiction, he argues—our successes and our failures—can we light the way forward for those whose lives remain threatened by its hold. The Urge is at once an eye-opening history of ideas, a riveting personal story of addiction and recovery, and a clinician’s urgent call for a more expansive, nuanced, and compassionate view of one of society’s most intractable challenges.

Revenge is made and justice is delivered. Take a trip through the minds of the killers, the victims, and the pedophiles. All those twisted from childhood will twist together in the end.

Taint and Alana are in love. But this is no normal love, no, Taint suffers from Depression. Alana deals with Bulimia. They do everything they can to help each other, meeting others on the way; a strange boy called Garth with an unhealthy obsession with fire and the very source of all three of their problems: Two Men.

My book consists of some analyses of my own person and the way i see the world through my experiences in every day life.Having been raised in a religious environment has also given me an outlook on life and it's pitfalls as well as the good things that came out of it. Religion is the staple of most societies and each has a way oi life to it and a promise for a heaven or a place that will give peace and an absence of any evil. Where freedom reigns and happiness is around us like a coat. Whether there are many ways to get there I can not say but I am sure that most people think that their way is the one and only way. I will in no way dispute these facts because sitting in judgment over others is like walking in quicksand and in the end the results may still be the same

Tracing the cultural evolution of shopping from outdoor bazaars to suburban malls, this brazen look at the history and psychology of one of humankind's oldest pursuits considers the variety of reasons (and excuses) that drive the impulse to buy. An opulent collection of shopping places are described, including ancient markets, covered arcades of 18th-century France, gallerias of 19th-century Italy, and megamalls of 1950s America. Examples from literature and other sources explore the historically conflicted attitudes about shopping, it seems that fashionistas have always fought over the trendiest hemlines and hats. The development of buying options is detailed, from mail order catalogs and Internet stores to retail districts and massive supermarkets.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1942.

"Binge Eating: Learning to Control the Urge" is a book that helps readers to fully understand how the disorder can affect an individual. A lot of people still think that a person who binge eats is simply indulging in a bad habit or is being greedy. The book however, refutes that claim and explains what binge eating really is. It outlines what binge eating is and then moves into the symptoms and signs that come with this particular eating disorder. It then goes on to outline the various treatments that can be used to help persons deal with this disorder. This is great book to start with when one wants to learn about binge eating disorder.

Ordinary people can perform acts of astonishing selflessness, sometimes even putting their lives on the line. A pregnant woman saw a dorsal fin and blood in the water—and dove right in to pull her wounded husband to safety. Remarkably, some even leap into action to save complete strangers: one New York man jumped onto the subway tracks to rescue a boy who had fallen into the path of an oncoming train. Such behavior is not uniquely human. Researchers have found that mother rodents are highly motivated to bring newborn pups—not just their own—back to safety. What do these stories have in common, and what do they reveal about the instinct to protect others? In The Altruistic Urge, Stephanie D. Preston explores how and why we developed a surprisingly powerful drive to help the vulnerable. She argues that the neural and psychological mechanisms that evolved to safeguard offspring also motivate people to save strangers in need of immediate aid. Eye-catching dramatic rescues bear a striking similarity to how other mammals retrieve their young and help explain more mundane forms of support like donating money. Merging extensive interdisciplinary research that spans psychology, neuroscience, neurobiology, and evolutionary biology, Preston develops a groundbreaking model of altruistic responses. Her theory accounts for extraordinary feats of bravery, all-too-common apathy, and everything in between—and it can also be deployed to craft more effective appeals to assist those in need.