Romancing Opiates

Shows that doctors, psychologists and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed literary myths in constructing an equal and opposite myth of quasi-treatment. This work also shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems.

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For hundreds of years, addiction to drugs has seemed dangerous but with a hint of glamour. Addicts are a mystery to those who have never been one. They are presumed to be in touch with profound enlightenments of which non-addicts are ignorant. Theodore Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists, and social workers have always known these drug addictions to be false! They have created these myths to build lucrative method of expensive quasi-treatment.