For two hundred years, addiction to opiates has seemed both dangerous and glamorous. Countless writers, from Coleridge and De Quincey to William Burroughs and Irving Walsh, have invested it with deep philosophical significance. Addicts are presumed to be in touch with profound mysteries of which non-addicts are ignorant. Dalrymple shows that doctors, psychologists and social workers, all of them uncritically accepting addicts' descriptions of addiction, have employed these literary myths in creating an equal and opposite myth of quasi-treatment. Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not the serious medical condition, but a relatively trivial experience. He says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality. Romancing Opiates will make you wonder if the most obvious facts about addiction have been overlooked because of myths that suit the interests both of the addicts and the addiction bureaucracy that serves them.

In The Pleasure of Thinking, Theodore Dalrymple embarks on an entertaining intellectual journey. With his characteristic wit, Dalrymple navigates the quirky realms of literature, biography, philosophy, science, and history, highlighting the satisfaction that comes with reflecting on life's questions. This book is for anyone who delights in the intricacies of the human mind and seeks to understand the world in all its quirky complexity. Often through personal anecdotes from his time as a prison doctor and psychiatrist, his essays illuminate the myriad corners of the human mind seen through his inimitable, thought-provoking observations and celebrate thought and the paradox of reflection. About the author: Theodore Dalrymple spent the first part of his career as doctor in deprived parts of Africa and South America. When he returned to England he joined the Prison Service as a GP and psychiatrist in London's East End and later inner-city Birmingham. He is a regular contributor to, among others, the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Spectator, the Australian, the Critic, and he has a column in The Oldie and City Journal.