Almost everything you know about heroin addiction is wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it is obviously wrong. Heroin is not highly addictive; withdrawal from it is not medically serious; addicts do not become criminals to feed their habit; addicts do not need any medical assistance to stop taking heroin; and contrary to received wisdom, heroin addiction most certainly IS a moral or spiritual problem. Based on his experience as a prison doctor and as a psychiatrist in a large general hospital in Birmingham, Dr. Dalrymple argues that addiction to heroin is not an illness at all, and that doctors only make it worse. They deceive both the addicts and themselves by pretending that they have something to offer. In this brilliant, entertaining and provocative book, Theodore Dalrymple explains how and why a literary tradition dating back to De Quincey and Coleridge, and continuing up to the deeply sociopathic William Burroughs and beyond, has misled all Western societies for generations about the nature of heroin addiction. These writers' self-dramatizing and dishonest accounts of their own addiction have been accepted uncritically, and have been more influential by far in forming public attitudes than the whole of pharmacological science. As a result, a self-serving, self-perpetuating and completely useless medical bureaucracy has been set up to deal with the problem. With scathing wit, implacable logic and savage denunciation, Dr. Dalrymple exposes the mythology surrounding heroin addiction. Moving seamlessly between literature, pharmacology, history and philosophy, he demonstrates what happens when the nature of a social problem is so thoroughly misunderstood, and when human beings are regarded as inanimate objects rather than as agents of their own destiny. His scintillating, iconoclastic little book has an importance far beyond its immediate subject matter.

"I try to believe that everything I have read has contributed some small ingredient to the melting pot of my mind." In On the Ivory Stages , Theodore Dalrymple continues the genre he established with These Spindrift Pages by capturing the thoughts inspired by his recent reading. These passages serve as small essays that are part literary criticism, historical analysis and philosophical musings, sometimes all at once. The breadth of writers and subjects he addresses are both cause and effect of an expansive and curious mind. Readers will benefit, as Dalrymple has, from the volume and quality of his reading and from the wisdom it inspires. Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has written many books, including Life at the Bottom, Admirable Evasions and These Spindrift Pages.

We have created a New Kind of Man - the Human Mutualist.... Filosofa Cicero B. Nyayaya, the first and so far only President of the African republic of Ngombia, is being hailed as a new kind of leader. By combining the traditional wisdom of Africa with the cutting-edge political science of European intellectuals (and with the help of one-party rule), his new philosophy of Human Mutualism promises finally to bring equality and justice to his people! In this book, a British visitor to a small Ngombian village documents the people's unceasing efforts to incorporate the principles of Human Mutualism into their daily lives. And if human nature sometimes gets in the way of all this progress, not to worry: Filosofa's new principles will be applied creatively . Readers will laugh at this fun and enlightening satire on Tanzania under the rule of Julius Nyerere. Theodore Dalrymple is a retired doctor and psychiatrist who has traveled extensively in Africa and who lived for three years in Tanzania. He has written many books, including Life at the Bottom , Romancing Opiates and These Spindrift Pages .