Pressestimmen
One of Behavioral Scientist's Best Books of the Year
“[Hart's] positions may seem quite extreme to some but they also, by and large, make a lot of sense—and are backed up by ample research . . . A major reason drugs have such a negative public image, Hart asserts, is racism . . . eye-opening.” —NPR.org
“Hart’s argument that we need to drastically revise our current view of illegal drugs is both powerful and timely . . . when it comes to the legacy of this country’s war on drugs, we should all share his outrage.” —The New York Times Book Review
“One of the most thought-provoking reads I’ve had the pleasure of exploring in a long time . . .” —Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
“Hart’s book is compelling and well-argued. It’s one of those zeitgeisty books that manages to perform iconoclasm while outlining the unspoken obvious, detailing a lifestyle that many hold but few admit to publicly . . . Provocative and necessary.”—Jezebel
“Provocative and enlightening . . . Drug Use for Grown-Ups has the soul of a manifesto.” —Wall Street Journal
“As more and more states across the country legalize marijuana, and as popular opinion toward the war on drugs sours, Dr. Carl L. Hart’s new book arrives at the perfect time. . . . thoughtful and persuasive . . . He argues that if we truly believe in liberty as established in the Declaration of Independence, then the pursuit of this particular happiness should also be part of our protected civil liberties.” —BookPage (starred review)
“I approached this book with knee-jerk skepticism . . . But Hart, a neuroscientist who specializes in drugs and addiction, met my ignorance with a series of thought-provoking arguments . . . Through his own experiences and research, he makes a compelling case for revising our mindsets about taboo substances, and the people who use them.” —Discover Magazine
“A full-throated defense of self-aware, voluntary drug use . . . a valuable tool for mounting arguments in defense of free choice.”—Kirkus
“A timely, fact-based, coherent, humane counterargument to America’s spectacularly failed War on Drugs.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Comprehensive and illuminating . . . Columbia University psychology professor Hart combines his scientific research on how recreational drugs impact brain functioning with reflections on his own use of heroin and other drugs. . . . Careful reasoning and detailed evidence buttress the book’s most surprising claims . . . This bracingly contrarian take provides much food for thought.” —Publisher’s Weekly
“You must read this book. It's an eye-opening, mind-expanding masterpiece from one of the most important scientists in the world. You won't be the same after.” —Johann Hari, author of Chasing the Scream
“Why won’t this nation admit that criminalizing drugs has been far more deadly than the drugs themselves? This deeply personal, honest, and courageous book shines a crucial light on a topic cloaked in racism, repression, and myth.” —Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, and Fatal Invention
“You may not agree with the author's personal enthusiasm for recreational drug use (and I happen not to). Nonetheless, Drug Use For Grown-Ups is a powerful, convincing tour of the hypocrisy that underlies so many of our drug laws, and the brutally unequal ways in which the laws are enforced. One shares Hart's fury at how, as per usual, it is the weak and marginalized members of society who are most targeted.” —Robert Sapolsky, author of Behave
“Dr. Carl Hart challenges our popular assumptions about drug addiction both through science and through a forthright account of hiw own heroin use. Drug Use For Grown-Ups makes a powerful case against stigmatizing—and criminalizing—adults who get high.” —Shane Bauer, author of American Prison
“Carl Hart provides a viscerally personal and candid book that debunks common myths that demonize recreational drug use. Hart—a neuroscientist and expert on substance abuse—brings us inside his own experiences with enlightened drug use and his frustration with the ineffectiveness and harm of the war on drugs. His book is timely with the dramatic rise in overdoses in the US compared to societies that have decriminalized drugs and seen a reduction in usage, overdoses and arrests.” —BJ Casey, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Yale University
“Dr. Carl Hart is that rara avis: A stellar neuroscientist—in fact, the preeminent expert on ‘recreational’ drugs—who is honest and enthusiastic about drug use. In Drug Use For Grown-Ups he dissects unalloyed data to dismiss our pernicious mythologies so that we can better understand the truly liberating nature and the real, not the imaginary, risks of these oft-maligned experiences. But Hart is also a captivating storyteller, and that’s what makes this book . . . well, addictive as he follows the data, wisdom and love from Switzerland to Portugal to New York City, taking you along for the ride. As he bravely and humanely traces the science supporting treatment, regulation and decriminalization instead of succumbing to stigma or pandering to respectability politics, he displays a devotion to scientific truth in the service of better human health and relationships. By the time you reluctantly approach this book’s end, you will have acquired an education in what drugs offer us, their potential price, and healthy policies. Armed with this new clarity, it doesn’t matter whether you choose to shun drug use or to embrace its potential as a wondrous human experience: Thanks to Hart’s clarity and courage, your eyes will be opened and for the first time, your choice will be informed.” —Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
“This book is written by a leading drug researcher and neuroscientist who has himself grown up through, and been significantly affected by, the era of the ‘war on drugs.’ His personal story from acceptance of the status quo to understanding its fundamental flaws permeates both the science and the wisdom that this book projects. One hopes that the political and scientific establishment reads it and reflects on the urgent need for new evidence-based drugs policies.” —David Nutt, author of Drink? The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health
“Like he did in my Netflix cannabis doc, Grass Is Greener, DR. Carl Hart gives you the real-to-real regarding drug use and dismantles all the lies and misinformation we’ve been assaulted with for decades. Drug Use for Grown-Ups is a hip, street smart, scholarly yet easy-to-read deep dive into the how and why of illegal drugs that should be required reading from millennials to seniors.” —Fab 5 Freddy
Buchrückseite
Drug Use for Grown-Ups will be controversial, to be sure: the propaganda war, Dr. Hart argues, has been tremendously effective. Imagine if the only subject of any discussion about driving automobiles was fatal car crashes. Drug Use for Grown-Ups offers a radically different vision: when used responsibly, drugs can enrich and enhance our lives. We have a long way to go, but the vital conversation this book will generate is an extraordinarily important step.
Über den Autor und weitere Mitwirkende
Carl Hart is the Ziff Professor of Psychology in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is also a Research Scientist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Professor Hart has published numerous scientific and popular articles in the area of neuropsychopharmacology and is co-author of the textbook Drugs, Society and Human Behavior (with Charles Ksir). His book High Price was the 2014 winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
Leseprobe. Abdruck erfolgt mit freundlicher Genehmigung der Rechteinhaber. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
I am an unapologetic drug user. I take drugs as part of my pursuit of happiness, and they work. I am a happier and better person because of them. I am also a scientist and a professor of psychology specializing in neuroscience at Columbia University, known for my work on drug abuse and addiction. It has taken me more than two decades to come out of the closet about my personal drug use. Simply put, I have been a coward. The philosopher John Locke once noted that pursuing happiness is “the foundation of liberty.” This idea is at the core of the Declaration of Independence, the document that gave birth to our nation. The Declaration asserts that each of us is endowed with certain “unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and that governments are created for the purpose of protecting these rights. The use of drugs in the pursuit of happiness, in my view, is arguably an act that the government is obliged to safeguard. Why is our government arresting hundreds of thousands of Americans each year for using drugs, for pursuing pleasure, for seeking happiness? The short answer is that it’s a very long story. The long answer is the book you are reading. America’s drug regime is a monstrous, incoherent mess.
TO GRASP HOW we got here and what we can do about it, I’d like to start by telling you something about my life and work as a “drug abuse” scientist. In the fall of 1999, I landed my dream job, as an assistant professor and researcher at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. My research involved giving thousands of doses of drugs, including crack cocaine, marijuana, and metham- phetamine, to a range of people in order to study the effects. I believed my work contributed to our understanding of drug addiction. I would be awarded multimillion-dollar grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to conduct this research, and I would be invited to serve on some of the most prestigious committees in the area of neuropsychopharmacology. It was a thrilling time. Twenty years later—twenty years I’ve spent studying the inter- actions among the brain, drugs, and behavior and observing how moralizing about drug use is expressed in social policy—my initial excitement has given way to skepticism, cynicism, and disillusionment. When I was a naive graduate student, I believed that I was doing God’s work by telling people to stay away from drugs. I believed that the poverty and crime that plagued my childhood com- munity were a direct result of drug use and addiction. I now know that telling people to avoid drugs is no more godly than the Church prohibiting my Catholic wife from using birth control, but it is just as paternalistic, a way of restricting one’s freedom and autonomy.
What about the notion that drugs led to poverty and crime in my neighborhood? Well, that is simply an ugly fantasy, an incredibly effective one to be sure. It’s effective not only because it is still believed by large segments of the American public but also because it seemingly provides a simple solution to complicated problems faced by poor and desperate people. Many other complex factors are responsible for the turmoil seen in the places of my youth and other communities. But it took me a long time to see that clearly myself. I was too busy for too long being a soldier in the regime, caught up in the cause of “proving” how dangerous drug use is.
I HAD THE COOLEST job in the world. I got people high on a daily basis.
I instructed the twenty-five-year-old white man to light the marijuana cigarette, which was to be smoked through a hollow plastic cigarette holder so that the contents were not visible. He inhaled for five seconds, then held the smoke in his lungs for another ten seconds before exhaling. He repeated this two more times, with a forty-second interval between each puff. We called this our paced- puffing procedure. We used it to standardize, to the best of our ability, the amount of drug inhaled.
Although I couldn’t know for sure whether he was getting placebo or active THC, the major psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, I could tell from his glassy red eyes and the serene smile on his boyish flushed face that he really enjoyed what he had gotten. Nodding slowly and with more bass in his voice than usual, he said, “Yeah, that’s it.” I could also tell that he was an experienced smoker; it took him only three puffs to suck down nearly three-fourths of the 1 g cigarette. Marijuana smoke now filled the small sterile room. The smoker, whom I’ll call John, was a research participant in one of my studies. And there I was, a young black dreadlocked scientist, trying to conceal the perpetual anxiety I felt about having the strong, distinct smell of marijuana in my hair for another entire workday. I was concerned that as I traveled, on the elevator, from floor to floor or sat in on a lecture or meeting, some judgmental per- son might think disparagingly, “Typical, dreadlock smoking while at work.” Never mind that marijuana has never been my primary drug of choice. Never mind that I had a personal rule, for fear of biasing my results, against using the drug I was currently studying. The year was 2000.
In this particular experiment, I was trying to understand how cannabis affected regular users’ brain functioning and behavior. I had received a grant from NIDA to conduct the study. My hard work and commitment were finally paying off. When I started the study, I believed, as did most people, that pot temporarily impairs mental processes such that smokers exhibit memory problems and other cognitive disruptions. There are certainly plenty of anecdotal accounts in line with that view. But, of course, anecdote is not evidence. That’s why we do the science. Still, there are even scientific data suggesting that pot temporarily diminishes short-term memory ability in infrequent users. Of course, this is not surprising, because many drugs—alcohol, Ambien, and Xanax, among others— temporarily disrupt selective mental processes in people who have less experience with that particular drug.
But the negative impact of so-called recreational drug use on the mental functioning of regular, experienced users is less clear, at least in the scientific literature. So I was seeking to determine the detri-mental cognitive effects of marijuana in people who smoked the drug nearly every day. I wanted to know how they would perform on mental tests after smoking, to establish whether the drug would produce widespread brain dysfunction, even if only temporarily.
John was a typical participant. He smoked multiple joints nearly every day. He was affable, bright, curious, college-educated, and ambitious. He was an artist, an actor between gigs. As a result, he had the time to complete my three-session, outpatient weed study, which paid a couple of hundred dollars. Neither he nor our other research participants fit stereotypical media portrayals of the pot- head, who does little besides sitting on the couch, eating Cheetos, and playing video games.
Throughout the experiment, even when under the influence of cannabis, John was lucid and socially appropriate, as were the other participants. No participant failed to show up because they had for- gotten the time or day of their scheduled appointment. Not one quit the study because the tests were too difficult or tedious. No one complained that the pot was too weak. And absolutely none of the participants ever became violent. They all complied with our stringent study rules, which imposed demands on their schedules, requiring participants to do considerable planning, to inhibit behaviors that might have been inconsistent with meeting study schedule requirements...
