Memoirs of an Addicted Brain
A Neuroscientist Examines His Former Life on Drugs
by Marc Lewis, PhD
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Pub. Ed. $26.99
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Memoirs of an Addicted Brain
Marc Lewis’s relationship with drugs began in a New England boarding school where, as a bullied and homesick 15-year-old, he made brief escapes from reality by way of cough medicine, alcohol, and marijuana. In Berkeley, Calif., he found methamphetamine and LSD and heroin. He sniffed nitrous oxide in Malaysia and frequented Calcutta’s opium dens. Ultimately, though, his journey took him where it takes most addicts: into a life of addiction, desperation, deception, and crime.
But unlike most addicts, Lewis recovered and became a developmental psychologist and researcher in neuroscience. In Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, he applies his professional expertise to a study of his former self, using the story of his own journey through addiction to tell the universal story of addictions of every kind. He explains the neurological effects of a variety of powerful drugs, and shows how they speak to the brain—itself designed to seek rewards and soothe pain—in its own language. And he illuminates how craving overtakes the nervous system, sculpting a synaptic network dedicated to one goal—more—at the expense of everything else.
Each chapter introduces a new drug experience, or a new stage of drug addiction. Cough medicine, we learn, blocks the NDMA receptor, a doorway for glutamate to enter brain cells and help them fire; marijuana, by amplifying the action of already active neurons, magnifies thoughts, responses, and perceptions; LSD dynamites the serotonin system, which ordinarily regulates information flow throughout the brain; heroin floods the brain’s opioid receptors far beyond what evolution designed them for.
Vivid and candid, Memoirs of an Addicted Brain illuminates the science of addiction in a uniquely powerful way.
Hardcover : 336 pages
Publisher: Perseus Books LLC ( March 06, 2012 )
Item #: 13-550232
ISBN: 9781610391474
Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 inches
Product Weight: 19.0 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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