4 out of 4 stars
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Why Can’t Johnny Just Quit by Kyle Oh, M.D. is a book about addiction. I would give it 4 out of 4 stars. While there were a few errors, the book seemed to be professionally proofread and edited. It deals with addiction as a disease with a genetic basis. It treats the addicted individual as a person in need of society’s help and not a criminal to be pushed aside and neglected. The book shows that what we assume to be a “high” from a drug, due to the misrepresentations of the media, is not the real high, and the difference between the two can be worth your life. I liked the emphasis on treating the addict with compassion and understanding the most in the book. While I know that the author was using repetition to hammer home his points, sometimes it seemed to be too much.
Doctor Oh takes the view that all addiction has a genetic basis, we just have not found all the genes yet. He also shows that addiction has warning signs and, if one pays attention to those signs, one can avoid becoming addicted to the drug. The author divided the book into chapters, some of which target a specific addiction (opiates, alcohol, marijuana, etc.) and, while some material repeats across these chapters, I think it is essential to read every chapter. There is also a chapter on why people relapse, as well as on basic pain management. Doctor Oh bases this advice and conclusions on his work with patients, who have dealt with, or are dealing with, addiction. The book includes case studies at the end as well as tables of statistics to showcase his findings. The book has references at the end of some chapters, should you want to learn more.
Addiction takes a toll on the person addicted as well as those who love them. We treat the addict as a criminal and lock them away, instead of giving them the help they need. Like the homeless, we push the afflicted from our minds, as if they don’t exist. We ignore them because nothing we have done has stopped the drugs or the addiction. This book offers a way to recognize those addicted with kindness and compassion. It shows addiction for what it is, an inherited disease that changes the way certain drugs interact with a person. It shows that, eventually, this will alter the person and the way they interact with the world; that the craving will soon be all.
It is interesting that, while drugs always have a warning that some people might experience side effects (but not all), that we fail to see that the drugs may not react to each person the same way. We don’t see that a sedative, in low doses, might have an energizing effect on a person; that a slightly higher dose may produce euphoria. We recognize this difference in reaction with ADHD patients, who can be calmed by a stimulant, but fail to see that a person who could become addicted would also experience a drug differently from other people.
I firmly believe that this an essential book for everyone to read. If you have an addiction, it will educate you on the disease. If you love an addict, it will give you a glimpse of the daily struggle and how the situation came to be. If you have ever taken a drug, be it prescription or other, it will help you see the warning signs of addiction and help you prevent the downward slide into addiction. I think that this book should be readily available at any meetings for addicts or those who love an addict.
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Why can't Johnny Just Quit?
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