Customer Reviews

The Heroin User's Handbook

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This user's guide is a well researched impartial look at all the aspects of heroin use and its intersection with areas of real life. The author displays great erudition in the areas of history, addiction, and chemistry. And knowledge of heroin use and law enforcement is informed by real world knowledge.

He basically says this is Heroin, good and bad, and its up to you to decide how you want to live your life. Ultimately everyone has basic ideas about freedom, reality, law, and life that color their opinion. But I believe this author strains to be as impartial as a person can. He certainly succeeds in taking all of the glamour out of heroin.

Also he shows how basic prejudices we associate with drugs, and heroin in particular, are colored by the times and society we live in. For this reason, the book is an excellent all around look at drug use, society and reality in general.

I also recommend the author's other book, "The Little Book of Heroin" which has much of the same information.

This user's guide is a well researched impartial look at all the aspects of heroin use and its intersection with areas of real life. The author displays great erudition in the areas of history, addiction, and chemistry. And knowledge of heroin use and law enforcement is informed by real world knowledge.

He basically says this is Heroin, good and bad, and its up to you to decide how you want to live your life. Ultimately everyone has basic ideas about freedom, reality, law, and life that color their opinion. But I believe this author strains to be as impartial as a person can. He certainly succeeds in taking all of the glamour out of heroin.

Also he shows how basic prejudices we associate with drugs, and heroin in particular, are colored by the times and society we live in. For this reason, the book is an excellent all around look at drug use, society and reality in general.

I also recommend the author's other book, "The Little Book of Heroin" which has much of the same information.

Somewhat interesting, but pretty slanted as opposed to unbiased. On the one hand claims Heroin users are stereotyped, on the other hand he stereotypes anyone not a Heroin user. People are people and individuals, not made from a mold.

On the positive side, he paints a good picture of the upside and downside of using Heroin, and the dangers, through a lengthy description of how to literally obtain and use Heroin.

His info on the number of deaths associated with Heroin overdose is misleading. He states no more than 100 a year, then later says most overdose deaths are misinterpreted, and poorly investigated, that the cause of death is actually something other than Heroin, but he can't explain it.

Dying from Heroin use can be from Heroin, it's metabolite Morphine, the type of cut/dilutant, disease, etc. Doesn't matter if it was the actual drug. If you didn't use it, it wouldn't have happened. Even so, going by Heroin overdose alone, Los Angeles County has more than 100 Heroin overdose deaths in one year, let alone the entire country. He also left out how many people are near death from Heroin overdose, but are saved my paramedics and Narcan.

This is his perspective based on his experience. It is but one perspective, there are others that he dismisses as prejudice, social taboos, anti-drug warriors, and many other excuses.

Reading it knowing it is but one perspective, it's worth reading. But it's worth examining other perspectives, particularly those of the medical personnel, especially in Free Clinics worldwide, especially the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco.

Far too often disinformation couched in florid rhetoric intended to advance a moral preference couched as a universal ethic pollutes solid medical advice.

Francis Moreas "Heroin: A Users Handbook" defeats myths and details real medical and chemical information and advice, often with a near clinical narrative tone.

The straightforward tone is what is most welcome: neither alarmist, flinching from reality, nor governmentese, Moreas offers the Strait Dope in an informed journalistic style that never descends to a Gonzo-Hippie or Libertarian screed. This is exactly the kind of book you want for answers.

On the legal side....while Moreas offers an excellent overview with welcome detail, my assessment is to remain more cautious in assuming this work covers all on the intersection of heroin use and the legal and regulatory system where the reader is located. While the Federal schedule of narcotics is well-known and easily reviewed, each state in the U.S.A. has sovereignty and distinctions in how they classify and treat various chemicals. The international legal dimensions of heroin use are far too complex for this slender volume.

I have read this book and feel that it gives the reader a true non fiction account about Heroin. The underlying factor that I get from it is that it is neither for or against H'. But leaves it to the reader to decide for himself what is best for him. Alot of this information is based in fact that the author has taken the time to find out for himself . Not go to the libaray or online and shift through documented reports on the subject. Then put a book together based on someone elses information or disinformation. And I feel that disinformation can and has been a dangerous thing. It is filled with reliable scientific information and how the legal systym works. Hopefully the reader will never experiance that first hand. The chapter on that is very straigt foward. I recomend this book to anyone interested in the subject or doing a study on it. I give it 4 stars.

I found this because it flowed and made it easy to understand.Now I get a lot better result and before its hard to explain but its easy to understand now.

Francis Moraes, Ph.D is a hero in this miserable era of anti-heroin propaganda and the desecration of the American populace's right to put what they want in their bodies. This book offers a huge slice of reality about heroin. It is probably the ONLY source of media (counting websites, films, lyrics, etc.) that does so (beyond the author's now-defunct website). Here are a few of the many points that Dr. Moraes elucidates for the 99.99999% of the ignorant populace, smashing the hegemonic norms reified by countless forms of propaganda:
1. There ARE functional junkies. Just because John Q. Drone only hears about the 'evil heroin-crazed murderers' on the news (bwahahaha...crazed how? Snoring too loud?) doesn't mean that there aren't many professionals with their lives under control who enjoy heroin the way many Americans enjoy cigarettes. The only difference is that heroin can't give you cancer...but can land you in a lot of legal trouble.
2. There ARE casual heroin users, just as there are casual drinkers. Heroin is an addictive drug, but so is alcohol. You don't see our society stating that anyone who has a beer after work is a 'substance abuser' do you?
3. The demonization of heroin is a discursive occurrence; not the pinnacle of society's search for Good and Bad chemicals. During the 1900s, upper-class ladies had heroin habits, during Prohibition, alcohol was illegal. While the powers that be would like its pawns to believe that heroin has always been considered Evil and alcohol always society's Drug of Choice, this is not so...nor should it ever be.
4. Heroin is NOT the smack in the head that the world believes it is. To paraphrase the book, pot users, for instance, are most disappointed with heroin's effects, for the gentle sense of well-being and evaporation of all intense negative emotions caused by heroin is a far cry from the sensory alterations and downright wacky feelings caused by the smelly weed. In other words, a heroin user is a happier, calmer, and perhaps drowsier version of a sober individual; a pot user is a laughing idiot who may be incapable of performing certain tasks that require heavy abstract thinking and higher brain function. In addition, heroin--unlike alcohol and cocaine--makes people less violent and argumentative than they are while sober: "A society of heroin addicts may not be a more productive one, but it would be a less violent one."
5. The author also gets it right when it comes to the downside of heroin addiction! The majority of books exaggerate the effects of heroin ("a full body orgasm--don't even try it once, it's so good!") but also downplay the miseries of withdrawal ("It's just like a mild flu"). This book is the only one I have ever read that is ACCURATE on how horrible withdrawal can be, from the severe depression to the constant vomiting to the relentless insomnia, boredom, shivering, sweating, body aches, etc. This book is incredible at showing not only how heroin is unfairly demonized, but also how the withdrawal from heroin has been unfairly downplayed.
6. Finally, the author accurately represents the political truths: "Victorian England has the homosexuals, Hitler had the Jews, and modern America has the drug users." Or, in the last few years of marijuana acceptance, I would say that heroin users have become even more targeted. When reading the chapters on law (en)forcement and the court-enforced churchgoing that is Narcotics Anonymous (because 'your higher power can be the doorknob' this isn't a violation of church and state, huh?), I kept feeling that I was talking to a friend who understood and agreed with me about the politics regarding drug use. I have never felt like this before except while talking to my partner.

I am so glad that I am not alone, and that someone has written a book that has pretty much echoed my own (accurate) views on this drug. Now if only the website could be revived...or that more intellectuals who have experiences with and accurate views of opiates could get out of the closet and try to change this very messed-up 'zero tolerance' society. Functional junkies, intelligent heroin users, former opiate aficianados and even undermedicated pain patients all need society's attitudes to change.

im a 30 year old drug counsler and former addict on mantance there are no positives to using herion are any opiate i called amazon about this a man from my clnic showed me this and explaned to amazan the leagality of not putting a age restricion on this espically in todays world with idots like eminem singing about a life style they know nothing about i was a 20 year addict and always will be theres no such thing as a ex addict now counsler this is a dangrous book from one of those one book only printers and this wasnt writen byy a doctor no doctor would give any thing but negitive effects of herion and seening the kids that i counsle getting younger and younger if this isnt banded put a age restiction on it are if something bad happens a lawsuit can be started message me if you have qustions ive been a drug counsler for 10 years and have seen enough people blue having to be punched and thrown naked in ice to keep them alive this is sick if you saw what i see everyday and lived the life i did you find it sick to

A book praising heroin and instructing its readers in how to use heroin, how to purify heroin, etc. I'm surprised Amazon is willing to sell this kind of thing.