Creating the American Junkie

Creating the American Junkie
Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
Total Pages : 294
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0801883830
ISBN-13 : 9780801883835
Rating : 4/5 (835 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Creating the American Junkie by : Caroline Jean Acker

Download or read book Creating the American Junkie written by Caroline Jean Acker and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-01-05 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irredeemable deviance. Creating the American Junkie examines how psychiatrists and psychologists produced a construction of opiate addicts as deviants with inherently flawed personalities caught in the grip of a dependency from which few would ever escape. Their portrayal of the tough urban addict helped bolster the federal government's policy of drug prohibition and created a social context that made the life of the American heroin addict, or junkie, more, not less, precarious in the wake of Progressive Era reforms. Weaving together the accounts of addicts and researchers, Acker examines how the construction of addiction in the early twentieth century was strongly influenced by the professional concerns of psychiatrists seeking to increase their medical authority; by the disciplinary ambitions of pharmacologists to build a drug development infrastructure; and by the American Medical Association's campaign to reduce prescriptions of opiates and to absolve physicians in private practice from the necessity of treating difficult addicts as patients. In contrast, early sociological studies of heroin addicts formed a basis for criticizing the criminalization of addiction. By 1940, Acker concludes, a particular configuration of ideas about opiate addiction was firmly in place and remained essentially stable until the enormous demographic changes in drug use of the 1960s and 1970s prompted changes in the understanding of addiction—and in public policy.


Creating the American Junkie Related Books

Creating the American Junkie
Language: en
Pages: 294
Authors: Caroline Jean Acker
Categories: Family & Relationships
Type: BOOK - Published: 2006-01-05 - Publisher: JHU Press

GET EBOOK

Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irred
Creating the American Junkie
Language: en
Pages: 300
Authors: Caroline Jean Acker
Categories: Family & Relationships
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-04-26 - Publisher: JHU Press

GET EBOOK

Heroin was only one drug among many that worried Progressive Era anti-vice reformers, but by the mid-twentieth century, heroin addiction came to symbolize irred
Placebo Junkies
Language: en
Pages: 306
Authors: J.C. Carleson
Categories: Young Adult Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-10-27 - Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

GET EBOOK

Going Bovine meets Trainspotting in this gritty portrait of at-risk teens gaming the prescription drug trial system. Meet Audie: Professional lab rat. Guinea pi
Hurt
Language: en
Pages: 284
Authors: Miriam Boeri
Categories: Health & Fitness
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018 - Publisher: Univ of California Press

GET EBOOK

The historical and social context -- The life course of baby boomers -- Relationships -- The war on drugs and mass incarceration -- The racial landscape of the
Altering American Consciousness
Language: en
Pages: 428
Authors: Caroline Jean Acker
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004 - Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press

GET EBOOK

Virtually every American alive has at some point consumed at least one, and very likely more, consciousness altering drug. Yet, if the use of drugs is a constan