New Book: “The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction”. This is an in-depth examination of addiction science and medical treatments for drug dependence and alcoholism, written by an experienced science and business journalist.

Author Biography

Dirk Hanson is a freelance science reporter and novelist who lives in Minnesota. His two previous books, ”The New Alchemists: Silicon Valley and the Microlectronics Revolution” and ”The Incursion: A Novel,” were reviewed in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, and other publications. He has also worked as a business and technology reporter for the Des Moines Register, and for numerous magazines and trade publications. He currently edits the Addiction Inbox blog.

TEASERS/Facts from the book

As many as 30 percent of suicides every year may come from the nation’s pool of about 22 million alcoholics. Half of all emergency room patients with multiple fractures are alcoholics, according to research by prominent alcohol investigator George Vaillant. Female alcoholics develop liver diseases like cirrhosis more frequently than men do. Alcohol loses most its rewarding properties when brain receptors for opiates are blocked.

–Large numbers of addicted cigarette smokers suffer from clinical depression. Smoking a single cigarette has been likened by one nicotine researcher to ”lighting a match in a gasoline factory.” Women who smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day face an 80 per cent greater risk of developing breast cancer, compared to non-smoking women. Roughly one out of every three women of childbearing age was a cigarette smoker in 1991. Former Surgeon General Everett Koop said tobacco smoking results in ”a thousand funerals a day.”

–Large doses of methamphetamine can trigger psychotic episodes indistinguishable from schizophrenia. Vigabatrin, a drug for the treatment of epilepsy, may turn out to be the first government-approved treatment for meth addiction.

–Recent studies have documented the existence of severe caffeine addicts, who suffer significant depression and impaired cognition for several months following termination of coffee drinking.

–Mice that have been genetic altered so that they lack the ability to taste sweet foods still prefer sugar water to regular water. And PET scans of former bulimics (men suffer from it, too) disclosed that they showed a marked decrease in serotonin binding at 5HT receptors, compared to healthy, age-matched women.

–Between 3 and 7 percent of Americans are “poor metabolizers” due to a genetic variant for the enzyme CYP2D6. For them, the recommended drug dosage can be far too high.

–A significant percentage of regular marijuana users report that they suffer from severe withdrawal symptoms when they abstain completely from pot.

For more information:
Dirk Hanson
218-365-6277
Website URL: www.dirkhanson.org