American Junkie

American Junkie
Author: Tom Hansen
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1593766645

A non-stop trip into one man's land of desperate addicts, failed punk bands, and brushes with sad fame, as he sells drugs during the Seattle grunge years. In American Junkie, Tom Hansen maps his heroin addiction, from the promise of a young life to the prison of a mattress, from budding musician to broken down junkie, drowning in syringes and cigarette butts, shooting heroin into wounds the size of softballs, and ultimately, a ride to a hospital for a six-month stay and a painful self-discovery that cuts down to the bone. Through it all he never really loses his step, never lets go of his smarts, and always projects quintessential American reason, humor, and hope to make a story not only about drugs, but a compelling study of vulnerability and toughness.

Creating the American Junkie

Creating the American Junkie
Author: Caroline Jean Acker
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2006-01-05
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780801883835

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.

American Junkie

American Junkie
Author: Tom Hansen
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2017-03-14
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1593766718

A non-stop trip into one man's land of desperate addicts, failed punk bands, and brushes with sad fame, as he sells drugs during the Seattle grunge years. In American Junkie, Tom Hansen maps his heroin addiction, from the promise of a young life to the prison of a mattress, from budding musician to broken down junkie, drowning in syringes and cigarette butts, shooting heroin into wounds the size of softballs, and ultimately, a ride to a hospital for a six-month stay and a painful self-discovery that cuts down to the bone. Through it all he never really loses his step, never lets go of his smarts, and always projects quintessential American reason, humor, and hope to make a story not only about drugs, but a compelling study of vulnerability and toughness.

American Junkie "Life, Love, and Loss"

American Junkie
Author: James Hamilton
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 77
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1664173153

American Junkie "Life, Love, and Loss" marks the first internationally published collection of poetry from Author James Hamilton. The collection is an original, unflinching, and visceral look into the sometimes shocking, personal drug culture in America. The afflicted, sometimes gloss over the ghastly damage inflicted on lovers and other family members, however, "Junkie" aims to give these forgotten victims a voice in the mire.

Political Junkies

Political Junkies
Author: Claire Bond Potter
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541645006

A wide-ranging history of seventy years of change in political media, and how it transformed -- and fractured -- American politics With fake news on Facebook, trolls on Twitter, and viral outrage everywhere, it's easy to believe that the internet changed politics entirely. In Political Junkies, historian Claire Bond Potter shows otherwise, revealing the roots of today's dysfunction by situating online politics in a longer history of alternative political media. From independent newsletters in the 1950s to talk radio in the 1970s to cable television in the 1980s, pioneers on the left and right developed alternative media outlets that made politics more popular, and ultimately, more partisan. When campaign operatives took up e-mail, blogging, and social media, they only supercharged these trends. At a time when political engagement has never been greater and trust has never been lower, Political Junkies is essential reading for understanding how we got here.

Fame Junkies

Fame Junkies
Author: Jake Halpern
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2008-01-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0547527241

The author of Welcome to the New World and Bad Paper discusses America’s obsession with celebrity in this 2007 investigation. Why do more people watch American Idol than the nightly news? What is it about Paris Hilton’s dating life that lures us so? Why do teenage girls—when given the option of “pressing a magic button and becoming either stronger, smarter, famous, or more beautiful” —predominantly opt for fame? In this entertaining and enlightening book, Jake Halpern explores the fascinating and often dark implications of America’s obsession with fame. He travels to a Hollywood home for aspiring child actors and enrolls in a program that trains celebrity assistants. He visits the offices of Us Weekly and a laboratory where monkeys give up food to stare at pictures of dominant members of their group. The book culminates in Halpern’s encounter with Rod Stewart’s biggest fan, a woman from Pittsburgh who nominated the singer for Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Fame Junkies reveals how psychology, technology, and even evolution conspire to make the world of red carpets and velvet ropes so enthralling to all of us on the outside looking in. Praise for Fame Junkies “An astute look at the mighty vortex of fame, which this author believes will only get more powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews “Halpern displays an evocative, insiderish style reminiscent . . . of Tom Wolfe’s when he peered into 1960s celebrity culture.” —Wall Street Journal “A critical look at Americans’ infatuation with fame and determines that fame is elusive, desirable—and also possibly addictive . . . . [An] engaging study.” —Publishers Weekly

Basketball Junkie

Basketball Junkie
Author: Chris Herren
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2011-05-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429924144

As seen in ESPN Films’ Unguarded, a “powerful . . . bracing . . . exceptional” true account of the former NBA and overseas pro’s rise and harrowing fall (NPR Books). I was dead for thirty seconds. That’s what the cop in Fall River told me. When the EMTs found me, there was a needle in my arm and a packet of heroin in the front seat. At basketball-crazy Durfee High School in Fall River, Massachusetts, junior guard Chris Herren carried his family’s and the declining city’s dreams on his skinny frame. He was heavily recruited by major universities, chosen as a McDonald’s All-American, featured in a Sports Illustrated cover story, and at just seventeen years old became the central figure in Fall River Dreams, an acclaimed book about the 1994 Durfee team’s quest for the state championship. Leaving Fall River for college, Herren starred on Jerry Tarkanian’s Fresno State Bulldogs team of talented misfits, which included future NBA players as well as future convicted felons. His gritty, tattooed, hip-hop persona drew the ire of rival fans and more national attention: Rolling Stone profiled him, 60 Minutes interviewed him, and the Denver Nuggets drafted him. When the Boston Celtics acquired his contract, he lived the dream of every Massachusetts kid—but off the court Herren was secretly crumbling, as his alcohol and drug use escalated and his life spiraled out of control. Twenty years later, Chris Herren was a husband, a father, and a heroin junkie, who would flirt with death—and ultimately live to tell about it.

News Junkie

News Junkie
Author: Jason Leopold
Publisher: Vireo Book, A
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2014-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781940207230

Recounts the author's life, showing how a man once fueled by self-destructive impulses transforms his life and finds his career with the independent media.

Border Junkies

Border Junkies
Author: Scott Comar
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2011-10-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 029272683X

The drug war that has turned Juárez, Mexico, into a killing field that has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 2008 captures headlines almost daily. But few accounts go all the way down to the streets to investigate the lives of individual drug users. One of those users, Scott Comar, survived years of heroin addiction and failed attempts at detox and finally cleaned up in 2003. Now a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso in the history department's borderlands doctoral program, Comar has written Border Junkies, a searingly honest account of his spiraling descent into heroin addiction, surrender, change, and recovery on the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Junkies is the first book ever written about the lifestyle of active addiction on the streets of Juárez. Comar vividly describes living between the disparate Mexican and American cultures and among the fellow junkies, drug dealers, hookers, coyote smugglers, thieves, and killers who were his friends and neighbors in addiction—and the social workers, missionaries, shelter workers, and doctors who tried to help him escape. With the perspective of his anthropological training, he shows how homelessness, poverty, and addiction all fuel the use of narcotics and the rise in their consumption on the streets of Juárez and contribute to the societal decay of this Mexican urban landscape. Comar also offers significant insights into the U.S.-Mexico borderland's underground and peripheral economy and the ways in which the region's inhabitants adapt to the local economic terrain.

American Junk

American Junk
Author: Mary Randolph Carter
Publisher: Penguin Putnam
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1994
Genre: House furnishings
ISBN: 9780670844005

A guide to decorating the home using objects acquired at flea markets, auctions, and garage sales features before-and-after photographs, prices, a listing of auction houses, and tips on bargaining, cleaning, and camouflage.