Addicted

Humans are biologically hardwired to alter their mental state, drugs are the pathway, and America is their biggest consumer. From antiquity to modernity, use and prohibition have gone hand in hand. Addicted raises the curtain to expose the lies and fill in the blanks behind America's failed 50 year war on drugs and makes sense of the quagmire of misinformed laws and policy, blending Miller's investigative journalism with historical narrative. In addition, Miller tells the story of nature's three primary psychotropic plants and the history of government efforts to suppress them: Papaver Somniferum, the opium poppy, the drug of Asian mystery, which provides opium and its derivative alkaloids morphine and heroin; Erythroxylum Coca, which provides the cocaine of all night parties and glamor; and Cannabis Sativa, L., the historical intoxicant of rebellion and counterculture. These plants convert soil, water, nutrients, CO2, and light into complex chemical substances, which can elevate, intoxicate, and even heal. Addicted unravels the institutional mechanism that fuels the war's self-perpetuation, its abject failure, and its deplorable byproduct of racial injustice. The stories in Addicted feature a diverse cast of heroes, villains, and bureaucrats as well as all the post-Nixon Presidents who failed in their version of the war.