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Book Jacket MEMOIRS OF AN ADDICTED BRAIN
A Neuroscientist Examines His Former Life on Drugs
MARC LEWIS, PH.D.
SUMMARY  |  EXCERPT   |  QUOTES
In a vivid, candid memoir of his own addiction, a renowned neuroscientist articulates exactly how drugs speak to the brain, illuminating both the science of craving and the human condition

Marc Lewis's relationship with drugs began in a New England boarding school where, as a bullied and homesick fifteen-year-old, he made brief escapes from reality by way of cough medicine, alcohol, and marijuana. In Berkeley, California, in its hippie heyday, he found methamphetamine and LSD and heroin. He sniffed nitrous oxide in Malaysia and frequented Calcutta's opium dens. Ultimately, though, his journey took him where it takes most addicts: into a life of addiction, desperation, deception, and crime.

But unlike most addicts, Lewis recovered and became a developmental psychologist and researcher in neuroscience. In Memoirs of an Addicted Brain, he applies his professional expertise to a study of his former self, using the story of his own journey through addiction to tell the universal story of addictions of every kind. He explains the neurological effects of a variety of powerful drugs, and shows how they speak to the brain—itself designed to seek rewards and soothe pain—in its own language. And he illuminates how craving overtakes the nervous system, sculpting a synaptic network dedicated to one goal—more—at the expense of everything else.

Dr. Marc Lewis is a developmental neuroscientist and professor of human development and applied psychology at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. He is the author of over fifty journal publications in neuroscience and developmental psychology and coeditor of Emotion, Development, and Self-Organization: Dynamic Systems Approaches to Emotional Development.

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PAPERBACK
ISBN 978-1-61039-233-4
Pub date: 03/05/13
Price: $15.99/0.00 Canada
6¹/8 x 9¼
336 pages
Memoir, Recovery, Science
Selling Territory: WxC,AUS,NZ
Pub history: 978-1-61039-147-7

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