Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature's Best Pain Medication

Wonderfully informative book with a tremendous amount of historical information about the neck-breaking lurches so many world governments have made between plentiful, legal supply, and all out prohibition & anti-pain relief prohibition. Often pointing to the hypocrisy involving legal drugs, IE caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, etc.; & the prohibition of drugs that soothe one’s mental & physical pains. I’ve waited years to buy this book as I mistakenly thought my spouse already owned a copy, but I couldn’t find it. Finally realized I was confusing it with another book, so he went ahead & bought it for me. I’m incredibly hopeful the history in this book will give me the ability to advocate better, for myself in my doctors appointments. Reading this book as 2022 is coming to an end & I’ve been struggling with severe pain for 3/4 of my life already, & the sadistic 2016 CDC guidelines are making life miserable for people w/rare disease & disability… is illuminating. Especially as we’re staring down the future of another horribly misguided set of guidelines from the CDC, written w/0 patient input, & “expert testimony” of moralistic addiction specialists, we see that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This plant, with thousands of years of medical use is again being prohibited to being dispensed to the suffering, for absolutely no good reason, based in any kind of solid medical fact, because SOME people struggle w/ a different medical malady, Use Disorder. Which also does not deserve the ire & stigma that comes along with its diagnosis. However, relics of Puritanism & proponents of sobriety culture have failed in their ignorance, once again, to gauge how devastatingly illogical their attempts at a “one size fits all” opioid enforcement has driven patients with two separate, but now conflated, conditions to ever desperate attempts for treatment. Doctors are really the ones who should be reading this, & personally apologizing to the millions of patients & their families that have been harmed by the pleas of these patients, which have fallen, not on deaf ears, but deliberately tuned out, uncaring ears, lacking basic empathy. This refusal to listen to the pleas of legitimate pain patients has driven many to seek illicit sources, & countless others to seek more tragic, permanent ways to end their suffering. This book should be eye opening to prohibitionists, but I imagine the members of PROP & Shatterproof would sooner burn every copy of this than read a single word in it. We can only hope that activism will correct the course deliberately set by PROP & Shatterproof by their hijacking of CDC hearings in 2016, & the organizers of these organizations will have to face a revoking for the suffering they’ve inflicted on so many.But in the meantime this book will teach the history that we need to know, to fight back against the malignement we're currently facing. Good reading to all! Enjoy.

This is a very good introduction to the subject of growing poppies (one does not need to be an opium fiend to appreciate poppies) and the various uses of different parts of the plant. It was clearly written for people who might wish to abuse opium in several ways, and I think that a lot of the information about processing opium into morphine and heroin should have gone into a separate book-- a book specifically directed to an audience of people interested in such substances. But, at the same time, I recognize that this seemingly extraneous material does sort of flesh - out the big picture, as far as the full range of products that can be extracted from the poppy. The book impelled me to delve into other books and sources of information on poppies and opium, and it appears that some of the author's information (on very minor or incidental points) is subject to some debate. But, this is a very minor criticism. These debatable points would only be of interest to professional horticulturists, biochemists, and others with highly specialized interests. For all I know, the author of this book could be on the right side of these arcane points of contention. I'll leave that to others to decide. Beyond a wealth of well-presented factual data, the book offers (almost as incidental side bars) wonderful insights into the range of cultural and political implications inherent to poppy cultivation. And, as an added bonus, there is a reproduction of a pen and ink drawing by Jean Cocteau called "The Opium Smoker," which is quite wonderful and which I had never seen before, though I have personally been steeped in Cocteau's work for many years now. My one major caveat, as far as the book goes is this: it romanticizes opium, even when offering readers due warnings about the dangers of opium and it's processed by - products. This is not a book that anybody struggling with addiction issues would want to read. I can easily imagine that somebody in recovery from addiction to opiates might be tempted to relapse after reading this book. But, for those who, like me, have a detached interest in the subject and are not drawn to abusing such drugs, the book is an excellent resource for information.

I bought this book because some friends and I were joking about opium and I decided I wanted to learn more about it. While I don't think I will ever produce opium for recreational or medicinal use, the book has renewed my interest in poppies as a colourful, beautiful flower that come in a huge variety of forms.The book is informative on the nature of opium and poppy products and many of the important opiate alkaloids found within. The book goes on to describe other products of poppies, morphine to heroin for instance, but this was of less interest to me. My main concern was actually the flower and its direct products, rather than products of its products and etc.I wish it was more detailed on the actual plant biology aspect, outside of opiates, but I understand that Hogshire is not a botanist and is not as interested in such things as the details of the roots or the poppy seed capsule's exact design. So I cannot blame him for not going in depth.I do however appreciate the brief history given of poppies, opium, and the United States' take on the flowers. This I thought was a pleasant, and interesting, addition to the book.