by Dr. Carl Hart

I read Drug Use for Grownups before reading this; if I had read this first, I think I would have been surprised to read the second. This is Dr. Hart’s memoir. Throughout his youth and young adulthood, we feel him just floating above the surface of drug use – just a little marijuana and alcohol, very little, with his athletic performance as an excuse. And a little cocaine later. He doesn’t seem really into any of it. So what a surprise to find him an unapologetic heroin hobbyist in the second book. His overall message is the same – drugs don’t ruin lives, people ruin lives; it’s just that I really wouldn’t have pegged him for a user.

I do love a life story and I enjoyed his memoir. It did give an interesting perspective on life and problems in “the hood”. Hart grew up with five older sisters and two younger brothers; an alcoholic father, eventually separated parents. He witnessed crime, addiction, abuse; he shoplifted, he fathered a child he didn’t know about for 16 years. He also played basketball and joined the military, and from there it’s a story of life turned around.

That’s right, 2021.51 – for some reason I never posted a review of this. It’s pertinent to my next Book Corner.

by Dr. Carl L. Hart

To describe this book in one word, I’d maybe choose “scandalous.” Dr. Hart uses heroin & has no intention of stopping. It’s a harmless hobby, like having a drink. “Grown-ups” can responsibly take heroin, and opioids, and meth – there is no drug that should be off limits. Now there’s the general libertarian argument for that, which Dr. Hart espouses; but as a tenured professor of psychology at Columbia specializing in neuropharmacology, he’ll also argue authoritatively that none of these drugs will necessarily harm you, if used responsibly – so it’s not simply a matter of “you should be able to legally destroy your life if you choose”. It’s also that, if you’re a “grown-up” about it, you won’t.

Dr. Hart wrote this risky book to come out of the closet, in the hopes others would follow. I think he will likely find himself forever in the minority. I’ve never read any account of someone in such a prestigious station in life coming clean about so much casual, ongoing drug use (he’s tried everything). But now I have – & I guess he’d say that’s the point of the book.

And I know he’ll say that this is more evidence of how badly the book is needed, but hearing him justify his heroin use and explain how NOT an addict he is made me wonder how long it might take for the inevitable shoe to drop – where will Dr. Hart be a year or more from now? Still a happy user insisting he’s not an addict? Will it be true? I believe it to be true of him now. I do believe his accounts and all the evidence he presents; but being brainwashed by our anti-drug society I just can’t help but wonder…

One constant point of his that I appreciate is this: drugs feel good, and that’s reason enough to take them. He gets really uptight around LSD users because they tend to try to justify their drug use as “different” from others – they’re doing it for mind-expanding reasons or whatever, not to get high. “What’s wrong with getting high?” he cuts one guy off mid-sentence. I love that. The right to pleasure… not currently enshrined in the Constitution, but should be, as Tom Lehrer put it decades ago. He was talking about pornography, not drugs, but the principle’s the same –

“Obscenity. I’m for it. Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on – but we know what’s really involved: dirty books are fun. That’s all there is to it. But you can’t get up in a court and say that I suppose. it’s simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the constitution unfortunately.”

by Sheila Liming

I felt like this was a bait-and-switch. It just didn’t seem to be about “hanging out” at all. It was just a bunch of stories about the author’s oh-so-interesting life. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound resentful just because I’m boring, but it’s like she had nine lives, none of which I could relate to. She was an accordion player in a successful jam band in Pittsburgh! She was a bartender in an isolated Washington state bar! She was a professor in North Dakota! She was pals with a Food Network star and appeared in her reality TV show! She was a guest at a dinner party with famous physicist-author Brian Greene! Enough already! No, wait, she also almost got killed ice-climbing tied to three other people, one of whom was 84 years old! I expected every next chapter to find her performing as a rodeo clown or clerking for a Supreme Court justice.

by Nejib

A hardcover graphic novel about the period of Bowie’s life when he was making MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD and HUNKY DORY. He lived in a rambling old house called Haddon Hall with his wife Angie, soon to birth their son Zowie, and a bunch of friends and fellow artists (and apparently Sid Barret).

I knew a bit, not a ton, about Bowie’s life; but I didn’t always know who key characters were (Marc Bolan of T Rex, for example) or exactly what was going on. It was cool though.

The parts about David’s schizophrenic older brother, Terry; and about his father’s death, were VERY touching.

Silly, but you just don’t tend to think about David Bowie as having a “Mum and Dad.” But of course, he did.