This book aims to provide a contemporary insight into substance use issues, drawing upon theory, evidence and practice and has a number of national and international authors. Underpinning most of the chapters is a consideration of how recovery is enacted in substance use. Like all edited books there are elements of the curate's egg and I thought some of the chapters were more substantial and of interest than others. I found the chapters on binge drinking (Mistral) and alcohol and fun (Brown) and how drinking and drug taking is treated differently for men and women (Moore and Measham) stood out, particularly as they reflect many of my own interests.
The index of the book lists the chapter titles and authors but does not set out explicit themes to guide the reader who is left to select topics of interest. I feel there are three themes; firstly, ‘setting the scene’; secondly, ‘fun’ and, finally, ‘practice and treatment’.
The ‘setting the scene’ theme consists of two chapters. Richard Velleman places substance use research and practice and theory within a national and international context and, in a subsequent chapter, Robin Davidson considers the difficulties inherent in formulating an effective alcohol policy, paying particular attention to the tensions of balancing public health against the economic clout of the industry. The theme of ‘fun’ runs through the next part of the book and consists of three previously mentioned chapters. Willm Mistral's chapter on binge drinking contrasts how ‘fun’ in young people is demonised whilst the same drinking ‘fun’ in middle-aged and older adults is regarded as unproblematic. This is followed by Rebecca Brown, an Australian PhD student, who presents some of her findings of interviews with young women drinkers and how some public messages appear to ignore the ‘fun’ which drives much of their drinking. The theme of how drinking and drug use of women is treated differently to that of men is then expanded upon in another chapter by Karenza Moore, and Fiona Measham.
The rest of the book is more practice orientated and in my opinion this can be divided into further sub-themes. These include firstly, families and children affected by substance use; secondly, substance use and mental health and finally, other practice related –themes. The family and children sub-theme consists of two chapters, one from Lorna Templeton outlining some of the progress in recognising the lack of support for families and children in current service provision, a strand that is expanded upon in a further chapter by Louise Hill when considering the impact of children affected by parental drug and alcohol use. The mental health theme includes a chapter from Amanda Baker, Sarah Hiles, Louise Thornton, Amanda Searle and Francis Kay-Lambkin reflecting the increasing work concerning the link between smoking, impaired physical health and mental illness. The following chapter from Tim Leighton describes how the Self-Help Addiction Recovery Programme (SHARP) has promoted recovery by working with local service users and communities. The last chapter concerning mental health from Willm Mistral and Stephen Wilkinson puts recovery into a wider context by considering how it is now driving much substance use policy. The other two chapters are more loosely related to practice. Lesley Smith contributes a summary of the screening tools that are now routinely used to screen for alcohol problems and the final chapter is from David Nutt which is concerned with how the risk-averse decisions of funding councils are placing a barrier on some possibly important research endeavours, in particular investigations into some of the therapeutic benefits of illicit drugs.
I teach a problematic substance use module to qualified mental health nurses and to date have found it difficult to recommend a contemporary book for this course. This book goes a long way to filling that gap and I will be adding this text as essential reading for my students. I recommend it to the readers of Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy.
John Foster
University of Greenwich
London, UK
E-mail: [email protected]