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Turbulence
by
Cheikh found, from nowhere, that he had a quiet hankering for a cigarette. It had been over a decade since he had quit – Amadou, at five years old, having been told that smoking killed people, had one day asked his father to stop, and
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“You know, at some point people reach an age at which they can no longer be considered ‘promising.’ I think it is about the time they turn forty.”
― Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
― Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
“I have panicked unnecessarily in all four corners of the globe.”
― The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
― The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
“Many [Russian] treatment programmes will only treat [patients] for one health problem at a time, forcing them to choose between being treated for their addiction or for their TB. Since drug users' lives are often chaotic anyway, being unable to receive holistic care means that they often move between different treatment programmes, stopping and starting courses of different sorts of medication - exactly the circumstances that cause viruses to mutate. The result is one of the highest rates of multidrug-resistant TB in the world, a hazard to health that extends beyond the users themselves, affecting Russian society at large.”
― Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
― Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
“Even in the less-obviously creative fields of hard science, LSD can be profoundly beneficial. In fact, it played a role in the two biggest discoveries in biology of the 20th century. Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA with James Watson, and Kary Mullis, who invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), had both taken the drug, and attributed some of their understanding and insights to it. Mullis has gone so far as to say: "would I have invented PCR if I hadn't taken LSD? I seriously doubt it ... [having taken LSD] I could sit on a DNA molecule and watch the polymers go by. I learnt that partly on psychedelic drugs.”
― Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
― Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
“In fact, attempts to deter substance abuse through drug testing in prisons is actually making this gateway effect more severe. Cannabis and its breakdown products can be detected in urine for weeks, whereas heroin clears from the body much faster. Testing positive for drugs can result in an increase in sentence, so prisoners have found a way to reduce the likelihood of being caught: use heroin instead of cannabis. Far from protecting them, imprisoning cannabis users will make them more likely to start using hard drugs.”
― Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
― Drugs Without the Hot Air: Minimizing the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs
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