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Adaptations of the reward circuit to intermittent and chronic supraphysiological stimulation by drugs increase reward thresholds. As a consequence, response to non-drug reinforcers in individuals with chronic drug use or addiction, may be decreased. Clinical symptoms include anhedonia and compulsive drug use, at the expense of the attainment of other rewarding experiences and despite detrimental consequences to the individual's functioning. While most addiction studies focus on the increased valuation of drug reward and drug-related cues, this chapter instead reviews the behavioural and neurobiological evidence for decreased valuation of non-drug reinforcers and cues. Future research should directly address the following question: is processing of drug reward enhanced at the expense of non drug-related reward (at least in certain subgroups of addicted individuals)? Or are these two processes independent?

This chapter examines the issues of drug addiction and rehabilitation in China. It explores some of the factors contributing to the rise of addiction in China; discusses how drug users in China are normally treated in compulsory or voluntary drug treatment centers; and explains how repeat drug abusers are often sent to labor education camps for one to three years. It also evaluates the effectiveness of these three treatment regimes and examines some of the new treatment models made available to drug users in China. It is shown that most of the drug abuse problems in China involve opiates, predominantly heroin. While the rates of illicit drug use and associated adverse consequences have continued to escalate across many areas in China, options for effective treatment have remained largely unchanged.

This chapter looks at what is known about the ways in which parents' drug use may influence the lives of their children, and the challenges faced by those seeking to meet these children's needs. It argues that the needs of children and families have attracted too little attention because the policy focus has been elsewhere – on reducing the risk of acquiring and spreading HIV infection, and on reducing drug-related crime. The chapter highlights one of the ‘thorniest’ questions facing professionals: how much adversity is it tolerable for children to experience at the hands of their addict parents?

This book assembles and analyzes the relevant information pertaining to prisoner reentry: the systems, people, programs, and prospects for implementing a more effective and just system. This chapter summarizes the data and develops major themes and policy recommendations. No one believes that the current prison and parole system is working. Recent public opinion polls show an increasing dissatisfaction with the purely punitive approach to criminal justice. Data suggest that having to earn and demonstrate readiness for release and being supervised postprison may have some deterrent or rehabilitation benefits—particularly for the most dangerous offenders. Effective programs include therapeutic communities for drug addicts and substance abuse programs with aftercare for alcoholics and drug addicts; cognitive behavioral programs for sex offenders; and adult basic education, vocational education, and prison industries for the general prison population.

This chapter builds on the insights about the connection between physical self-management and the body and the relationship of exclusion by exploring another figure of heteronomy, the drug addict. As with the adolescent from the previous chapter, the drug addict demonstrates how autonomy functions as an exclusionary discourse that delineates the boundaries of political community. However, the chapter shifts the focus from the practices of cultivating autonomy to how failure to behave in a way deemed autonomous results in exclusion from the political community. The drug war is illustrative of the ways that self-governing subjects and self-governing communities are protected from threats to their autonomy. In short, the practices of the drug war are justified by the norm of autonomy or concern with maintaining the ability of individuals to self-govern and thus to participate in democratic self-governance.

This chapter focuses on two young drug addicts who went by the names “Tank” and “Slim.” Among the matters comprising the Commission's unfinished business was their just-beginning investigation into a particularly bizarre manifestation of police graft—cops ordering stolen merchandise and paying for it in drugs. Waverly Logan—the ex-cop and witness who had first surfaced on a Channel 5 television show—had been unable, because of his notoriety, to work undercover for the Commission. But he was able to put them in touch with two people who could, Tank and Slim. Both were registered police informants and offered immediate access to an ongoing corrupt arrangement they had developed with the seventy or so officers in a narcotics enforcement outfit called Group 6, stationed at the 23rd Precinct in central Harlem. The two were in constant need of narcotics. The cops in Group 6, like anyone else, had personal needs of various kinds and they often found themselves short of money to pay for what they wanted. But they had lots of what Tank and Slim needed—drugs.

This chapter examines how an event called Earth Day helped revive the South Street Seaport. It begins with an overview of the crises that set the Seaport's context during the 1960s and 1970s, from racial tensions and protests to countercultures, pollution, cultural alienation, political corruption, and physical degradation. It then considers the Seaport's experimentation with programs and policies still debated today and how South Street Seaport Museum redefined the concept of a history museum. It also discusses the Seaport's community-building efforts, such as getting involved in the environmental movement, and goes on to explore how Pier 16 became a centerpiece for Earth Day in the early 1970s. It concludes with an assessment of the Pioneer program and the establishment of the Pioneer Sail Training School, later replaced by the Pioneer Marine School, whose mission was to help inner-city former drug addicts become self-reliant citizens by teaching them marine repair and construction.

This chapter presents concluding remarks on defamation. It discusses the story of James Frey, the self-described drug addict, alcoholic, and criminal, and author of a controversial memoir entitled A Million Little Pieces, who appeared on CNN's Larry King Live to defend his veracity. Frey appeared on the show after The Smoking Gun website alleged that he manipulated details of his life to render himself more compelling as a “tragic victim” and to sweeten the “melodramatic narrative.” The chapter also discusses a story taken from the central chapter of An Unfinished Woman, which focuses on a tragicomic episode known as “the trouble,” which involves the “transshipment of a Russian prostitute.” It also argues that objectivity is something people share by balancing viewpoints, not something pure and independent which they come upon in isolation.