New guide for health professionals presents impacts of the major drugs

The Pocket Guide to Drugs and Health covers stimulants, opioids, cannabis, hallucinogens, and novel psychoactive substances, and expands on previous work to include licit drugs, alcohol, tobacco and hypnosedatives.  

Authors, Professor Shane Darke, Associate Professor Julia Lappin and Professor Michael Farrell developed the guide for medical practitioners, physicians in training, nurses, and treatment providers.

Each chapter provides clear, evidence-based information on dependence, withdrawal, toxicity, mortality, the effects of drugs on each major organ system, and psychiatric morbidities. There are also chapters addressing injecting drug use and the treatment of drug dependence.

The guide is an essential reference for busy health professionals with information presented in a reader friendly format.

Each section can be reviewed at a glance with key points contained to one page. The book is also pocket sized to allow for ease of use and transport.

“This pocket guide is a goldmine of information on psychoactive drugs, their effects and how to manage patients who are using them. It is beautifully presented to make it extremely easy to find what one is looking for. No clinician should be without it,” Robert West, Emeritus Professor, University College London.

The Pocket Guide to Drugs and Health is available for purchase from Silverback Publishing or the UNSW Bookshop.