In addition to being a compelling indictment of the “addiction bureaucracy,” Theodore Dalrymple’s Romancing Opiates is probably the most wryly funny book-length discussion of heroin addiction you’ll read all week. Here’s a characteristic digression:
Cold turkey is so called because of the piloerection—the gooseflesh—that is a sign of withdrawal from opiates, and “I’m turkeying” is a common way for addicts to describe their condition. In England they also say, mixing their avian metaphors, that they’re “clucking” or “doing their cluck.” Strictly speaking they should be gobbling, or doing their gobble.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Rome and the Church in the United States
Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste…
Marriage Annulment and False Mercy
Pope Leo XIV recently told participants in a juridical-pastoral formation course of the Roman Rota that the…
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…
