Drug-Impaired Professionals

Dr. Coombs presents a very readable format managing to communicate both educational data and personal anecdotes as illustration. This is a growing field and a very important one today. Our social denial has kept us from looking clearly at the illness and the ways it manifests in our caregivers. There are benefits to both the afflicted and those whose lives they touch when recovery is given the support described in Dr. Coombs's book.

The abuse of drugs, legal and illegal, by professionals has been a subject little discussed within the hearing of outsiders. Coombs breaks the silence to quite rightly view addiction as an occupational hazard, detailing the extraordinary stresses, ready access, and high performance expectations among contributing factors, as well as emotional elements and a surprising degree of naivete. He examines the dynamics of addiction; the vulnerabilities and developmental stages, and discusses the recovery tools available to break free. Some may question the author's inclusion of hashish and marijuana in the array of addictive drugs, and the unwary reader who acts on Coombs' assertion that "LSD produces symptoms similar to those of stimulants" (page 296) is in for a bit of a surprise, but taken as a whole the work is a valuable survey of a significant problem which deserves wider discussion, within the professions and without. (The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)