Seeing through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth about Marijuana
About this audiobook
Depending on which doctor you speak with or which websites you read, cannabis could be an appealing, low-risk medicine—even an aid to wellness—or an insidiously addictive drug rotting the brains of our youth. This dissonance confuses young people, distressed patients, and paralyzes politicians, all while inviting dubious sources of information and resulting in uninformed choices, enhanced polarization, and a fragmented national policy.
Seeing through the Smoke is an unflinching examination at the grossly misunderstood drug that uses data-driven medical science and a critical historical perspective to reveal the truth behind cannabis.
In this balanced and measured investigation, cannabis specialist and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School Dr. Peter Grinspoon untangles the reality behind cannabis, revealing how we ended up with radically divergent understandings of the drug and pointing a way toward a middle ground that we can all share.
Moving through an illuminating tour of the social history and the medical science behind cannabis, Grinspoon unpacks the layers of disinformation left by a sordid history of government propaganda, racial suppression, and indifference from the medical community to answer questions like:
Is cannabis addictive?
What are its best-established medical uses?
Can cannabis help cure cancer?
How does cannabis affect memory?
How dangerous is cannabis for teens?
Is cannabis a safer treatment for ADHD and PTSD?
What exactly is CBD and how is it different from marijuana?
What are the most concerning side effects?
By focusing on the most critical purported harms—driving, pregnancy, addictiveness, memory—and by focusing on the most commonly cited medical benefits—relieving chronic pain, sleep, anxiety, PTSD, autism, and cancer—Seeing through the Smoke will help patients, parents, doctors, health experts, regulators, and politicians move beyond biased perceptions and arrive at a shared reality towards cannabis.
About the author
Peter Grinspoon, M.D., is a primary care physician and cannabis specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is a certified physician wellness coach as well as a board member of the advocacy group Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. Dr. Grinspoon is a widely recognized expert on cannabis science and drug policy who regularly appears as an expert on national television and radio programs. Grinspoon’s Harvard Health articles have reached tens of millions of readers, been widely referenced in the national media, and been cited in congressional testimony. He is the author of the groundbreaking memoir Free Refills: A Doctor Confronts His Addiction.
Alex Boyles has been acting pretty much his entire life. He got his BA in theater–acting/directing performance from CSU Long Beach and his MFA in acting performance from Ohio State University. He started narrating audiobooks in 2019 and hasn’t looked back!
Madan Kataria, M.D., "the guru of giggling" (The Times, U.K.), is the founder of the laughter yoga club movement that started in 1995 in Mumbai. He has conducted seminars and workshops around the world for such organizations as UBS, Emirates Bank, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Volvo. He has also been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and ABC, and is associated with an increasing number of medical research projects analyzing the benefits of laughter. Retired from medical practice, he devotes all his time to writing, teaching, coaching, and training laughter leaders in order to foster the spread of laughter clubs. He is the creator of World Laughter Day, which is celebrated on the first Sunday of every May. Andrew Weil, M.D. (foreword) is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including Spontaneous Happiness, Spontaneous Healing, and Healthy Aging. A world-renowned pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, he is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center.
