Opium

Opium, the dried resin of the poppy flower pod, is the source of all natural narcotics. More than any other substance, it has impacted the history of human kind. Opium, the tale, weaves this history of man's misuse of opium resin and narcotics with a modern medical mystery. 


In Opium the author reveals the record of opium resin and narcotic use from its discovery in the eastern Mediterranean, through its role in the Roman Empire, to the exploitation of the Chinese people and finally to its current overuse in a human world determined to tolerate no pain. How much has it affected our world? Was there opium resin in the sour wine that Jesus refused to drink on the cross? If England had begun selling opim resin before 1776 would George III have lost the American colonies? Opium the novel unveils the answers.


A mysterious and fatal epidemic has afflicted the population of California. Kurt Kolber and his alter ego Donovan York, physicians and members of the Med team at the CIA, have been asked by the President to help solve the medical mystery. The only common denominator is narcotic use, legal and illegal. 


These two story lines thread together in the end.