Robert Hayward – författare

Robert Hayward offers a careful analysis of surviving accounts of the Temple and its service. All the central texts are provided in translation, with a detailed commentary. While descriptions of the Temple and its service are available, discussions of the meaning of these things are less easily found. This study clearly illustrates how the Temple was seen as a meeting point between heaven and earth, its service being an earthly representation of heavenly reality. Jews regarded the Temple service therefore as having significance for the whole created world. The Jewish Temple offers a valuable collection of materials both for those looking for an introduction to the topic and for the scholar interested in grasping the meanings beyond those texts.

Robert Hayward offers a careful analysis of surviving accounts of the Temple and its service. All the central texts are provided in translation, with a detailed commentary. While descriptions of the Temple and its service are available, discussions of the meaning of these things are less easily found. This study clearly illustrates how the Temple was seen as a meeting point between heaven and earth, its service being an earthly representation of heavenly reality. Jews regarded the Temple service therefore as having significance for the whole created world. The Jewish Temple offers a valuable collection of materials both for those looking for an introduction to the topic and for the scholar interested in grasping the meanings beyond those texts.

The aim of contemporary mental health policy is to enable people who have had a severe mental illness to lead relatively independent lives in the community, rather than be sequestered permanently in the large mental hospitals. In recent years plans to hasten the closure of many of these hospitals have become controversial and generated sharp debate about community care. From the Mental Patient to the Person contributes to this debate through an exploration of the experiences of a group of people with a history of schizophrenic illness, who are living in the community.

The aim of contemporary mental health policy is to enable people who have had a severe mental illness to lead relatively independent lives in the community, rather than be sequestered permanently in the large mental hospitals. In recent years plans to hasten the closure of many of these hospitals have become controversial and generated sharp debate about community care. From the Mental Patient to the Person contributes to this debate through an exploration of the experiences of a group of people with a history of schizophrenic illness, who are living in the community.

A man plumbs the depths in a struggle with opioid addiction in this searing memoir.

Hayward was sober after decades of heavy drinking and owned a swimming pool construction business in Southern California when, in the early 2000s, he started taking the opioid OxyContin for back pain. The drug eliminated the pain and induced a euphoric high, but while it was touted as nonaddictive, it proved quite the opposite. The author was soon snorting huge quantities every day to appease his craving; stealing money from his company to support his habit, which he fed with prescriptions and illicit street purchases; and alienating his family and employees with his manic bluster. A medical detox regimen got him clean, but he immediately relapsed and plunged further into chaos, including an incident in which he accidentally spilled his OxyContin pills into the pit underneath an outhouse--and dove in to retrieve them. Hayward finally went cold turkey at his isolated ranch in the Sierras, whereupon the memoir becomes a squalid but gripping story of wilderness survival. Snowed in at a freezing cabin with bears prowling outside, he endured horrific withdrawal symptoms--"I was crying, tears falling, snot dropping from my nose, drool from my mouth, throw up in my mouth, yellow/orange vomit shooting out in the front, black liquid squirting out from behind"--that sapped his will to live. The author's account lays bare the dynamics of opioid dependency, from the corrupt collusion of doctors in promoting addiction to the egotism and hubris of addicts in imagining they can control their habits. His prose is vivid and evocative in conveying the rush of opioid highs--"The colors of the forest and lake were vivid and pulsating....I sat on a boulder and wallowed in my addiction, exhilarated beyond ecstasy, a whole body and mind orgasm throbbed through my entire mind, body, and what was left of my soul"--and unsparing on the relentless taskmasters the drugs become. ("They turn you into a robot--going through life's motions, yet everything revolves around your next dose, next hit, next snort, next visit to the doctor or dealer, the endless counting and recounting of pills.") When Hayward finally writes of gleaning hope from God, his redemption feels authentic and moving.

An engrossing account of degradation and hard-fought recovery.

- Kirkus Reviews

In 1996, the FDA approved and endorsed Perdue Pharmaceutical’s new drug, "Oxycontin" as a non-addictive pain reliever.

Since 1996, the CDC reported 841,000 drug overdose deaths nationwide.

In the 12 months ending in April of 2021, over 103,000 Americans died from a drug overdose.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention tells us that Americans 50 years old and younger are more likely to die of a drug overdose than any other cause.

Do you ever wonder why teenagers and even pre-teens now prefer heroin over tobacco and marijuana? Do you wonder how heroin went from a taboo drug to the most abused drug, or how it came out of the shadows and is now everywhere? Prescribed pain killers, heroin, and now deadly Fentanyl are in every neighborhood in the country. Addiction affects everyone.

Why do millions of middle class and upper class Americans throw away everything they have and more just to feed their opioid addiction?

Do you wonder how this began, where it came from? What caused this out-of-control opioid pandemic?

What fuels the dynamics of the addicted brain, and is there a solution?

Killing Pain explains in a very personal and brutally honest way how it all began, how easy it is to become addicted to opioids, and what it takes to get clean again. As bad as it is, there is a solution.