GETTING OVER GETTING HIGH

Lightweight advice on giving up recreational stimulants with the help of vitamin supplements--which minimizes the difficulty of the task. On the basis that ""natural highs"" can replace those chemically induced, psychotherapist Green (Goodbye, Blues; Your Child Is Bright!) describes visualization and other meditation technques at length, and also talks-up regular exercise and more sexual satisfaction. To end dependency on artificial stimulants--caffeine, cocaine, amphetamines and ""their look-alikes"" (including over-the-counter diet pills), marijuana, and hallucinogens--Green recommends vitamin B complex and vitamin E, both of which are essential to proper nerve function. For each stimulant, specific amounts are indicated. In giving up marijuana, Green explains, ""choline is the critical factor. You will want to take 500 milligrams at a time, three times a day."" But he makes all this sound too easy. In amphetamine abuse too, he claims, ""the elimination of the addiction process is. . . extremely simple and takes from four to seven days."" Even supposing that supportive vitamin therapy is helpful--which is not established--this is far too casual a treatment of a serious problem. Readers will get a far more realistic perspective from Stephen J. Levy's Managing the ""Drugs"" in Your Life (1983), and sounder, savvier advice on the mechanics of quitting from How to Get Off Drugs, by the editors of Rolling Stone (p. 299).