Between the Substance Agency and the User’s Control. Instrumental Drug Use Among Drug Users in Warsaw
Keywords:
substance use, drug instrumentalisation, neural model of addiction, the Nida model, agency, controlAbstract
The focus of this article is on instrumental drug use and the problem of agency in interaction with psychoactive substances. Most of the Euro-American discourse formed around drug use stresses the individual loss of self-control related to drug use. This paper is located within those critical studies of drug use, which challenge the notion that regular drug users are deprived of agency in their interaction with psychoactive
substances. During my fieldwork among drug users in Warsaw, I got the impression that psychoactive substances can be treated as a tool for altering the state of the human mind, which can be employed in various ways and controlled by the user. Still, this tool is a dangerous one and cannot always be fully subject to human agency. Based on case studies, I analyse the functions of drugs for the users and their intentions regarding use. The ethnographic exploration of individual drug use trajectories is a starting point for the further consideration of the process of negotiating agency with psychoactive substances.
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References
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B o u r d i e u P. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Standford.
B u r r o u g h s W. 1959. Naked Lunch. Paris.
C a m p b e l l N. 2010. Toward a Critical Neuroscience of ‘Addiction’. BioSocieties 5 (1), 89–104.
C h e n K. and K a n d e l D. 1995. The Natural History of Drug Use from Adolescence to the Mid-Thirties in a General Population. American Journal of Public Health 85(1), 41–7.
C l o u d W. and Gr a n f i e l d R. 2015. Social Capital and Natural Recovery: Overcoming Addiction Without Treatment. In R. Granfield and C. Reinarman (eds.), Expanding Addiction. Critical Essays. New York and London, 196–215.
C o u r t w r i g h t D. 2010. The Nida Brain Disease Paradigm: History, Resistance and Spinoffs. BioSocieties 5(1), 137–147.
G a r r i o t W. and R a i k h e l E. 2015. Addiction in the Making. The Annual Review of Anthropology 44, 477–491.
G r a n f i e l d R. and R e i n a r m a n C. 2015. Addiction is Not Just a Brain Disease: Critical Studies of Addiction. In R. Granfield and C. Reinarman (eds.), Expanding Addiction. Critical Essays. New York and London, 1–25.
I h d e D. and Ma l a f o u r i s L. 2018. Homo Faber Revisited: Postphenomenology and Material Engagement Theory. Philosophy and Technology 32(2), 195–214.
K u s h n e r H. 2010. Toward a Cultural Biology of Addiction. BioSocieties 5(1), 8–24.
L i l i e n f e l d S. and S a t e l S. 2014. Addiction and the Brain–Disease Fallacy. Frontiers in Psychiatry 4, 141.
L e n d e D. 2012. Addiction and Neuroanthropology. In G. Downey and D. Lende (eds.), Neuroanthropology and the Encultured Brain, 339–363.
L e n d e D., Te r r i L., C l a i r e S., K i r k E. 2007. Functional Methamphetamine Use. The Insider’s Perspective. Addiction Research and Theory 15(5), 465–477.
L e s h n e r A. 1997. Addiction is a Brain Disease, and It Matters. Science 278, 45–47.
L e v i n e H. 2015. Discovering Addiction: Enduring Conceptions of Habitual Drunkenness in America. In R. Granfield and C. Reinarman (eds.), Expanding Addiction. Critical Essays. New York and London, 25–43.
L e v y N. 2013. Addiction is Not a Brain Disease (and it Matters). Frontiers in Psychiatry 4. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00024/full, access 20.06.2018.
Mü l l e r C. and S c h uma n n G. 2011. Drugs as Instruments: A New Framework for Non-addictive Psychoactive Drug Use. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 34(6), 293–347.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. 2008. Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction. Washington.
R a i k h e l E. 2015. From the Brain Disease Model to Ecologies of Addition. Re-Visioning Psychiatry. Cultural phenomenology, Critical Neuroscience and Global Mental Health 59(3), 375–399.
R o b i n s L. 1993. Vietnam Veterans’ Rapid Recovery from Heroin Addiction. A Fluke or Normal Expectation? Addiction 88(8): 1041–1054.
R o b i n s o n T. and B e r r i d g e K. 2003. Addiction. Annual Review of Psychology 54, 25–53.
R o om R. 2015. The Cultural Framing of Addiction. In R. Granfield and C. Reinarman (eds.), Expanding Addiction. Critical Essays. New York and London, 43–51.
W a l d o r f D., R e i n a r m a n C., Mu r p h y S. 1991. Cocaine Changes: the Experience of Using and Quitting, Philadelphia.
W e i n b e r g D. 2013. Post-humanism, Addiction and the Loss of Self-Control: Reflections on the Missing Core of Addiction Science. International Journal of Drug Policy 24, 173–181.
W i n i c k Ch. 1962. Maturing out of Narcotic Addiction. Bulletin on Narcotics 14, 1–7.
V r e c k o S. 2010. ‘Civilizing Technologies’ and the Control of Deviance. Biosocieties 5(1), 36–51.
Z i n b e r g N. 1984. Drug, Set, And Setting: The Basis For Controlled Intoxicant Use. New Heaven.
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Published
2019-12-15
How to Cite
Sadowska, Z. (2019). Between the Substance Agency and the User’s Control. Instrumental Drug Use Among Drug Users in Warsaw. Ethnologia Polona, 40, 147–168. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ethp/article/view/29
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