An introduction to human enhancement drugs

Exploring the Impacts of Rurality on Service Access and Harm Among Image and Performance Enhancing Drug (IPED) Users in a Remote English Region

“…Recent years have seen a growth in interest in image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs), and the potential risk to public health posed by their use, both in the UK and internationally (Bates & McVeigh, 2016; Bates et al, 2021; Hope et al, 2022; Sagoe & Pallesen, 2018). IPEDs broadly are drugs taken for the purposes of enhancing one’s appearance, sporting performance, sexual function or mood (van de Ven et al, 2019), and are often referred to as “lifestyle medicines,” reflecting the lifestyle-enhancement motivations underpinning much contemporary use (Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016; Kotzé & Antonopoulos, 2021). While the use of IPEDs among sporting competitors and “hardcore” gym cultures (e.g., bodybuilders) has long been explored (Klein, 1995; Monaghan, 2001), recent research has drawn attention to their use among recreational fitness trainers, highlighting a seeming normalization of use among gym-going populations, and other wellness-conscious groups (Brennan et al, 2017; Evans-Brown et al, 2012; Kimergård, 2015; Sagoe et al, 2014).…”

“…While academic discourse around IPEDs increasingly acknowledges the importance of harm reduction for users (Bates et al, 2022), it is clear there remain gaps in our understanding regarding how best to serve specific populations (Hope et al, 2022; McVeigh, Hearne, et al, 2021). With IPED use being highly heterogenous (van de Ven et al, 2019), much work has acknowledged the extent to which interventions must be tailored to the different practices, motivations and harm profiles of users (Christiansen et al, 2017; Harvey et al, 2021; Vinther & Christiansen, 2019). Consequently, a range of user typologies have been developed which attempt to bridge this knowledge gap, with several works looking to match user risk behaviors to factors such as subcultural affiliation or motivations for training, as heuristics for guiding harm reduction (Christiansen et al, 2017; Turnock, 2018; Zahnow et al, 2018).…”

Rethinking Women’s “Performance and Image-Enhancing Drug Consumption”: An Agenda for Ontopolitically-Oriented Research

“…Yet, despite references to PIEDs as an apparently stable, unified category, on further scrutiny it becomes clear that the boundaries of the category are contested and mutable: different drugs and consumption practices have been classified under its ambit, and these have changed over time. Van de Ven et al (2019) describe some of these historical tensions in the constitution of PIEDs as a category, observing how the contextual boundaries of the category have shifted over the last two decades in relation to changing social concerns that the category PIEDs indexes: previously the category centered on "doping" in sport, but it has expanded to include the consumption of these drugs in other athletic and occupational settings. They write that "the main goals of these 'non-athletic' using groups is aesthetic modification, such as to lose weight or to increase muscle mass, and to a lesser extent, athletic enhancement" (p. 4).…”