From mundane medicines to euphorigenic drugs: How pharmaceutical pleasures are initiated, foregrounded, and made durable

Abstract

Examining how pharmaceuticals are used to induce pleasure presents a unique opportunity for analyzing not only how pleasure is assembled and experienced through distinct consumption practices but also how mundane medicines can become euphorigenic substances. Drawing on qualitative research on the non-medical use of prescription drugs by young adults in the United States, this paper utilizes Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to examine how prescription medicines come to produce pleasure. We suggest that the euphorigenic properties ascribed to prescription drugs are not inherent in their pharmaceutical formulations, but instead emerge through interactions within networks of heterogeneous actants. Our paper examines the indeterminacy of experience as individuals are initiated into prescription drug pleasures, how euphorigenic effects coalesce and are foregrounded through subsequent use, and how pleasure and other forms of gratification are made durable through repeated and deliberate pharmaceutical consumption. Understanding how individuals are socialized into pharmaceutical pleasure, and how assemblages act to constitute the euphorigenic potential of pharmaceutical misuse, may allow for more context-appropriate intervention efforts.

Pleasure, drugs, materiality and tensions in harm reduction in practice: The case of safer injection programmes

“…Despite the importance of addressing some risks associated to injection practices, pleasure should also be considered a legitimate topic (Race, 2017; Race et al, 2021) because it is central to the lives and experiences of people who use drugs. Recently, some critical drug scholars have drawn on conceptual elements from different post-structuralist approaches (Bundy & Quintero, 2017; Race, 2017) and assemblage thinking (Cañedo & Moral, 2017; Dennis & Farrugia, 2017), sometimes combining the two (Malins, 2017), to conceptualise pleasure in relation to drugs. In this essay, I combine this critical drug studies perspective with insights from narcofeminism by studying the role of pleasure in the experiences of people who inject drugs, how they interact and negotiate with harm reduction providers and how they deploy resistance strategies to patriarchal approaches to drugs use.…”

With Medicine in Mind? Exploring the Relevance of Having Recreational Experience When Becoming a Medicinal Cannabis User

“…All drugs are inherently ambiguous phenomena, as they can act both as “benevolent cures” and “dangerous toxins” (Keane, 2008). Thus, just as mundane prescription drugs can be transformed into euphoric substances used for pleasure through specific situational contexts and user practices (Bundy & Quintero, 2017), cannabis can be transformed from a euphoric substance into a mundane medicine (Newhart & Dolphin, 2018). In the last decades we have seen a renewed interest in the medical utility of cannabis (Pisanti & Bifulco, 2017; Taylor, 2009), in part due to growing evidence that cannabinoids, the active components of cannabis, are effective in the treatment of chronic pain, spasticity, nausea, and epilepsy (National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2017) and also may be relevant for the treatment of other somatic (Cascio et al, 2017; Toczek & Malinowska, 2018) and mental health conditions (Scherma et al, 2020).…”