‘The great unmentionable’: Exploring the pleasures and benefits of ecstasy from the perspectives of drug users

Abstract

Although legal and illegal drugs have throughout history given pleasure to those who consume them, research in the drug field has ignored this central and fundamental feature. The absence of any discussion of pleasure is striking when one considers the contemporary literature on ecstasy and the dance scene. Pleasure is still missing within much of this drug discourse. Research has failed to explore a significant and integral feature of drug use, primarily the reasons why people use and the benefits they receive. To adjust this imbalance, the aim of this paper is to explore the ways in which young people experience and talk about the pleasure, enjoyment, and benefits of using ecstasy. Utilizing recent theoretical developments in both sociology and cultural studies, we examine in-depth qualitative interview data from a sample of 276 respondents who use ecstasy and attend dance events in the San Francisco Bay Area. We explore two different but interwoven themes that emerge from their narratives. First, the pleasures experienced from the immediate effects of the drug, and second, the more enduring benefits. The former enabled them to transcend the mundane nature of their everyday activities and interactions, and the latter resulted from the respondents’ belief that they could recreate elements of the ecstasy experience in their day-to-day lives.

Basically that's how I could describe it, a pleasure overload. (018)

All my friends say like, you know, I get very, very friendly. They say like they look at me and they think that I’ve got like sunshine flying out of my butt. Like I’m so happy. It's like … I can’t be any more happy. (036)

Notes

Notes

[1] We do not wish to suggest that no research has been done on pleasure and drug use, but instead to emphasize the extent to which such issues have been generally neglected. For examples of research on pleasure, drug use and addiction see Ettorre (1989), Peele (1985), Warburton (1994), and Warburton and Sherwood (1996).

[2] Whereas Partridge (1978), for example, suggests a more sociocultural explanation, arguing that there exists a long-held European–North American consensus view that illicit drugs are inherently bad because of an intense dislike and mistrust of altered states of consciousness, Tiger (1992) has suggested that industrialized societies have devalued notions of pleasure.

[3] While the existing research literature has emphasized dance events as primary settings for using club drugs, these drugs are not exclusively used at dance events. See also Beck and Rosenbaum (1994), Greer and Tolbert (1998), and Pedersen and Skrondal (1999).

[4] One exception to this would be the work of Thornton (1996), who focused less on the internal happenings of the clubs themselves and more on the extent to which rave culture could be characterized as a subculture in the traditional sense.

[5] The one exception to this would be the work of Jackson (2004), who examined the pleasurable elements of the ‘clubbing’ experience. His focus was on the body and the sensual and pleasurable experiences of clubbing.

[6] A small sample of non-club drug users were also interviewed.

[7] For a further discussion of these negative effects see Hunt, Evans, and Kares (2007).

[8] However, it is also important to note that some researchers have suggested that taking ecstasy and attending dance events may gradually become routinized themselves and hence predictable and mundane. See, for example, Reith (2005), and Shewan, Dalgarno, and Reith (2000).

[9] This idea has also been examined by Maffesoli (1996), who developed the notion of neo-tribes.

[10] This division based on short-term versus long-term effects has been noted by other researchers. For example, Beck and Rosenbaum (1994) examined the extent to which different types of ecstasy users (therapeutically or recreationally oriented) would emphasize short-term versus longer-term effects.

[11] Feeling that one now understands the meaning of life is not unusual for drug users. For example, Coleridge, De Quincy, and Huxley all described similar effects for mind altering drugs (Boon, 2002; De Quincy, 1971; Huxley, 1954).

[12] Some researchers have referred to this process of self-improvement as ego-work. See Reith (2005).

[13] For a fuller discussion see Campbell (2004) and Ortner (1998).