Pharmacological routes to everyday exceptionality

Abstract

In a modern era of speed, uncertainty, pleasure and anguish, the boundaries between pharmacologically healing and enhancing the mind are being redefined [Pieters, T., and S. Snelders. 2009. “Psychropic Drug Use: Between Healing and Enhancing the Mind.” Neuroethics 2 (2): 63–73]. Whether smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and coffee, or taking illicit drugs, some degree of intoxication is an everyday practice for many [Bancroft, A. 2009. Drugs, Intoxication & Society. Cambridge: Polity Press]. Despite this ‘normalization’ of even illicit drug taking, normative political and managerial literatures both homogenize and demonize drug taking, discursively constituting an undifferentiated ‘drug user’ who is presumed unable to take drugs and work effectively. This paper suggests an alternate articulation of the relationship between drugs, work and everyday life. Analysing interviews with self-identifying drug using creative and knowledge workers, as well as reportage on prescription drug ‘misuse’, we argue that some drug use is increasingly being positioned within, rather than against, a managerialist performative ethos concerned with the enhancement of both the physical and cognitive aspects of everyday working lives.

Keywords:

• drugs
• work
• everyday
• management
• exceptionality
• performance

Acknowledgements

The authors express sincere gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editor who have provided insightful comments on earlier drafts on this paper.

Notes

1. Neuro-active refers to the effects of drugs and other substances that act on a human being's central nervous system.

2. These drugs are defined as improving mental and cognitive functions.

3. The broad requirements in the advertisements were that participants had to work in ‘knowledge-intensive’, professional firms or creative-based industries, be at least 18 years of age and have some involvement in drug taking in relation to work that they would be willing to discuss.

4. An archetypical propaganda anti-drug movie told from the perspective of a high-school principal. Its plot is about a trio of drug dealers who lead innocent teenagers to become addicted to ‘reefer’ (marijuana). As a consequence of these teenagers' consumption, their unmanageable behaviour leads to a car accident, a shooting and an innocent bystander being brought to trial.

5. Yasmin's use of the word ‘terrorist’ here appears to be a contemporary variant of the exaggerated use of the designation of ‘a terror’ in English, since the late nineteenth century, to describe a naughty child.