Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392

Research paper

The pleasure in context

Cameron Duff ∗

Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, University of British Columbia, 320 - 1290 Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC V6Z 1W2, Canada

Received 17 April 2007; received in revised form 5 July 2007; accepted 17 July 2007

Abstract

Background: The pleasures associated with the use of illicit drugs are rarely acknowledged in contemporary drug policy debates. Where they

are, these pleasures are almost always attributed to the specific physiological and/or sensory effects of individual substances.

Methods: Drawing on qualitative research recently completed in Melbourne, Australia, this paper argues that the pleasures associated with

illicit drug use extend well beyond the purely physiological to include a host of properly contextual elements as well.

Results: These “contextual” pleasures include the corporeal experience of space, such as the “feeling” of electronic music in a large night-club

space, or the engagement with natural and wilderness environments. Also important are a range of corporeal and performative practices, such

as dancing and interacting with strangers, which were reportedly facilitated with the use of different drugs.

Conclusions: This emphasis on the dynamics of space, embodiment and practice as they impact the contextual experience of pleasure, has the

potential to open up new ways of thinking about pleasure and its place in the mediation of all drug related behaviours. Greater understanding

of these relationships should also facilitate the emergence of new, context specific, drug prevention and harm reduction initiatives.

© 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Pleasure; Drugs; Space; Embodiment; Practice; Youth

Introduction

Critical examinations of the nature and experience of

pleasure abound in the social sciences, yet remain strangely

uncommon in contemporary drug policy debates (O’Malley

& Valverde, 2004). Whilst the pursuit of pleasure might stand

as one of the most obvious explanations for recent increases

in the incidence and prevalence of illicit drug use in many

parts of the world, attempts to understand the shifting phe-

nomenology of these pleasures remain at the margins of most

drug policy discussions. Indeed, those who consume such

drugs routinely cite pleasure among their abiding motiva-

tions for use (see Fitzgerald, 2002; Levy, O’Grady, Wish,

& Arria, 2005; Maclean, 2005; White et al., 2006), just as

researchers routinely prefer the more conventional analy-

sis of drug related harms. To study the pleasures associated

with illicit drug use appears to remain too disreputable, too

unscientific, to merit systematic and sustained attention.

Where scholars have defied this trend they have almost

always deferred to the grim calculus of perceived risks

∗ Tel.: +1 604 714 3466; fax: +1 604 714 3478.

E-mail address: cameron.duff@vch.ca.

and benefits in the instrumental analysis of marginal util-

ity (Coveney & Bunton, 2003). Pleasure is here conceived of

as a “good” that is consumed only in those instances where

putative benefits outweigh any real or imagined risks; plea-

sure is thus the utility that describes the difference in these

calculations (Boys, Marsden, & Strang, 2001). Confined to

this instrumental logic, those few studies that have attempted

to clarify the positive value individuals derive from their

drug use, typically recast pleasure as “benefit” (White et al.,

2006), “function” (Boys et al., 2001) or “felicity” (O’Malley

& Valverde, 2004). Drug use is, in this way, understood or

explained in functional terms as an “ends oriented” behaviour

rationally planned in order to achieve some discrete good,

for example, “staying awake, enhanced sociability, closeness

with others and increased confidence” (White et al., 2006,

p. 139). Yet such functional explanations fail to describe the

distinctly pleasurable elements of these moments – the cor-

poreal and sensory joys that are experienced in and through

the enhancement of sociability, closeness or confidence. This

focus on benefits and functions actually reveals very little

about pleasure and very little about the sensory experience

of illicit drug use.

0955-3959/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.07.003

C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392 385

This approach also tends to “essentialize” pleasure in treat-

ing it as the distinct outcome of distinct acts – for example the

incidence of social interaction or the consumption of a sin-

gle white tablet (Coveney & Bunton, 2003). With respect to

this single tablet, any sensate pleasure that might be derived

from the consumption of this pill is conventionally assumed

to obtain in the pharmacological constitution of the substance

itself (Malbon, 1999; Measham, 2002). Hence, to consume

3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in the form

of the street drug “ecstasy” is to experience the intense psy-

cho – physiological pleasures associated with the temporary

alteration of the function of the neuro-transmitters serotonin,

dopamine and norepinepherine and the series of sympathetic

reactions associated with this sudden increase in neural activ-

ity (Morton, 2005, pp. 79–81). Pleasure, in a sense, resides

in the tablet and is activated as the tablet is metabolized in

the body and the brain.

As Coveney and Bunton (2003) argue, this approach

presents two enduring challenges for those interested in

the study of pleasure, each deeply inter-connected. First it

presents a seemingly exhaustive account of the nature of

pleasure framed as an epiphenomenal outcome of some tem-

porally prior act of commission or consumption. Pleasure is

a fleeting state produced as the direct result of some other

activity like eating, walking, drinking, love-making and so

on. Pleasure thus follows from the prior action in a sim-

ple relationship of cause and effect. With the temporal and

instrumental logic of this relationship so seemingly straight-

forward, further explanations regarding the nature of pleasure

become redundant. Second, and more significantly, conven-

tional understandings of pleasure regard the experience as

wholly subjective and corporeal in nature – pleasure is some-

thing that is felt and experienced and so exists beyond the

reach of language and/or cognition. We can’t in effect talk

about pleasure as it is actually experienced and so its more

scientific analysis becomes moot. Whilst some psychologists

have attempted to overcome this problem with the develop-

ment of various “hedonistic scales”, the subjective nature of

these self-report data attracts sustained criticism (Mellers,

1995). Together these two factors continue to frustrate efforts

to develop more sophisticated understandings of the nature

and experience of pleasure.

These factors presumably account for the paucity of sus-

tained attempts to examine the various pleasures associated

with the use of illicit drugs. Meanwhile, a seemingly endless

stream of scholarly papers is produced each year document-

ing the myriad risks and harms associated with this drug use,

with few scholars pausing to consider the obvious conun-

drum thrown up by this work – why is the prevalence of

most types of illicit drug use continuing to rise in the face of

an overwhelming scientific consensus regarding the putative

harmfulness of this behaviour? Given the wide coverage this

evidence typically receives in the mainstream media and its

inclusion in the curriculum of school based drug prevention

programs and population wide public health initiatives, it is

difficult to sustain the proposition that most people remain

simply ignorant of such scientific advances (see also Fox,

2002; Petersen & Lupton, 1996). Clearly other factors are

also at work. The increased availability of these drugs and the

subsequent reduction in their “street price” in many parts of

the world are routinely cited in arguments seeking to account

for recent increases in drug use (see UNODC, 2005), yet

rarely is the demand side of this equation given due consid-

eration. Indeed, it would appear that the demand for illicit

drugs continues to grow at the same time as the evidence

documenting the harmfulness of such behaviour has become

ever more compelling and ever more widely discussed.

However, the fact that drug use continues to grow in the

face of mounting evidence concerning its manifest harm-

fulness only strikes one as odd in the absence of evidence

concerning the pleasures or benefits associated with this

drug use. To focus solely on the harms associated with

this behaviour, as almost all existing drug research does,

is to fail to reflect the lived experience of illicit drug use

in all its confusing heterogeneity (see Fitzgerald, 1997;

Measham, Aldridge, & Parker, 2001). What’s more, the

failure to account for the complexity of pleasure has left

researchers and policy makers poorly placed to account for

recent changes in drug use behaviours and to plan for the

appropriate mix of policies and services necessary to respond

to these changes.

It is the argument of this paper that a more holistic under-

standing of the experience of drug related pleasures has the

potential to further contextualize existing accounts of illicit

drug use whilst also serving as a timely corrective to more

“rationalist” accounts of young people’s drug use behaviours

(see Fox, 2002). Such “rationalist” proclivities are discernible

in most contemporary drug policy analyses with their priv-

ileging of the importance of “cost-benefit” decision-making

and cognitive reflection, over and above the corporeal, situ-

ated experience of the body and its pleasures (see also Malins,

2004). In contrast to these more rationalist accounts, drug

use ought to be understood as a complex and heterogeneous

assemblage of risks, conscious and unconscious choices and

decisions, physical and psychical sensations, affects, cor-

poreal processes, structural and contextual forces (Duff, in

press; Fitzgerald, 1997; Malbon, 1999). Appropriate atten-

tion to this broader mix of forces and processes should

provide important insights into the manner in which individu-

als actually experience the various risks and harms, pleasures

and benefits that attend all drug use episodes. Without con-

sidering the importance of pleasure we risk exaggerating the

significance of risks and harms for individual drug users.

This paper seeks to partially redress this imbalance in pre-

senting accounts of the experience of drug related pleasures

drawn from qualitative research recently completed in Mel-

bourne, Australia. In particular, this work suggests that the

pleasures associated with the use of illicit substances extend

well beyond the physiological experience of the drug itself to

include a host of properly contextual elements. These “con-

textual” pleasures include the corporeal experience of space,

such as the “feeling” of electronic music in a large night-

386 C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392

club space, or the engagement with natural and wilderness

environments. Also important are a range of corporeal and

performative practices, such as dancing and interacting with

strangers, which were reportedly facilitated with the use of

different drugs. This emphasis on the dynamics of space,

embodiment and practice has the potential to open up new

ways of thinking about the experience of pleasure and its

place in the mediation of all drug related behaviours. Greater

understanding of these relationships should also facilitate the

emergence of new, context specific, drug prevention and harm

reduction initiatives.

Drug use in context

The various accounts of the nature and experience of drug

related pleasures presented in the sections that follow are

drawn from a series of qualitative research projects conducted

in Melbourne between 2003 and 2005 (see Duff, 2003, 2005a,

2005b for details). These research projects shared a focus on

the elucidation of the cultures and contexts of illicit drug

use in distinct youth populations in Melbourne, and the var-

ious ways these cultures shape both the manner in which

these substances are used, and the experience of drug related

harms. Whilst the study of drug related pleasures was not an

explicit focus of this research, participants routinely empha-

sised the importance of such pleasures in their own drug use

narratives. Participants also insisted that the pleasures associ-

ated with the use of illicit drugs are in many respects framed

or transformed according to the different contexts in which

they are used. And so the same drug was reported to often-

times produce quite different pleasurable and sensory effects

in different social contexts.

However, it is not just that drug use feels different in differ-

ent contexts – that the sensory experience of pleasure differs

from context to context – but that the very nature of these

pleasures extends well beyond the purely corporeal or physi-

ological. Across each of these research projects, participants

described drug related pleasures that obtained primarily in

the range of activities and practices that the consumption

of these drugs facilitated. Participants here insisted that the

consumption of different drugs in different contexts trans-

forms individual behaviour and individual practices. Drug

use was said to make possible certain types of performative

behaviours, certain ways of “being in the world” that are

inaccessible, unthinkable or just unlikely while sober.

This notion that contexts and settings have an impor-

tant bearing on the experience of illicit drug use is well

established in drug policy debates. Norman Zinberg’s (1984)

now seminal study of controlled drug use in New York

City, firmly established the significance of “set” and “set-

ting” in framing the physiological experience of illicit drug

use, yet tended to gloss over the role of set and setting

in framing the performative and/or practical experience of

this behaviour. Indeed, the sense that a kind of non-sensory

or non-physiological pleasure might be derived from the

use of different drugs, precisely because these drugs open

up a range of new performative possibilities, has rarely

been considered in contemporary drug policy debates. It

is not that these non-sensory pleasures are somehow more

important or more fundamental, it is rather that our under-

standing of drug related pleasures needs to be expanded to

include both physiological pleasures as well as more per-

formative pleasures. Evidence supporting the significance

of each kind of drug related pleasure will be presented

below, yet first this notion of performativity requires brief

clarification.

Performativity

The study of performance and performativity is concerned

primarily with what bodies do; with the range of practices

and habits of kinaesthetic movement and rest that together

describe the experience of embodied subjectivity (Nash,

2000; Thrift, 2004a). Developed within diverse intellectual

debates spanning cultural studies, social theory and gender

studies, thinkers interested in the study of performativity have

tended to emphasise two particular domains with each inspir-

ing a distinctive theoretical trajectory (Butler, 1993; Nash,

2000; Thrift, 2004a). Thinkers like Judith Butler and Jacques

Derrida have insisted on the linguistic and/or semiotic char-

acter of performativity, building on the speech act theory of

J.L. Austin (see Butler, 1993, pp. 223–230). Others like Nigel

Thrift and Bruno Latour have concentrated on the embodied

and corporeal experience of practice and the body’s man-

ifold articulations in space (Thrift, 2004a). Each approach,

however, highlights the myriad ways in which the experience

of subjectivity and identity is continually made and remade

in and through the body’s activities, both enunciative and

kinesthetic. Rather than regard subjectivity and/or identity as

the slow unfolding of some innate human nature or set of

dispositions, theorists interested in the experience of perfor-

mativity insist that subjectivity is best understood as a process

of “becoming” whereby one’s practices and utterances both

describe who and what one is, whilst also contributing to the

further transformation of being (Butler, 1993).

Whilst debates about the provenance and ontology of

speech and practice continue to inspire novel theoretical and

empirical inquiries, what is most relevant for the present study

is the insistence that subjectivity is a dynamic “complex”

of corporeal and enunciative practices, habits and customs.

Each, moreover, is the effect of myriad social and ontological

forces manifested at localised and particular points in space.

Thrift (2003) argues that the study of space and/or context is

of fundamental significance in that performative practices are

always mediated or framed in and through particular cultural

settings. And so certain speech acts and practices only “make

sense” in certain contexts, whilst equally, specific practices

are often unthinkable or at the very least unacceptable in other

“inappropriate contexts”.

One is, in this sense, what one does and what one utters,

and so the body and its habits, routines and expressions

C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392 387

become absolutely central in any attempt to understand the

self and to understand the contextual and performative expe-

rience of identity. It is also central to understanding the body’s

various “becomings” in that the enactment of new speech acts

and/or the acquisition of new corporeal skills and techniques

affect a series of subtle transformations in the body. To enact

new practices, new speech acts, is to transform the body and

to transform one’s subjective experience – it is to “become

other”, sometimes very subtly and sometimes all in a rush of

difference.

This “rush of difference” is central to the pleasure Mel-

bourne research participants described when talking about

the range of performative practices made possible with the

experience of drug intoxication. This rush also speaks to

the relationship between context and practice in the gener-

ation of drug related pleasures. In each case, participants

described intoxication as an experience of difference; an

experience in which different iterations of the self and sub-

jectivity were performatively enacted, different encounters

entered into and different relationships cultivated. This is

not to deny the fundamentally affective or physiological

dimension of all drug related pleasures, it is only to insist

that one must add to this dimension a uniquely performa-

tive aspect. In making greater sense of these physiological

and performative dimensions, it is worthwhile considering

the experience of practice, space and embodiment as they

impact on the generation of drug related pleasures. Each

of these three dimensions will be examined in the sections

below.

The pleasure in practice

The focus on performativity and practice is vital for

the simple reason that research participants reported that

it is the things one does whilst using illicit drugs that are

the key to understanding most drug related pleasures. As

one research participant noted in relation to the use of

ecstasy:

Like you never just take the pill and sit in your room waiting

for something to happen right?! It’s about dancing and

talking and hanging out. It’s all the random, crazy things

that you do while you’re high that make the night.

Dancing on ecstasy was a particularly common experience

with many research participants speaking with great anima-

tion about the joys of dancing whilst high. Many described

feeling transformed in this dancing; feeling a deeper con-

nection to their own bodies, and often experiencing their

bodies in a new way. For example, one young woman noted

that:

Dancing on pills is just the best thing right, like I don’t

know, you just feel so different. Like your body’s all elec-

tric or something. Sometimes like if the music’s just right,

you feel like your whole body’s just connected. Like every

part is fitting together with the music.

What’s important here is the understanding that drugs

like ecstasy and cocaine are rarely the focus of one’s recre-

ational activities in these settings, but rather are consumed in

order to facilitate or enhance some other activity like danc-

ing, social interaction, conversation, sex and so on (see also

Duff, 2005a; Malbon, 1999). Social interaction was found

to be particularly important with many participants speaking

of the manner in which ecstasy use tends to “open” one up

with peers and strangers. When consumed among friends,

participants agreed that ecstasy use often encourages deeper

and more intimate conversations, sometimes on topics that

friends rarely if ever discuss together. One young man from

another focus group noted:

You feel so much closer to the people that you’re friends

with. Like when I’m out and because I’ve taken drugs I feel

so much more comfortable saying ‘I love you’ and it’s like

in my family it’s not the easiest thing to say. But I feel that

I can say to really good friends of mine now, even when

I’m straight, ‘I love you so much as a friend’ and that’s

because of pills.

One participant even went so far as to describe ecstasy

use as a means of “express bonding” with friends. She added

that,

Like everyone’s so busy now with work and boyfriends and

whatever and no one’s ever got any time to talk. Like we

never just catch up. We don’t go out so much anymore but

we still like getting high so the drug thing is really about

that connection that we have. Like now we’ll have a pill

and just really talk and have fun. It’s like we’re cramming

a month’s worth of conversations into one night.

Other participants noted that they typically felt more

spontaneous, more “up for it” whilst using ecstasy or

amphetamines and that these drugs make social interactions

with friends and strangers more fluid and dynamic. The

appeal of connecting with “random” strangers in bars and

clubs was reported to be a particularly enjoyable part of

ecstasy and amphetamine use:

Like, I love being able to, just going into a club and talking

to, you know, random people. Like you just come up and

sit next to them and go, “hello, how are you?” They’ll be

like, “you’re pilling aren’t you?” and you’ll be like “yeah”

and they’ll be totally cool just talking. I mean you can’t

normally do that just going out you know?

This sense of connection was common to many partici-

pant’s accounts of their own use of these drugs: connecting

with friends, connecting with strangers and often-times con-

necting with oneself. Indeed, many youth described taking

388 C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392

ecstasy as part of a broader process of self-discovery. Ecstasy

was described as a drug that is particularly well suited to this

kind of inquiry, helping to put one in touch with one’s deeper

feelings. One young man noted that:

It (ecstasy) is a drug that has the potential to be either a

party drug, but it also has the potential in the right set-

ting to be something that helps you explore your own

feelings and personality in ways that you quite honestly

just couldn’t have without it. And whether I guess peo-

ple use that potential depends on how they approach

drugs.

Important here is the idea that this drug use helped facili-

tate a very particular “practice of the self” (see Duff, 2004);

an experience of the self in which one approaches a sense of

difference within oneself. A number of participants shared

similar stories, speaking of the manner in which ecstasy

use had helped them see a different side of themselves,

or to understand themselves more fully. One respondent

stated:

I was that type of kid, you know a good Asian son of the

family, meeting my parents’ expectations academically,

getting through uni. That was really the only excitement

for much of my youth. I don’t look at that life and say

“oh, that was my straight and narrow period”, it was, but

incidentally, that was who I was. But that period of my

life, those 22 years there were exceptionally lonely times

in my life. I was actually quite depressed a lot of times, I

was very unsure of myself a lot of times. But then I got

introduced to this drug and everything seemed different.

I just found this confidence in myself as a person, it’s a

confidence I’d never had before that. I find I get along a

lot better with my peers, I’m a lot more aware of myself.

I feel I fit into the world a lot better. I mean those are big

statements but that is my experience.

This quotation highlights the value of describing some

types of illicit drug use as performative in nature, for it

illustrates the transformative impact of this young man’s

experience with ecstasy. It highlights the transformation of

subjective and corporeal experience so central to all perfor-

mative practices (see Thrift, 2000), whilst also providing

some sense of the pleasures that are associated with this

performativity. It suggests fundamentally that a range of

different pleasures are associated with the use of illicit

drugs like ecstasy and amphetamines, many of which are

derived from the types of utterances and practices that

these drugs facilitate. Whether this is dancing, connecting

with friends and strangers, or exploring one’s own self,

feelings and identity, these pleasures go well beyond the

immediate physiological sensation of drug use. These plea-

sures are also deeply embedded in specific contexts and

specific spaces, like clubs, bars, private homes and open

spaces.

The pleasure in space

Research participants in each of the various research

projects spoke of the significance of specific settings and con-

texts and their importance as “drug use spaces” (Measham et

al., 2001). Including individual clubs and licensed premises,

private homes and public or “outdoor” settings, these spa-

tial contexts were favoured as suitable environments for

illicit drug use both for their relative lack of formal super-

vision and for their unique “intensive” properties. It was

in relation to these intensive properties that respondents

spoke most clearly about the experience of pleasure and

space.

Most often, participants spoke of the energetic appeal of

drug use spaces like clubs and bars and private parties. Speak-

ing in turn of the “vibe”, a palpable “buzz” and the “rush”

of mingling with friends and strangers in affectively charged

spaces, research participants struggled to put into words the

feelings associated with these spaces and the energy and drive

that infuses them. They were unequivocal, however, about the

pleasures that were experienced in these spaces. The philoso-

pher Manual DeLanda draws a distinction between extensive

and intensive space that provides a useful means of clari-

fying what it is that participants found so appealing about

these drug use spaces and the energy or vibe that one finds

in them.

DeLanda (2005, pp. 80–83) argues that most conventional

understandings of space are rooted in the notion of extension:

the sense that space “extends” in three geometric dimen-

sions according to the familiar notion of metric lengths or

distance. This is the space of measurable dimensions and rou-

tine navigation – the space of maps (see also Thrift, 2003).

Yet this is not the only way in which space is experienced.

As DeLanda argues, we also experience space in intensive

ways; as a deeply felt or affective environment rich with sen-

sory and perceptual potential. This is the space of home, of

wild, natural environments, of neighbourhoods and favoured

streets. This intensiveness, however, is not only a matter of

subjective perception or personal preference, for as DeLanda

(2005, pp. 81–82) argues, these affects, energies and sensa-

tions are a fundamental and defining product of all intensive

spaces. What’s more we tend to experience these intensive

spaces as profoundly energetic and uplifting; as joyous, life-

affirming environments. For one discovers in such spaces a

means of more effectively connecting with or “plugging in”

to an immanent field of “virtuality”; a swarming play of affect

and matter/energy (Boundas, 2005).

Hence, one is attracted to intensive spaces for their energy

and for the affective experiences they afford. Like a heaving

dancefloor in one’s favourite club on a Saturday night . . .

The thing I love is when you’re coming into the club, you

know at the line up or whatever, and you can hear the

music, the beat and the noise and you start getting excited

thinking about what’s going on inside and that’s for me

usually when the pill (ecstasy) first starts coming on.

C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392 389

What’s important here is the idea that club spaces are expe-

rienced as intensely energetic and uplifting spaces, but more

importantly, that the use of illicit substances provides a means

of more effectively connecting with this energy.

Mostly I think the high with drugs like ecstasy is the way

it enhances the environment you’re in, like if it’s a club or

someone’s house or the beach whatever. Pills just help you

to connect with your surroundings which a lot of clubs, um

like the decor is really set up for that you know.

A number of respondents also spoke of this idea of con-

necting with space in relation to outdoor and/or natural

environments:

I love being outside when I’m high, you know just dropping

a pill with some friends and then just exploring the gardens,

climbing a tree, playing frisbee or smoking a joint and

staring at the garden for a while.

Others spoke about private spaces in the same fashion:

I mostly use at home now. I love just, you’re familiar with

the environment, but everything can just change and you

can find so much, like different things that you’ve never

really noticed.

Important in each of these quotations is the sense of con-

necting differently with space, of experiencing a familiar

space in a new way. However, it’s not that the use of these

drugs can create or manufacture a feeling of connection or

rapture no matter where they are used, but rather that this

drug use can amplify or enhance a pre-existing sense of con-

nection or intimacy. For example, the use of drugs in one’s

home was said to profoundly enhance one’s sense of comfort

and connection within that space:

(Using) at home is great because like it’s a safe environ-

ment and it can be a really fun environment too. But for

me it’s about this house and the funny little family we have

here and the things that we do together.

The pleasures associated with this kind of recreational

drug use were thus reported to far exceed the merely phys-

iological. Whilst these physiological pleasures are certainly

important, such an account fails to capture the range of plea-

surable sensations associated with the use of different drugs

in different contexts and spaces. This attention to space also

goes some of the way to explaining why the same drug can

produce such different pleasurable and/or sensory effects in

different spaces. As one respondent noted:

Like you can take the pill and just have this amazing feel-

ing, this amazing time and your friend will be like “Jesus

these are just crap, I’m getting nothing”. And I’ll be like,

“what do you mean? I’m on it!”. So that’s the level that

you’re trying to get to which is why we take it. It’s like

that level where you’re really in touch with what’s going

on around you, but it doesn’t happen every time.

The differential experience of intensive space provides

some explanation for why this peak experience doesn’t hap-

pen every time. Yet when it does, users report needing a whole

new language to describe the sensations.

The pleasure in the body

What is perhaps most striking about research respondent’s

accounts of the various sensory pleasures associated with

the use of illicit drugs is the difficulty most had articulating

the precise nature and experience of these pleasures. Most

were able to describe specific feelings and sensations pecu-

liar to specific substances, yet there was little agreement about

the deeper nature of these sensate experiences. What was

common to these accounts, however, was the sense of expe-

riencing the body differently; of being exposed to a radically

new set of corporeal and psychological sensations. Speaking

about his first experience with the drug ecstasy, one respon-

dent noted:

I mean it (ecstasy) didn’t hit me for about twenty minutes,

and I was like ‘this is crap anyway’, right, and then sud-

denly, this thing happened that I can’t describe. . .I can’t

explain the sensation, but you just, you go into this whole

new world. I’d never felt like this before. . .it just felt so

good.

Almost all respondents shared similar stories about their

experiences with drugs like ecstasy, amphetamines and

cocaine and the way these drugs produced hitherto unknown

sensations and feelings. Typically, these were described as

physical or sensate pleasures experienced in and on the sur-

faces of the skin:

It’s so hard to put into words. But the way your body feels,

these waves and rushes, especially if someone touches you

like runs their hands through your hair or something – I

love it when my boyfriend does that – your whole body is

so sensitive and every sensation is just this intense pleasure

like you’re a cat purring on someone’s lap (laughs).

For other respondents, this drug use was associated with

a sudden heightening or enhancement of physical, sensate

and perceptual functioning. Amphetamines in particular were

said to enhance alertness and mental acuity, perception and

endurance. This was experienced as a kind of optimal func-

tioning; as if every sense was functioning at its highest

capacity.

When you’re high like that it just feels like your body

is so connected like every part is working perfectly, all

390 C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392

coordinated and free. It’s such an amazing feeling I love

that part the most.

Whilst these sensations were not always experienced as

pleasurable, the fact that they remained distinctly new, even

unique, was common to many respondents accounts of their

own drug use. Indeed, many respondents spoke about the

desire to experience new sensations and new psychological

and/or cognitive states as an enduring motivation underpin-

ning their specific drug use histories. This desire explains

many participants’ eagerness to try new drugs and new drug

combinations. One respondent noted:

Once you get the feeling of drugs you know when you have

ecstasy its going to make you feel euphoric and good and

happy and talkative. Then I’d experimented with speed and

I realised this made me feel energetic, gave me a running

feeling. I thought maybe if I combine these two drugs I

will be a genius and I will be feeling great and running

around and having a good time, and it worked!

This kind of drug experimentation was often associated

with unpleasant and even harmful experiences, though most

respondents seemed to understand this risk as a tolerable

side-effect of the drive to experience new drug sensations.

Others spoke about learning to experience certain sensa-

tions as pleasurable in ways that are largely consistent with

Becker’s seminal study on Cannabis use (see Becker, 1953).

The ecstasy “rush” is a good example of this process.

The rush was characterized as the sudden onset of the

ecstasy “peak”, in which a host of different physical and psy-

chological sensations are felt all at once (see also Fitzgerald,

Louie, Rosenthal, & Crofts, 2000). This was variously

described as a feeling of rushing or flowing, as if currents

of energy or electricity were charging through the body “like

a great wave, you know, like it just washes over your body”.

Whilst the rush was often described as the most “amaz-

ing” and pleasurable part of using ecstasy, some respondents

reported that their initial experiences with the rush were pro-

foundly unsettling. Some reported feeling overwhelmed and

shocked by the intensity of the sensations associated with this

rush, with others describing feelings of paranoia “like my

mind was racing”. A small number of respondents reported

deciding not to use these drugs again because of these experi-

ences, though most indicated that their attitudes soon changed

as they became more familiar with the nature of the experi-

ence. One woman noted:

It’s a knockout experience right!? Like the first couple of

times it just knocked me on my butt. But then after that,

like you kinda know what to expect and you talk to your

friends and so you know when you get that rush again that

you’re not going crazy, so you just go with it.

Beyond the initial experience of the ecstasy “peak”,

respondents described a longer “plateau” period, typically

lasting some 2–3 h, in which one’s sensations and percep-

tions remained in a heightened state of arousal (see also

Beck & Rosenbaum, 1994). Many described this plateau as

more pleasurable than the initial “rush”, given that it was less

intense and so one was able to function more normally and

engage in a wider range of activities. One respondent stated:

Like sometimes when you’re peaking you feel like you

can’t get off the couch right! Like you’re just feeling too

good and too wasted. So after that part’s finished that’s

when you normally feel like you can do things again like

dance or chat or whatever.

These qualitative reports reveal once more the rich array

of distinctly physiological pleasures associated with the use

of “party drugs” like ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines.

Yet at the same time, they also reveal the limitations of a

strictly physiological account of such drug related pleasures.

Research respondents spoke again and again about the con-

textual elements of these pleasures. In each instance, settings

and contexts were described as somehow enhancing or inten-

sifying the experience of these drug related pleasures.

Yeah, Summer Daze (festival event) 2004 was amazing, we

had this really great coke. And it was sunny and the park

looked so good with the city behind it and all my friends

dancing around me. The DJ was playing these really great

party tunes and I felt just complete clarity listening to the

music and hearing every detail of it, feeling it rush through

my body.

This quotation highlights the intrinsically contextual ele-

ment of many drug related pleasures. It’s not just the use

of cocaine that describes or explains the nature of this young

man’s experience on this day – it is clearly part of a richer and

more intensive complex of sensations and experiences (see

also Fitzgerald, 1997). This conclusion, once again highlights

the need for a more expansive understanding of the spatial

and performative dimensions of all drug related pleasures to

compliment conventional physiological understandings.

Conclusions: the pleasure in context

The real value in exploring the experience and context

of drug related pleasures lies in the contribution such work

might make to a more general rethinking of contemporary

drug policy. For too long drug policy debates have been domi-

nated by narrow conceptions of risk and harm and the manner

in which drug use both produces and reflects various cultural,

political, medical and “bio-psycho” understandings of risk

(see also Fox, 1999, pp. 25–29). Drug use is almost always

positioned in such debates as an innately risky practice in

which risk and the experience of harm are fundamentally, if

not causally, linked. Yet the problem with this approach is

that it unavoidably casts drug use as irrational and unhealthy,

C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384–392 391

or worse, maladaptive, for why would one knowingly take

such an obvious personal risk? (O’Malley & Valverde,

2004).

This is the basic conclusion most “mainstream” drug pol-

icy debates arrive at. Based on a series of largely untested

assumptions about the moral value of good health, and a sci-

entific consensus regarding the ineluctable riskiness of illicit

drug use, most drug policies remain trapped in a logic of

risk and risk avoidance. Harm reduction is only the most

progressive face of this logic. The real problem is that such

discourses leave no room for a more embodied or corpo-

real understanding of the positive value of illicit drug use; in

short they leave no room for pleasure. This only reinforces

the enduring estrangement between scientists, policy makers

and ordinary citizens on the one hand and drug users on the

other. The former continue to marvel at the seeming indif-

ference drug users maintain to risk, whilst the latter speak

happily in private codes about the illicit pleasures only they

dare countenance. All the while public policy stumbles on.

To begin to seriously explore the nature and experience of

drug related pleasures is to finally concede the complexity of

all drug use behaviours. It is also to insist that such behaviours

encompass a far broader array of experiences, sensations and

affects than most contemporary public health accounts allow

for (see also Fox, 2002). In seeking to better understand these

experiences, it is vital that researchers, policy makers and

others develop sufficiently nuanced understandings of the

relationship between pleasure, risk, culture and context as

they impact on the lived experience of illicit drug use (see also

Duff, 2003). The focus on pleasure and context is a particu-

larly important adjunct to the existing literature on culture and

risk. This paper has outlined a more contextual understanding

of drug related pleasures, highlighting the importance of spa-

tial and performative dimensions in the realisation of these

pleasures. This research suggests that the pleasures associ-

ated with the use of “party drugs” like ecstasy, cocaine and

amphetamines are to be found both in the kinds of practices

and experiences these drugs facilitate, as well as the ways

these drugs make one feel. Furthermore, this work indicates

that these corporeal and performative practices open up an

experience of difference in which new iterations of the self

and subjectivity are made possible. That individuals experi-

ence this otherness as profoundly exciting and pleasurable is

confirmed again and again in the words they use to describe

this experience.

This work also helps to contextualize the lived expe-

rience of illicit drug use in revealing something of what

individuals gain from this behaviour. What is gained is far

more than a fleeting experience of sensory and/or physiolog-

ical bliss – though this apparently is compelling enough –

what is also gained is a deeper connection to the spaces one

moves through and the people one encounters in these spaces.

Given the fundamental importance of connection, affect and

experience in contemporary youth cultures (see Maffesoli,

1996; Thrift, 2004b), the claim that drug use fundamentally

enhances or intensifies these experiences begins to explain

something of the enduring popularity of drugs like ecstasy

and amphetamines for youth. The challenge now is to develop

more refined understandings of the various ways the experi-

ence of pleasure mediates the experience of risk, such that

new kinds of drug prevention and harm reduction initiatives

might be developed. To more comprehensively understand

the manifold experience of illicit drug use, including the man-

ner in which individuals consider the varying significance of

drug related risks and pleasures, is to open up the possibility

of intervening in the very conduct of these experiences in

new and more effective ways. This innovation underscores

the promise of a very new kind of harm reduction policy and

practice.

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