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International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384392

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 (OMalley
& 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 phenomenology of these pleasures remain at the margins of most
drug policy discussions. Indeed, those who consume such
drugs routinely cite pleasure among their abiding motivations for use (see Fitzgerald, 2002; Levy, OGrady, Wish,
& Arria, 2005; Maclean, 2005; White et al., 2006), just as
researchers routinely prefer the more conventional analysis 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.

0955-3959/$ see front matter 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2007.07.003

and benefits in the instrumental analysis of marginal utility (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; pleasure 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 (OMalley
& 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 corporeal 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.

C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384392

This approach also tends to essentialize pleasure in treating it as the distinct outcome of distinct acts for example the
incidence of social interaction or the consumption of a single 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 psycho 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 activity (Morton, 2005, pp. 7981). 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 temporally 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 simple relationship of cause and effect. With the temporal and
instrumental logic of this relationship so seemingly straightforward, further explanations regarding the nature of pleasure
become redundant. Second, and more significantly, conventional understandings of pleasure regard the experience as
wholly subjective and corporeal in nature pleasure is something that is felt and experienced and so exists beyond the
reach of language and/or cognition. We cant 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 development 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 sustained 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 documenting the myriad risks and harms associated with this drug use,
with few scholars pausing to consider the obvious conundrum 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

385

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 consideration. 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 harmfulness 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). Whats 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 understanding 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 peoples drug use behaviours
(see Fox, 2002). Such rationalist proclivities are discernible
in most contemporary drug policy analyses with their privileging of the importance of cost-benefit decision-making
and cognitive reflection, over and above the corporeal, situated 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, corporeal processes, structural and contextual forces (Duff, in
press; Fitzgerald, 1997; Malbon, 1999). Appropriate attention to this broader mix of forces and processes should
provide important insights into the manner in which individuals actually experience the various risks and harms, pleasures
and benefits that attend all drug use episodes. Without considering 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 presenting accounts of the experience of drug related pleasures
drawn from qualitative research recently completed in Melbourne, 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 contextual pleasures include the corporeal experience of space,
such as the feeling of electronic music in a large night-

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C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384392

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.

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 understanding of drug related pleasures needs to be expanded to
include both physiological pleasures as well as more performative 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

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 various 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 emphasised the importance of such pleasures in their own drug use
narratives. Participants also insisted that the pleasures associated 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 oftentimes produce quite different pleasurable and sensory effects
in different social contexts.
However, it is not just that drug use feels different in different 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 physiological. 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 transforms 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 important bearing on the experience of illicit drug use is well
established in drug policy debates. Norman Zinbergs (1984)
now seminal study of controlled drug use in New York
City, firmly established the significance of set and setting 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

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 inspiring 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 character of performativity, building on the speech act theory of
J.L. Austin (see Butler, 1993, pp. 223230). Others like Nigel
Thrift and Bruno Latour have concentrated on the embodied
and corporeal experience of practice and the bodys manifold 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 bodys 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 performativity insist that subjectivity is best understood as a process
of becoming whereby ones 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) 384392

become absolutely central in any attempt to understand the

self and to understand the contextual and performative experience of identity. It is also central to understanding the bodys
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 ones 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 Melbourne 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 generation 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 subjectivity 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 performative 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?! Its about dancing and
talking and hanging out. Its all the random, crazy things
that you do while youre high that make the night.
Dancing on ecstasy was a particularly common experience
with many research participants speaking with great animation about the joys of dancing whilst high. Many described
feeling transformed in this dancing; feeling a deeper connection 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 dont
know, you just feel so different. Like your bodys all electric or something. Sometimes like if the musics just right,

387

you feel like your whole bodys just connected. Like every
part is fitting together with the music.
Whats important here is the understanding that drugs
like ecstasy and cocaine are rarely the focus of ones recreational activities in these settings, but rather are consumed in
order to facilitate or enhance some other activity like dancing, 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 youre friends
with. Like when Im out and because Ive taken drugs I feel
so much more comfortable saying I love you and its like
in my family its not the easiest thing to say. But I feel that
I can say to really good friends of mine now, even when
Im straight, I love you so much as a friend and thats
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 everyones so busy now with work and boyfriends and
whatever and no ones ever got any time to talk. Like we
never just catch up. We dont 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 well have a pill
and just really talk and have fun. Its like were cramming
a months 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? Theyll be
like, youre pilling arent you? and youll be like yeah
and theyll be totally cool just talking. I mean you cant
normally do that just going out you know?
This sense of connection was common to many participants accounts of their own use of these drugs: connecting
with friends, connecting with strangers and often-times connecting with oneself. Indeed, many youth described taking

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C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384392

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 ones 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 setting to be something that helps you explore your own
feelings and personality in ways that you quite honestly
just couldnt have without it. And whether I guess people use that potential depends on how they approach
drugs.
Important here is the idea that this drug use helped facilitate 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 dont 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, its a
confidence Id never had before that. I find I get along a
lot better with my peers, Im 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 mans
experience with ecstasy. It highlights the transformation of
subjective and corporeal experience so central to all performative 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 ones own self,
feelings and identity, these pleasures go well beyond the
immediate physiological sensation of drug use. These pleasures 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 contexts 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 spatial contexts were favoured as suitable environments for
illicit drug use both for their relative lack of formal supervision 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. Speaking 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 philosopher Manual DeLanda draws a distinction between extensive
and intensive space that provides a useful means of clarifying 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. 8083) argues that most conventional
understandings of space are rooted in the notion of extension:
the sense that space extends in three geometric dimensions according to the familiar notion of metric lengths or
distance. This is the space of measurable dimensions and routine 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 sensory 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. 8182) argues, these affects, energies and sensations are a fundamental and defining product of all intensive
spaces. Whats more we tend to experience these intensive
spaces as profoundly energetic and uplifting; as joyous, lifeaffirming 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 ones favourite club on a Saturday night . . .
The thing I love is when youre 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 whats going on inside and thats for me
usually when the pill (ecstasy) first starts coming on.

C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384392

Whats important here is the idea that club spaces are experienced 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 youre in, like if its a club or
someones 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.

389

youre trying to get to which is why we take it. Its like

that level where youre really in touch with whats going
on around you, but it doesnt happen every time.
The differential experience of intensive space provides
some explanation for why this peak experience doesnt happen every time. Yet when it does, users report needing a whole
new language to describe the sensations.

The pleasure in the body

A number of respondents also spoke of this idea of connecting with space in relation to outdoor and/or natural
environments:
I love being outside when Im 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, youre familiar with
the environment, but everything can just change and you
can find so much, like different things that youve never
really noticed.
Important in each of these quotations is the sense of connecting differently with space, of experiencing a familiar
space in a new way. However, its 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 connection or intimacy. For example, the use of drugs in ones
home was said to profoundly enhance ones sense of comfort
and connection within that space:
(Using) at home is great because like its a safe environment and it can be a really fun environment too. But for
me its 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 physiological. Whilst these physiological pleasures are certainly
important, such an account fails to capture the range of pleasurable 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 feeling, this amazing time and your friend will be like Jesus
these are just crap, Im getting nothing. And Ill be like,
what do you mean? Im on it!. So thats the level that

What is perhaps most striking about research respondents

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 peculiar 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 experiencing 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 respondent noted:
I mean it (ecstasy) didnt hit me for about twenty minutes,
and I was like this is crap anyway, right, and then suddenly, this thing happened that I cant describe. . .I cant
explain the sensation, but you just, you go into this whole
new world. Id 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 surfaces of the skin:
Its 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 youre a cat purring on someones 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 functioning; as if every sense was functioning at its highest
capacity.
When youre high like that it just feels like your body
is so connected like every part is working perfectly, all

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C. Duff / International Journal of Drug Policy 19 (2008) 384392

coordinated and free. Its 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 underpinning 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 Id 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 sensations as pleasurable in ways that are largely consistent with
Beckers 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 psychological 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 amazing and pleasurable part of using ecstasy, some respondents
reported that their initial experiences with the rush were profoundly 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 experiences, though most indicated that their attitudes soon changed
as they became more familiar with the nature of the experience. One woman noted:
Its 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
youre 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 23 h, in which ones sensations and perceptions 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 youre peaking you feel like you
cant get off the couch right! Like youre just feeling too
good and too wasted. So after that parts finished thats
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 contextual elements of these pleasures. In each instance, settings
and contexts were described as somehow enhancing or intensifying 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 element of many drug related pleasures. Its not just the use
of cocaine that describes or explains the nature of this young
mans 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 dominated 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. 2529). 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) 384392

or worse, maladaptive, for why would one knowingly take

such an obvious personal risk? (OMalley & Valverde,
2004).
This is the basic conclusion most mainstream drug policy debates arrive at. Based on a series of largely untested
assumptions about the moral value of good health, and a scientific 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 corporeal 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 indifference 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 particularly 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 spatial and performative dimensions in the realisation of these
pleasures. This research suggests that the pleasures associated 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 experience 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 experience 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 physiological 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

391

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 experience 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 manner 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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