Scoring Ecstasy: MDMA,Consumerism and Spirituality in the Early Fiction of Irvine Welsh

Ecstasy (MDMA) is a drug whose short-term dangers have been demonstrated by a number of deaths, and whose long-term effects are still unknown. It is also illegal. Nevertheless, people continue to take it. This essay aims to address the question of why they do so. I argue that MDMA's ability to enhance communication and offer people a version of religious ritual means that the drug has the potential, at least, to modify subjectivity and intersubjective relationships. In particular, I study how one contemporary novelist and commentator on the club/rave scene, Irvine Welsh, explores this potential in his work. I focus mainly on his novel Marabou Stork Nightmares, the novella “The Undefeated” (from the collection Ecstasy) and the title story of the collection The Acid House. I am especially concerned with how Welsh reads MDMA's problematic relationships to consumer capitalism and to the ecstatic or otherworldly states that are loosely described by his characters as “spirituality.” I also address Welsh's accounts of LSD experience in the same stories in order to show how he situates the identity of the drug user as poised between the sense of self-affirmation and empathy offered by MDMA and the sense of self-annihilation (via an encounter with subjectless language, or Foucault's “thought of the outside”) offered by the LSD experience. I argue that the reason for this bipolar construction of subjectivity in Welsh's work is his wish to explore the drug-using subject's conflicting relationship to consumerism, which offers neither selfaffirmation nor self-annihilation, but a merely passive relation to experience, in which the subject's task is to absorb (consume) images and material goods. I will suggest that in playing out these conflicts, Welsh's stories show how the literary and philosophical tradition linking drug use and mysticism refuses to die; in effect, his work revitalizes the ideas of de Quincey, Huxley, Leary and others, reshaping them for the consumerist age while never being uncritical of house culture or the illicit drug scene. Like Derrida in “The Rhetoric of Drugs”, Welsh seeks a position on the issue that avoids the oversimplifications of much pro- and anti-drug rhetoric. Welsh's work is as much about consumerism and spirituality as about drugs, and his exploration of the subject positions of MDMA users is bound up with a dual critique of late capitalism and house culture that exposes the problematic connexions between them. His work shows, for instance, that Ecstasy does not offer an escape from the cash nexus: it is, is in many ways, just another consumer product tied to the leisure industry. While Ecstasy can initiate a new spiritual awareness in some users, this is best sustained by distancing oneself from the “chaos” of hedonistic excess and reducing the frequency of MDMA use. I conclude that Welsh is not so much an apologist for dangerous illegal drugs as an intelligent critic of consumerism.     

NY AG ends Emergent's exclusivity for Narcan nasal spray

Narcan, the lifesaving opioid overdose reversal drug, has been the only naloxone spray allowed on the market due to an exclusivity agreement between the pharmaceutical company that owns it — Emergent BioSolutions — and the company that makes the spray device. This deal is ending thanks to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has made it possible, via an agreement with Emergent, for other companies to use the patented, proprietary spray technology. Emergent, which bought Adapt, the creator of Narcan, will have to renegotiate these terms, James announced on Jan. 2. “Given the tragic, devastating effects of the opioid crisis, and the urgent need for additional drugs for the emergency treatment of opioid overdoses, my office will do whatever possible to ensure that there are no unnecessary impediments to the development of additional lifesaving opioid overdose reversal drugs,” she said. “I'm proud to announce that, starting today, additional companies will be able to gain access to these nasal spray devices. With more companies able to access this easy‐to‐use technology, our hope is that we can reduce the number of opioid overdose deaths across New York and this nation and save millions of additional lives.” A little history here: Adapt Pharma launched Narcan in February 2016, a year before the State Targeted Response (STR) grants were issued. Narcan is patented, but naloxone had been used for decades in the emergency treatment of opioid overdoses, by first responders and medical workers. In October 2018, in the middle of the lucrative STR (which no longer had to be 80% treatment) and State Opioid Response funding cycles, Emergent bought Adapt — for Narcan. Adapt had already entered into the contract with the nasal spray device manufacturer. Other pharmaceutical companies had been trying to develop a nalmefene overdose reversal drug using the device.     

Briefly Noted

Last week, Safehouse, a Philadelphia nonprofit that will open a supervised injection site in the city (see ADAW, Oct. 15, 2018), has hired an executive director, Jeanette Bowles, Ph.D. According to radio station WHYY, Bowles will help with fundraising and finding a site. “I believe in it so much,” Bowles said. “We see this working in other places, and the evidence supports it so strongly, that we don't have progress in public health without some controversy and scrutiny accompanying it.” Whether the Department of Justice will allow the site to operate remains unclear. “I've joined the team that respectfully disagrees with the Justice Department,” Bowles said. “Sitting in the office and doing the work separate from the community has never been my approach or style,” she said. “Being embedded with the community and developing those relationships and having my feet on the ground has always been most important to me. That's how the best public health work is done, through building bridges with community members.” Bowles earned a bachelor's degree from Temple University; obtained his master's in social work from the University of Pennsylvania; did postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Diego; and for her Drexel dissertation focused on opioid overdoses in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. The city, in giving the go‐ahead for the injection facility, said it would have to be run by a private nongovernmental entity.     

Cannabis and alcohol use in young adults: Connections

People with HIV, as well as those who are uninfected, do well on long‐term treatment with opioids (methadone or buprenorphine), researchers have found. There is a strong dose‐response relationship between mortality (all causes), unnatural death and overdose, with the higher morphine equivalent daily doses having the best outcomes, according to the study, by Ajay Manhapra, M.D., and colleagues and published online Sept. 16 in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence. “Opioid risk mitigation approaches should be expanded to address the potential effects of higher dose on all‐cause mortality in addition to unnatural and overdose fatalities,” the researchers conclude in the abstract. For the study, there were 22,996 patients on long‐term treatment, 6,578 (29%) with HIV and 16,418 (71%) uninfected. Among 5,222 (23%) deaths, 12% were unnatural deaths and 6% overdoses. The study, “All‐cause mortality among males living with and without HIV initiating long‐term opioid therapy, and its association with opioid dose, opioid interruption and other factors,” also found that benzodiazepine use was associated with overdose.     

NJ governor approves medical cannabis for OUD

Last week, Gov. Phil Murphy announced that New Jersey would remove prior authorization for Medicaid for medication‐assisted treatment (MAT) and would approve opioid use disorder as an eligible indication for medical marijuana. The moves, among several announced Jan. 23 in the state's efforts to combat the opioid epidemic, would increase access to treatment. Last year, more than 3,000 individuals in the state died from overdoses. “The opioid epidemic continues to devastate families and communities across our state,” said Gov. Murphy. “As we combat this crisis, it is critical that we use data‐driven, evidence‐based strategies to support individuals suffering from addiction and help them get on the path to recovery.”     

Briefly Noted

We asked Jerry Rhodes, former top executive at CRC (now Acadia) and a leader in opioid treatment program management, what he thinks of methadone as a medication to be used in primary care to treat opioid use disorder (OUD), as some people — including former Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Michael Botticelli — recommended last year (see ADAW, July 16, 2018). “I take issue with that,” said Rhodes. “Methadone is a dangerous drug in an unregulated environment,” he told ADAW. Buprenorphine is prescribed this way, but “buprenorphine is a relatively safe drug, and methadone isn't,” he said. A veteran of many battles over methadone, including the near‐elimination of opioid treatment programs, Rhodes told ADAW that “you don't give unfettered access to methadone” to patients with OUD. “Be careful what you wish for” is his advice. This has the potential to cause harm, he said. “Only people who don't understand the history of its utilization would recommend this.”     

On Being Not Canadian: The Social Organization of “Migrant Workers” in Canada*

Se fondant sur la méthode d'ethnographie institutionnelle de Dorothy E. Smith, l'auteure étudie l'organisation sociale de notre connaissance des gens catégorisés comme non‐immigrants ou « tra‐vailleurs migrants ». À la suite de l'étude du Non‐Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP) du gouvernement canadien (1973), elle montre l'importance de la pratique idéologique raciste et nationaliste des États à l'endroit de l'organisation matérielle du marché du travail compétitif « canadien » dans le cadre d'un capitalisme mondial restructuré de même que la réorganisation qui en résulte des notions d'esprit national canadien. Elle montre aussi que la pratique discursive des parlementaires qui consiste à considérer certaines personnes comme des « problèmes » pour les « Canadiens » ne provient pas de l'exclusion physique de ces «étrangers » mais plutôt de leur differentiation idéologique et matérielle des Canadiens une fois qu'ils vivent et travaillent dans la société canadienne. Utilizing Dorothy E. Smith's method of institutional ethnography, I investigate the social organization of our knowledge of people categorized as non‐immigrants or “migrant workers.” By examining Canada's 1973 Non‐immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP), I show the importance of racist and nationalist ideological state practice to the material organization of the competitive “Canadian” labour market within a restructured global capitalism and the resultant reorganization of notions of Canadian nationhood. I show that the parliamentary discursive practice of producing certain people as “problems” for “Canadians” results not in the physical exclusion of those constructed as “foreigners” but in their ideological and material differentiation from Canadians, once such people are living and working within Canadian society. Expressions such as…“foreigner”… and so on, denoting certain types of lesser or negative identities are in actuality congealed practices and forms of violence or relations of domination… This violence and its constructive or representative attempts have become so successful or hegemonic that they have become transparent—holding in place the ruler's claimed superior self, named or identified in myriad ways, and the inadequacy and inferiority of those who are ruled. — Himani Bannerji.     

Philadelphia‐based harm‐reduction advocate joins CleanSlate

Brooke Feldman is well‐known to the Philadelphia world of drug users as a peer counselor active in harm‐reduction work. But starting this week, she will be Center Manager for two sites owned by CleanSlate Centers, a treatment program focused on opioid and alcohol addiction. Feldman has a master's in social work and is able to bridge the “street” world and that of the established treatment center—but acknowledges that there was a leap of faith involved in joining the treatment field.     

A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English‐Language Canadian Sociology

Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship, and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives, and where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives? Drawing on Coulthard's politics of recognition and Tuck's damage‐centered research, we present here the first systematic empirical analysis of the place of Indigeneity in the Canadian Review of Sociology and the Canadian Journal of Sociology. We situate the presence of Indigeneity in Canadian sociology journals in the sociopolitical context of the time, and examine how imperialism, statism, and damage are oriented within the two journals. Most importantly, we challenge the silence in the discipline's intellectual frames and research programs with respect to Indigenous theorizing about the social world.     

Performing Beauty: Dove's “Real Beauty” Campaign

Dove, a popular beauty brand, impressed some in the advertising world with its unique “Campaign for Real Beauty” and made others cringe. But little is known about how real women respond. “Real” beauty according to Dove means various shapes and sizes—flaws and all—and is the key to rebranding, rebuilding women's self‐esteem, and redefining beauty standards. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with sixteen Canadian women and guided by social semiotics and dramaturgy, I examine Dove's presentation of beauty and women's reactions to it from a “beauty as performance” frame. This study examines processes of interpretation and finds that expressing beauty, the self, and a public image inextricably requires elements of performance.     

Frantz Fanon,poet: pleasure of the text,power of the text

ABSTRACT

Frantz Fanon’s writing represents a productive embrace of the political and the poetic. His ideas have had such a long afterlife, they live on in us, I submit, precisely because the language of their articulation, image-filled and rhythmic, is compelling. This article examines three elements of Fanonian poetics in Black Skin, White Masks: the use of metaphor and, in “By Way of Conclusion,” an ambiguous/multiple “I” as persona, and, finally, what Brent Edwards has called “anaphoric poetics,” the repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of successive phrases.     

“Nothing More Than the Usual Injury”: Debating Hockey Violence During the Manslaughter Trials of Allan Loney (1905) and Charles Masson (1907)

This historical case study of violence in Canadian hockey examines media coverage of two manslaughter trials: the 1905 trial of Allan Loney and the 1907 trial of Charles Masson. Both players stood accused of killing opposing players by striking them in the head with their hockey sticks. In each case, the offending player was acquitted in the courts, mainly because such violence was deemed intrinsic to the sport. Injuries that resulted from violent acts were downplayed or ignored; even death from a deliberate stick attack could be rationalized as an unfortunate accident. Newspaper accounts of the deaths, trials, and subsequent acquittals offer valuable insight into the cultural narratives surrounding hockey violence and notions of masculinity in early twentieth‐century Canada. These cases generated considerable debate around the issue of what constituted “clean” and “rough” hockey. The game reports, trial coverage, and public opinion examined in this case study suggest that stick‐swinging incidents and aggressive play have been regarded as ordinary and “proper” aspects of “strenuous hockey” for more than a century. The historical examination of such cases is important because the justifications for violence that were articulated in the context of the deaths continue to be voiced in contemporary discussions of hockey violence. As long as fighting and aggression remain markers of masculinity – and hockey continues to be seen as a training ground for manhood – it will be difficult to remove such forms of violence from the sport.     

Briefly Noted

The biennial International Drug Policy Reform Conference, sponsored by the Drug Policy Alliance and held Nov. 7–9 in St. Louis, Missouri, was full of varying sessions on harm reduction and reform — 45 of them in all. An article by Filter editor Will Godfrey summed up his perspective — he was the only print reporter so far to have covered the entire conference. We asked him what his feeling was about the prospects for treatment and harm reduction working together, as they have in the past. “There's plenty of friction, but there can and should be rapprochement between the harm‐reduction and traditional treatment communities,” he told ADAW. “Many people in the harm‐reduction movement pursue traditional recovery, and there are treatment folks who support harm reduction. All should be trying to save lives and empower people. Harm reductionists' legitimate concerns about mainstream treatment include its coercive or controlling deployment, its frequent eschewal of evidence‐based practices and its promotion of abstinence at the expense of stigmatizing people who use drugs. Treatment advocates often overlook that most people who use drugs are fine. And in any case, everyone must be free to choose their own path.” But the fact that two approaches — one more radical than the other — coexist still is bound to make some treatment providers uncomfortable. After all, some of the speakers said that even supervised consumption sites are unfair to drug users, who have no need to be “supervised,” and instead should be free to use drugs. All viewpoints were there. “There's constant debate in the harm‐reduction movement about working to change systems that inflict harm from the inside, versus calling for radical reforms from the outside,” said Godfrey. “I think both approaches are simultaneously necessary.” Not everyone saw the conflict. “I have to say that I didn't see an anti‐public health movement there at all,” Maia Szalavitz, who is writing a history of harm reduction and is respected in both harm reduction and some, at least, treatment camps, told ADAW. “There has always, of course, been tension between activists and researchers and between people who want to fight within the system and those who want to tear it all down.” For the Filter article, go to https://filtermag.org/drug‐policy‐reform‐movement/ .