Research paper
‘Enjoying the kick’: Locating pleasure within the drug consumption room

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2017.07.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Harm reduction policy and praxis has long struggled to accommodate the pleasures of alcohol and other drug use. Whilst scholars have consistently highlighted this struggle, how pleasure might come to practically inform the design and delivery of harm reduction policies and programs remains less clear. The present paper seeks to move beyond conceptual critiques of harm reduction’s ‘pleasure oversight’ to more focused empirical analysis of how flows of pleasure emerge, circulate and, importantly, may be reoriented in the course of harm reduction practice.

Methods

We ground our analysis in the context of detailed ethnographic research in a drug consumption room in Frankfurt, Germany. Drawing on recent strands of post-humanist thought, the paper deploys the concept of the ‘consumption event’ to uncover the manner in which these facilities mediate the practice and embodied experience of drug use and incite or limit bodily potentials for intoxication and pleasure.

Results

Through the analysis, we mapped a diversity of pleasures as they emerged and circulated through events of consumption at the consumption room. Beyond the pleasurable intensities of intoxication’s kick, these pleasures were expressed in a range of novel capacities, practices and drug using bodies. In each instance, pleasure could not be reduced to a simple, linear product of drug use. Rather, it arose for our participants through distinctive social and affective transformations enabled through events of consumption at the consumption room and the generative force of actors and associations of which these events were composed.

Conclusion

Our research suggests that the drug consumption room serves as a conduit through which its clients can potentially enact more pleasurable, productive and positive relations to both themselves and their drug use. Acknowledging the centrality of pleasure to client engagement with these facilities, the paper concludes by drawing out the implications of these findings for the design and delivery of consumption room services.

Introduction

Harm reduction policy and praxis has long struggled to accommodate the pleasures of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use. Over the course of three decades, this struggle has been subject to continued critique (Duff, 2004, Duff, 2008, Moore, 2008, Mugford, 1993). Scholars have consistently exposed harm reduction’s restrictive focus on the dangers and risks of AOD use and the routine dismissal of its subjective benefits (Keane, 2003). In response, a body of literature has sought to redress harm reduction’s ‘pleasure oversight’ (Schnuer, 2013). This work has been instrumental in documenting pleasure’s significance as both motivator and mediator of AOD use and its centrality to diverse drug cultures (see Fitzgerald, 1998; Harrison, Kelly, Lindsay, Advocat, & Hickey, 2011; MacLean, 2008, Pennay, 2012). By continuing to ignore the significance of pleasure, critics have argued that harm reduction runs the risk of misunderstanding the variety and complexity of AOD use, hindering its capacity to respond to this use in more effective and innovative ways (Duff, 2008, Farrugia, 2014).

Whilst scholars have mainly examined how the pleasures associated with AOD use might be conceptualised and empirically assessed, how this interest in pleasure might come to practically inform the design and delivery of harm reduction policies and programs remains less clear. This may partly explain harm reduction’s ongoing eschewal of pleasure, despite ample evidence to suggest its relevance and potential for program innovation. Reflecting on the situation nearly a decade ago, Race (2008) cautioned against the ‘straightforward voicing’ of pleasure’s absence, suggesting that we should also consider what is needed to ‘activate’ pleasure across harm reduction praxis. Given periodic interest in the problem of AOD pleasures, it is perhaps surprising that Race’s suggestion has met with so little action in the intervening years. So how exactly might pleasure be put to work in and for harm reduction? How might we begin to formulate a mode of harm reduction more responsive to pleasures and what would this harm reduction practice look like? The present paper begins to respond to these questions by two related lines of inquiry. Firstly, we challenge existing ways of understanding and researching pleasure by way of a critique of the drug using subject of pleasure and harm reduction’s role in shaping this subject. We argue for the need to subvert harm reduction’s adherence to neoliberal modes of subjectivity and knowledge practices (see Moore & Fraser, 2006), before turning to recent strands of post-humanist thinking for more productive alternatives. Secondly, we ground this theoretical analysis in the context of detailed ethnographic research in a drug consumption room in Frankfurt, Germany. Our purpose with this second line of inquiry is to move from conceptual critiques of harm reduction’s ‘pleasure oversight’ to a more focused empirical analysis of how flows of pleasure emerge and circulate and, more importantly, may be reoriented in the course of harm reduction practice. A key concern here is to identify new ways of accommodating drug pleasures in the design and delivery of novel harm reduction efforts.

Section snippets

The subject of harm reduction and the erasure of pleasure

As a number of critical AOD scholars have observed, the discursive deployment of harm reduction relies upon a very particular construction of the drug using subject (Moore, 2008, Moore and Fraser, 2006, O’Malley and Valverde, 2004). This is a subject conceived through neoliberal ideals of rationality, autonomy and prudence (Moore & Fraser, 2006). Within this framework, the subject of harm reduction is cast as “a health-conscious citizen capable of rational decision-making, self-determination,

Consumption rooms, harm reduction and pleasure

As innovative ‘safer environment interventions’, drug consumption rooms offer supervised, hygienic and low-risk conditions for the consumption of pre-obtained drugs (Rhodes et al., 2006). An expressed logic of ‘risk reduction’ underpins the aims, expectations and practices of these facilities (Fischer, Turnbull, Poland, & Haydon, 2004). Reflecting this logic, consumption room services are commonly promoted and sustained for their potential to (cost-effectively) promote less risky forms of

Post-humanism and the consumption event

Over the course of the last decade, the anthropocentrism inherent in most orthodox social science methods used in AOD research has come under increasing scrutiny. Gathered loosely under the label of post-humanism, a number of scholars have sought to redirect attention towards the nonhuman or more-than-human forces that comprise any event of AOD use (Dennis, 2017, Dilkes-Frayne, 2014, Duff, 2014, Duff, 2016, Fitzgerald, 1998; Jayne, Valentine, & Holloway, 2010). In doing so, these authors

Method

In accordance with the aims and orientations described above, our data collection strategies were determined for their capacity to illuminate the collective activity and agentic contributions of those bodies (human and nonhuman) assembled in drug use events. Empirical data were drawn from 12 months of participatory ethnographic fieldwork at the drug consumption room ‘La Strada’ in Frankfurt, Germany, which included semi-structured interviews with consumption room clients (n = 25) and staff (n = 

Results

La Strada is located on the edge of Frankfurt’s historic red light district, a short distance away from the city’s central station and primary drug dealing area. Tucked alongside a row of residential buildings and hotels, its outside suggests nothing remarkable about the site; only a small sign reveals the building’s formal designation. One enters the facility with a buzz of the doorbell and the approval of the shift’s doorkeeper. Walking in, you encounter La Strada’s café. As a drop-in space,

Discussion

In orienting our analysis towards the post-human, we have sought to open up a space to consider, trace and map pleasures as they emerge and circulate through events of consumption at La Strada. As our data reveal, these pleasures were marked by their prevalence and plurality. Alongside the pleasurable intensities of intoxication’s ‘kick’, pleasure was expressed in a range of novel capacities, practices and drug using bodies within encounters at La Strada. In each instance, pleasure could not be

Conclusion

Through the notion of the ‘consumption event’, we have sought to illuminate the relevance and potentials of pleasures within the context of the consumption room. In doing so, our account exposes, and works to amend, the limitations inherent to the neoliberal approach to both the subject and pleasures of AOD use. The consumption room is not just a space of risk reduction, nor should it be reduced in policy and research discussions to this logic. Our research suggests that this intervention

Funding

This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship; an Australian Government Endeavour Postgraduate Scholarship; and a Griffith University Population and Social Health Research Program PhD Researcher Grant.

Conflict of interest statement

No conflicts of interest to declare.

Acknowledgements

We extend our heartfelt thanks to La Strada’s clients, team and associates for their devotion of time, knowledge and advice. We are also grateful to John Fitzgerald and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and insights. Finally, many thanks go to Sina for her extended involvement in the project.

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