Table Of ContentReconsidering Drugs
I
Reconsidering Drugs
Mapping Victorian and
Modern Drug Discourses
Lawrence Driscoll
pal grave
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RECONSIDERING DRUGS
Copyright © Lawrence Driscoll, 2000.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2000 978-0-312-22272-7
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First published 2000 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-62241-2 ISBN 978-1-349-62239-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-62239-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Driscoll, Lawrence Victor.
Reconsidering drugs : mapping Victorian and modern drug
discourses I Lawrence Driscoll.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Drug abuse. 2. Drug abuse-History. 3. Drug abuse in
literature. 4. Drugs of abuse. I. Title.
HV580l.D554 2001
362.29'09--dc21 00-059142
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Letra Libre, Inc.
First edition: October 2000
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
we
must love truth for itself, to such an extent that we do not
we
love it for ourselves but against ourselves. must ever con
tradict ourselves; we must always welcome the opposite ofo ur
thought and scrutinize what worth this opposite may have.
-Nietzsche
Although the most clear-sighted judges ofw itches and even the
witches themselves were convinced the witches were guilty of
witchcraft, no guilt in fact existed. So it is with all guilt.
-Nietzsche
For my mother and father
Contents
Preface lX
Acknowledgments Xlll
Introduction
Chapter 1 "Unpopular Everywhere,"
or Forgetting the Self, Remembering Drugs 23
Chapter 2 "A Creature Without Species":
Constructing Drug Users 43
Chapter 3 "Pleasures Impossible to Interpret":
Freud and Cocaine 69
Chapter 4 "The Doctor Does a Good Job":
William Burroughs's Critique of Control 87
Chapter 5 Planet Heroin: Women and Drugs 101
Chapter 6 Up from Drug Slavery?:
Drugs and Race in Contemporary America 129
Notes 161
Bibliography 187
Index 197
Preface
W
alter Benjamin has written that "The reader, the thinker ... are
types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer,
the ecstatic. And more profane."1 Accordingly, I would hope
that this text will stimulate a process of profane illumination in the reader.
Benjamin suggests that thinking is "eminently narcotic" and I hope my read
ers will be prompted to think in such a way as to slip themselves past the
guards that usually patrol the borders of our thought.
My hope is that this book will be of use to anyone whose theory or prac
tice comes into contact with drugs. I imagine that it would be of interest to
clinicians and psychologists, as well as to sociologists and policymakers in
health and government. I would hope that my analyses will open a space for
them to reevaluate our accepted theories and practices, and hopefully en
courage them to locate new ways of approaching drugs at a time when it is
becoming more and more clear that current practices are stagnating. My in
tention throughout this book is to open up some discursive space for our
selves so that we can construct other discourses about drugs that will not
produce the damaging consequences that we are currently experiencing.
I also hope that this book will offer readers of cultural theory, media, and
literature a chance to focus on the subject of drugs in such a way as to open
up a range of possible readings in other areas of cultural studies. Due to their
proximity to drug discourses I hope that the book can provide readers of
class, gender, and race with a way to rethink how these frameworks are re
lated to established drug discourses. I believe that the real difficulty with "the
drug problem'' is that it is not a field of knowledge in motion but is an ac
cepted body of truth around which other discourses simply orbit. It is the
unquestioned centrality of this truth that I think needs to be disrupted if we
are going to move beyond the current borders of our thought. While this
book is by no means exhaustive, I hope that the fissures that I will open can
continue to be explored.
Although there are bound to be gaps and omissions in my selection of
texts, I have tried to focus on what I see as the discursive foundations of how
we shape our knowledge of drugs and their users. I have tried to focus on
I
x Reconsidering Drugs
the discourses that we generate about drugs rather than any particular au
thors. I have therefore chosen to open up the discussion by working with au
thors who I felt raise some of the central discursive concerns. Here you will
find chapters that orbit around Wilkie Collins, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sig
mund Freud, Anna Kavan, William Burroughs, and Ray Shell. I have also
drawn on the work of Conan Doyle, Jean Cocteau, Charles Baudelaire, Jean
Jacques Moreau, as well as looking briefly at Aleister Crowley, Kim Wozen
craft, Irvine Welsh, and Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Discussions of literary texts are
placed alongside analyses of discourses from medical history, sociology,
counseling, and psychology, as well as looking at narratives that we use in
popular culture, ranging from English antidrug advertising to Hollywood
cinema. Finding different ways of talking about drugs is not an easy task,
and I have had to choose an eclectic range of texts and discourses because
the roots of our drug discourses are far from localized. Discourses that ap
pear in an official psychological report one day will show up in popular cul
ture the next. I have tried to follow the discourse wherever it seemed to lead
rather than limit myself or the reader to a restricted area.
In many ways drug discourses seem to have a very good free trade agree
ment and cross borders and time zones with impunity. Therefore, you will
find a discussion of both English and American drug discourses and it may
seem that I am conflating the two countries. However, while it was true in
the 1960s that English drug policy was radically different from that of the
United States, since former president Ronald Reagan and prime minister
Margaret Thatcher redrew much of the political map in the 1980s, the drug
discourses of both countries have become almost indistinguishable. For ex
ample, Avril Taylor's discussion of Scottish women heroin users in chapter
six is not meant to be seen as a regional exception, but is meant to stand as
an example of how heroin addiction could be read in any Western country.
Similarly, I think that readers in England will find that the discussion of
William Burroughs will reverberate throughout British culture and is far
from restricted to the United States. The trans-Atlantic success of the film
Trainspotting is proof that when it comes to drugs, the English and the
Americans are speaking the same language. Obviously there are local differ
ences, such as the legalization of marijuana in Holland and various policies
in Switzerland, and Sweden, but I have tried to examine the roots that hold
the bulk of Western antidrug discourses together, rather than looking at the
surface variations.
Objections could also be raised by a literary historian that I have moved
too quickly across literary time zones. Again, the focus of the book is the
construction of our own current drug discourses; for example, I am more in
terested in what Burroughs can tell us about how we treat the concept of
control, rather than trying to place Burroughs's comments in relation to the
Preface I) x1
1950s and the Beat writers of his generation. I have done this with all the
literary works in the hope of liberating the voices of the texts from the re
strictions of a strict historicism. Similarly, the discussion of Anna Kavan in
chapter six is intended to open a discussion of how we could rewrite the
structure of our own drug narratives, rather than trying to explain her work
in relation to British experimental fiction in the 1940s.
My other omission is any extended discussion of legal drugs. While nar
ratives surrounding alcohol deploy the same logic as our drug narratives, for
the sake of space I have had to exclude this discussion, which really deserves
a book in itself. Other omissions include extended discussions of LSD,
mushrooms, or legal drugs or medicine such as Prozac, simply because these
subjects would require more space than is currently possible. The discussion
that follows will deal primarily with illegal drugs such as cocaine, crack,
heroin, and marijuana. Obviously, the field of drugs is almost beyond the
scope of any one writer's areas of expertise, but I hope that I have pointed to
several of the core concepts that need to be further dealt with.
