Trolling: Breaking Rules, Poking Fun, or Just Outright Harassment?
“I am not reading all of that, but fuck Chu May Paing. What a fraud.” I didn’t see the comment on Facebook when it was first posted. I…
Tag: harm reduction
Safety Dance: Covid Harm Reduction for the Rave Scene
No one wants to talk about this. We all hate it. We’re tired. Believe me, I feel that tiredness in my bones. And I know you’re busy and…
Community organizers were arrested for providing a safe supply. They need our solidarity.
Skip to the action steps You know how we’ve been fighting to legalize and regulate drugs, so people have access to a safe supply? Well, two community organizers…
Radical Harm Reduction and the Responsibility of a World by Jarrett Zigon
Addiction is exceedingly moralized. Perhaps no other concept associated with the experience of addiction reveals this more than that of responsibility. Too often, addiction is understood in…
“A cup of coffee and a needle”: How a harm reduction café in Copenhagen quietly demonstrates an alternative to the war on drugs by Johanna Kinnock
Behind the long counter of Café Dugnad, smells of spices and meat float out of industrial ovens. Light streams in through the glass doors of the smallish café,…
“Nothing About Us Without Us!” Really?: The Unequal Value of Lives in Harm Reduction NGOs by Catherine Larocque
Canada, like most capitalist societies of the global North, faces “an unprecedented and devastating wave of overdoses” and overdose deaths (Wells, 2017), intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic (Governm…
Criminalisation, harm reduction and responsibility in Polish drug policies by Justyna Struzik
In 2019, Sebastian Kaleta, a member of the Polish parliament associated with the ruling Law and Justice party, published a report denigrating Warsaw-based organisations working in the fields…
Fighting for injection in Paris by Johannes Lenhard
Figure 1: Non-safe-injection site behind Paris’ Gare du Nord, February 2016 (all photos by author). The first time I ever saw a person shooting up was right behind…
Incarceration as Harm Reduction: The realities of lethal street-based opioid overdoses in neoliberal Philadelphia by Tali Ziv
Philadelphia is the poorest of the ten largest cities in the United States and has one of the highest rates of fatal opioid-related overdoses in the state of…
Alright, let’s talk about GHB: A user’s guide.
When it kicks in, it feels like meeting an old friend for the first time. – Daniel, 34 Few drugs are as misunderstood and stigmatized as GHB (except for…
Why abstinence-only drug education doesn’t work—in fact, it backfires spectacularly.
I talked to a lot of middle-class recreational drug users for my research. None of them had any idea when they were younger that they’d end up dropping…
The intangible narcotic: What does ‘vibe’ mean, really?
There’s a term that comes up pretty frequently when talking about electronic music events. A search within my interviews (excepts from which are quoted here) and field notes…
Yin and yang at Harvest Festival: Part 1
NOTE: I will not be discussing my regular research topic (drug use) in this post, out of respect to the organizers of Harvest. All names have been changed.…
Drugs are… good? No, that can’t be right. Can it?
Like most academics, I’m obsessive. I spend a lot of my free time doing searches for new research on recreational drug use. I do this partly because there’s…
“Drugs are bad,” he said, sipping his beer: Legality vs. social acceptability
I’ve found it highly interesting to hear drug users trash talk other drugs, even while they’re high on their own preferred substance. Gina* thinks that alcohol is the…
A state of trance: Inner peace rising from chaos
The experience of getting inside Sound Academy for Armin van Buuren was the low point of the night. After an evening of rain and dancing at the electronic…
A happy ending for 30,000 mollyed-out kids running around Toronto.
My heart dropped into my stomach when I first saw the announcement. Fireworks and junk during Zedd’s finale. “You’re welcome for this 3-second photo op,” thought the cleanup…
Psytrance, a world unto itself
Most of what I knew about psytrance (psychedelic trance) raves before I actually went to one came from this article in Vice: Psytrance really is a counter-culture in…
Field Notes: This data collection is interfering with my dancing.
The following is a selection of some of the more entertaining notes from my first official field research night. (The last post was a preliminary getting-a-feel-for-things outing.) I…
Eat, sleep, anth, repeat: It begins
Sunglasses in the darkness. White shorts, no shirt. Perspiration shining on his skin in the wild, flashing lights. A familiar-looking backpack on his shoulders, strapped over his muscular…