RETHINKING INTOXICATED SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS.

Social research on alcohol and sexual encounters has tended to be siloed into several different research endeavors, each addressing separate aspects of wanted and unwanted sexual encounters. While sociologists have focused on the patterns of social interaction, status competition, and emotional hierarchies of sexual encounters, they have left the role of alcohol intoxication largely unexamined. Conversely, the two dominant approaches to sexual encounters within alcohol research, the theories of alcohol myopia and alcohol expectancy, while focusing on alcohol have tended to take little account of the socio-relational dynamics and gendered meanings involved in those encounters. Our aim in this theoretical paper is to begin to bring together some of the concepts from these different research strands in examining how the social processes of intoxication potentially impact heteronormative sexual scripts and hence notions of femininity and masculinity among cisgender, heterosexual women and men. Our discussion is focused on the concepts of ritual and scripts; power, status, and hierarchies; and socio-spatial contexts, which are central to an understanding of the gendered and embodied social practices that take place within intoxicated sexual events; the emotional nature of the socio-spatial contexts within which they occur; and the socio-structural conditions that frame these events.

Psychedelic discourses: A qualitative study of discussions in a Danish online forum.

BACKGROUND: This study focuses on user-perspectives related to norms, beliefs and practices concerning psychedelic substances as they are articulated in a Danish online forum. The study combines an interest in online drug research with a focus on discourse analysis to account for the dialectical relationship between individual and shared knowledge regarding the use and meaning of psychedelics. METHODS: A total of 1,865 posts from 154 threads of online discussion were coded and analyzed thematically, inspired by a socio-cognitive approach to the study of discourse. All topics were arranged into 54 categories which were further analyzed to map recurring patterns in the construction of meaning resulting in a limited number of dominant discourses. RESULTS: Five dominant discourses were identified: the recreational, the therapeutic, the spiritual, the scientific and the performance discourse. We suggest that these discourses can be seen as the available frameworks which forum users draw upon and reproduce when they describe, discuss, and negotiate their understandings and uses of psychedelics. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates the importance of having a nuanced approach to user perceptions. Future drug policy and practice development should take these nuances into account and expect significant variation in the motives and modalities of the use of psychedelics.

"BLURRING THE LINE:" INTOXICATION, GENDER, CONSENT AND SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS AMONG YOUNG ADULTS.

Social concern about sexual practices and sexual consent among young adults has increased significantly in recent years, and intoxication has often played a key role in such debates. While many studies have long suggested that alcohol plays a role in facilitating (casual) sexual encounters, intoxication has largely either been conceptualized as a risk factor, or researchers have focused on the pharmacological effects of alcohol on behaviors associated with sexual interaction and consent. To date little work has explored how young adults define and negotiate acceptable and unacceptable levels of intoxication during sexual encounters, nor the ways in which different levels of intoxication influence gendered sexual scripts and meanings of consent. This paper explores the latter two research questions using data from 145 in-depth, qualitative interviews with cisgender, heterosexual young adults ages 18-25 in the San Francisco Bay Area. In examining these interview data, by exploring the relationship between intoxication and sexual consent, and the ways in which gender plays out in notions of acceptable and unacceptable intoxicated sexual encounters, we highlight how different levels of intoxication signal different sexual scripts. Narratives about sexual encounters at low levels of intoxication highlighted the role of intoxication in achieving sexual sociability, but they also relied on the notion that intoxicated consent was dependent on the social relationship between the partners outside drinking contexts. Narratives about sexual encounters in heavy drinking situations were more explicitly gendered, often in keeping with traditionally gendered sexual scripts. In general we found that when men discussed their own levels of intoxication, their narratives were more focused on sexual performance and low status sex partners, while women's and some men's narratives about women's levels of intoxication were focused on women's consent, safety, and respectability. Finally, some participants rely on 'consent as a contract' and 'intoxication parity'- the idea that potential sexual partners should be equally intoxicated - to handle relations of power in interpersonal sexual scripts. Since these notions are sometimes deployed strategically, we suggest that they may serve to "black-box" gendered inequalities in power between the parties involved.

Subject in the Making: Technologies of the Self and Aspirations for a Good Life in Contemporary Denmark.

Coping with crisis is fundamental for human life, but so is the pursuit of everything good and fruitful. We revisit Foucault's technologies of the self as an analytical lens for what people do when pursuing a good life in contemporary Denmark. Comparing three emerging self-improvement domains; psychedelic micro-dosing, meditation and mindfulness, and fitness self-tracking, we explore processes though which individuals become subjects of their own actions. We argue that engaging in these transformational practices produces and reflects different notions of self, yet all involve attempts at managing vulnerabilities by accepting, controlling and balancing tensions between self-making and relation-making.

#studydrugs-Persuasive posting on Instagram.

BACKGROUND: Unregulated use of pharmaceuticals for cognitive enhancement has become a topic of growing concern, as recent studies indicate a growing prevalence in several countries. Prescription stimulants, also termed Study drugs (SDs) are typically accessed through peers but new studies show that social media platforms may play an important role in the diffusion of these pharmaceuticals. While there is scholarly focus on supply and purchasing practices, other aspects of drugs on social media have received less attention. The aim of this article is to show how SDs are portrayed on Instagram and to discuss some of the implications. METHODS: To find and collect Instagram posts related to SDs we conducted hashtag searches with a number of relevant terms; #studydrugs, #nootropics, #cognitiveenhancers, #smartdrugs, and #modafinil. A total of 563 posts including a selection of post comments, were included in the study and analyzed using the Content Analysis method. RESULTS: SD-related posts can be categorized into four main types; sales advertisement, personal experience, public information, and motivational quotes. Regardless of its kind, the majority of posts mainly express a positive sentiment towards SDs and SD use. Comments below posts show that people are influenced by SD-related posts and use Instagram for a variety of reasons in relation to their own SD praxis CONCLUSION: This study reveals that Instagram is used to facilitate not only access to SDs, but also a great deal of communication that generally seeks to motivate, promote or encourage the use of pharmaceuticals for enhancement. The positive sentiment towards SDs may play an important role as it provides a false sense of security to current and potential users by posting content that portrays this kind of drug use as the easy and safe solution to social and personal pressures of becoming a successful individual.

Contextualizing study drugs - An exploratory study of perceptions and practices among study counselors, general practitioners, psychiatrists and from student polls.

BACKGROUND: Recent decades have revealed a growing use of medicines for non-disease conditions, especially among university students. The prevalence rates for the use of study drugs (SDs), i.e. prescription stimulants and ß-blockers, range from 2 to 20% among students worldwide. However, SD use does not take place in a vacuum. Like any other health-related behavior, medicine use takes place in specific social and cultural contexts, and there is very little scholarly work on these contextual aspects of SD use. OBJECTIVE: This article aims to explore university students' use of SDs through the perceptions and practices of university counselors, general practitioners (GPs), psychiatrists, and from student polls in Denmark, in order to advocate for a contextual approach to SD use. METHODS: The article relies on data from three different data sets involving a total of 18 semi-structured interviews, seven study counselors, nine GPs, and two psychiatrists, as well as votes from eight in-class polls conducted among approximately 300 university students in total. Data were collected between 2012 and 2017 and analyzed through meaning condensation and categorization. RESULTS: The study shows that a great variety of perceptions and practices concerning SDs exists. While study counselors generally do not hear much about SDs from students, except for those seeking help with regard to ß-blockers, they link the pressure, competition and perfectionism among students to a more general explanation of why some students may feel the need to use SDs. GPs meet students seeking SDs, but differ significantly in how they align their perceptions with their prescribing practices. The psychiatrists who participated in the study expressed widely different perceptions and practices regarding SDs. Finally, student polls indicate that students' opinions on SDs are also highly divided. CONCLUSION: The lack of consensus on SDs among professionals in health and education may contribute to students' divided opinions about SDs, just as it provides students with an opportunity to legitimize their use of SDs.

Pursuing Pleasures of Productivity: University Students' Use of Prescription Stimulants for Enhancement and the Moral Uncertainty of Making Work Fun.

This article presents ethnographic data on the use of prescription stimulants for enhancement purposes by university students in New York City. The study shows that students find stimulants a helpful tool in preventing procrastination, particularly in relation to feeling disinterested, overloaded, or insecure. Using stimulants, students seek pleasure in the study situation, for example, to get rid of unpleasant states of mind or intensify an already existing excitement. The article illustrates the notion that enhancement strategies do not only concern productivity in the quantitative sense of bettering results, performances, and opportunities. Students also measure their own success in terms of the qualitative experience of working hard. The article further argues that taking an ethnographic approach facilitates the study of norms in the making, as students experience moral uncertainty-not because they improve study skills and results-but because they enhance the study experience, making work fun. The article thereby seeks to nuance simplistic neoliberal ideas of personhood.