Wild Flesh: Explorations in Critical Drug Studies

  Addiction, Modernity and the 'Urge to Use':  Some Thoughts on Nietzsche's Notion of the "Dionysian" [orignally published on my blog "Doing Modernity" on April 28, 2012] (I just added a fifth essay dealing with a shamanic approach to recovery 7-19-12) "Addictions" and "drug wars" seem to be defining features of modernity.  When patriarchal church and state conspired to destroy shamanic practices, the archaic wisdom of the "controlled use" of entheogenic plants died out.  For tens of thousands of years prior to this "Pharmacratic Inquisition" (Jonathan Ott), humans consumed mind-altering plant-gods as sacraments in holy ceremonies. Several years ago I launched a research project titled  "Dancing with Dionysus"  which was to be a mixture of autoethnography and sociological analysis exploring the social worlds of methamphetamine use in Southern California in the opening years in the 21st century. I had vent...

                                                                                       Caught in the Open:   Why My Friends Keep Going to Jail While I Stay Free Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.,D Junior was lying in a doorway on State Street, shivering against the concrete without even a blanket. No sleeping bag, no backpack, no pillow — just the thin layer of his clothes against the cold. I will never forget the sight. He looked more like a discarded bundle than a human being. Within a week, the police arrested him for shoplifting a sandwich. Two weeks later, he was back in jail again. That same month, my other three closest friends were locked up too. All of us share co-occurring disorders — mental distress and substance use — ye...