Bancroft, Angus

English

In this chapter, the author examines the way in which the purchase and delivery infrastructure of darknet cryptomarkets shapes the experience of opiate drug use and dependence. It uses the concept of social time and posits that the illicit drug distribution system reshapes two temporal dimensions shaping the experience of drug users. There is the experience of time located in the pharmacology of the drug and in the body of the drug user, which evokes experiences of withdrawal and dependence. Then there is the socio-technical embedding of the delivery system and governance structures which support or impinge on the autonomy of the user. This ‘drug time’ is both a benefit and a cost of engaging in cryptomarket use. The market infrastructure can give users the opportunities to more carefully manage their drug time, while also creating new risks of non-delivery that can sharpen experiences of dope sickness. The author concludes that the growing professionalisation, digitisation, and commercialisation of the drug market increasingly embed drug time in material infrastructures mediated through technical systems

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‘Waiting for the delivery man’:Temporalities of addiction, withdrawal, and the pleasures of drug time in a darknet cryptomarket

https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/files/372195513/BancroftEML2023WaitingForTheDeliveryMan.pdf

‘Waiting for the delivery man’:Temporalities of addiction, withdrawal, and the pleasures of drug time in a darknet cryptomarket

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