research
Drug use as a social ritual
- Publication date
- 16 March 1993
- Publisher
- This dissertation brings together results of my NWO-funded ethnography --into the
drug taking rituals of regular users of heroin, cocaine and other psychoactive
substances--, resulting studies and some twenty years of puzzlement and subsequent
pondering. The NWO study was initiated in the former Erasmus University Institute for
Preventive and Social Psychiatry (IPSP) by professor Charles D. Kaplan and the late
institute director professor Kees Trimbos. The work was completed within the walls of
the new-born lnstituut voor Verslavingsonderzoek (IVO), Addiction Research Institute,
and the safety of my home.
The assumed failure of users of illicit drugs to conform with common standards of
socially appropriate conduct is directly associated with the use of a substance which
supposedly renders them powerless. This image is not only part of popular wisdom,
but, in different forms also recognized in several scientific theories.' Many theories
emphasize the powerful pharmacological properties of psychoactive drugs. others
relate (problematic) substance use to f.e. deficient personality structures, ego
problems, impaired psychological development, acute distress or psychiatric problems.
Again other theories associate drug use with environmental deficits, such as poverty.
All of these factors may, indeed, explain part of the phenomenon, but the frequent
emphasis on only one aspect, be it a pharmacological, psychological or social factor,
is in my opinion erroneous. Until now, none of these schools has produced specific
correlations between cause and effect. A number of recent studies have
questioned these (rather) mono-causal explanations and emphasized the multi路
dimensionality of drug taking behaviors.