Keywords: conceptual metaphor, narratives, drug use, medicine addiction

Proceeding from the premise that conceptual metaphors exhibit the underlying cognitive mechanisms in interpreting new feelings and sensations, the authors use different methods to distinguish patterns of drug-taking from narratives. Within the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphors, they grasp the conceptual source domains for different kinds of drug-taking. They also use systhematical metaphor analysis as a method for analysing background metaphors (concepts of the researchers, official texts, representations in media etc.) and target metaphors (interviews taken with drug-takers and narratives from open source internet databases). The results of the research reveal two main source domains concerning the feelings of taking drugs, both connected strongly to bodily feelings: 1. changing substantiality, and 2. changing spatial and time perception. In case of heroin usage: substantiality is liquidness, in party drug use: machinelike (digital) and container; in marijuana use: machinelike (mechanic) and container. The spatial and time perceptions change when using heroin to in and out; using party drugs: up and down, and horizontal movement; using marijuana: far and close, and centripetal-centrifugal movement. Comparing these patterns to metaphors in recovered narratives and metaphors of (sedative) medicine addiction, the findings reflect on previous research in conceptual metaphor theory and give new perspectives in treating the different embodied experiences that drugs give.

 

 

Keywords: drug use, free market, legal fictions, rights, libertarianism

In this excerpt from his omonimously titled book, the widely known libertarian author makes a strong case for a free market in drugs. He exposes what he considers legal fictions used by the US government to incriminate drug takers, and analyses personal rights in the dilemmatic context of opportunities vs. risks. For Szasz, our right to drugs is part of an inalienable right to property, as already recognised by Ludwig von Mises. According to Szasz’ argument, the essence of liberty is choice, the one thing necessary to give moral value to any human action in the first place, which does not mean, however, an obligativity of the right choice for our freedom. In his diagnosis of the current, inconsistently regulated and unprincipled American drug market, and of the fictional or even harmful drug abuse services, the author concludes with the dismissal of the reformed drug policy.

 

Keywords: psychiatry, drug industry, coercion, antidepressants

In order to denounce the harmful effects of psychiatry, also closely tied to the international drug industry, on our culture and everyday life, the essay goes back to the roots of its traditionally coercive practice, arguing that this violent past is not yet buried. Even with the allegedly scientific turn of this medical specialty, modern psychiatry is still very far from having established itself upon firm scientific grounds and from having developed properly scientific methods, as it proceeds more led by psychopharmacology, than leading it. Nevertheless, its claim to coercive authority remains as strong as ever, as the addictive drugs prescribed by it are no better or even worse than placebo.