Description
Whether drinking Red Bull, relieving chronic pain with oxycodone, or experimenting with Ecstasy, Americans participate in a culture of self-medication, the use of psychoactive substances to toughen or manage our moods. A “drug-free The united states” appears to be a fantasyland that the general public don’t need to inhabit.
High: Drugs, Desire, and a Nation of Users asks fundamental questions about US drug policies and social norms. Why do we endorse the usage of some drugs and criminalize others? Why do we accept the necessity of a doctor-prescribed opiate but not the same thing bought off the street? This divided approach shapes public policy, the justice system, research, social services and products, and health care. And despite the decades-old war on drugs, drug use remains somewhat unchanged.
Ingrid Walker speaks to the silencing effects of both criminalization and medicalization, incorporating first-person narratives to show all kinds of user experiences with drugs. By challenging current thinking about drugs and users, Walker calls for a next wave of drug policy reform in the United States, beginning with recognizing the full spectrum of drug use practices.