Drug Addiction: Failure, Feast and Phoenix

This article offers a unique interdisciplinary theoretical examination of the stigmatisation of ‘drug addicts’ and its impacts on health and wellbeing. In the present conjuncture, drug addiction has become a metaphor for a ‘wasted’ life. The stigmatisation of addicts creates artificial monsters. They constitute matter out of place—addiction is dirt and the addict a form of symbolic pollution—as their excessive consumption means they are ostracised and branded as failures. Providing a tripartite framework—of failure, feast, and phoenix—this article will suggest that addiction occupies a contradictory social and conceptual space, at once cause, effect, and solution. It is in this context that the stigmatisation of addiction operates, despite the fact addicts constitute a consumer par excellence, solicited by the very system that seeks to punish, control, and cure them. Drawing on Girard’s generative scapegoat alongside the philosophical concept of the Muselmann, which parallels it, this paper will examine the hypocritical and contradictory portrayal, consumption and treatment of addiction; the social harm and stigmatisation arising from this portrayal; the systems of power and privilege that reproduce this; and how these systematically affect not only the health and wellbeing of addicts, but also their medical care and treatment. The health impacts arising from this framework will illustrate how scapegoating can lead to worsening mental and physical health, social isolation, and create barriers to treatment, which ultimately perpetuate the cycle of addiction that create public health challenges (e.g., drug-related deaths). The ensuing discussion will show how the addict is a symptom of capitalism and colonialism before it, sustaining it as well as serving as a convenient distraction from the systematic problems and illustrating the brutal realities of biopolitical power and its inherent contradictions. Only by understanding the broader socio-cultural and political implications of addiction within the context of late capitalism can we start to reduce stigma and scapegoating and focus on addiction as a medical issue rather than a moral and/or criminal one; a key to improving health outcomes.