In contemporary consumer societies, drug use has become a site of dense meanings about the moral government of the self and its relation to pleasure. These meanings are buttressed by medical constructions of addiction and legal constructions of drug abuse, which tend to depict drug use as a disorder of compulsion that requires forceful intervention. But how does cultural studies approach the topic of drug use? This lecture will consider cultural studies approaches to drug and alcohol use and regulation and the ways in which they tackle political investments in drug use.

To date, Party and Play (PNP) and its correlates - internet use, crystal meth use, and sex with multiple partners - have been produced within the HIV epidemiological and behavioural literature as a pathogenic site, because of the associations with substance use and HIV transmission. Little attempt has been made in this literature to approach these behaviours as a culture; that is, a cluster of activities and practices that are meaningful for participants with their own organising logics and relative coherence. This talk addresses the gap.

The digital context is dramatically re-shaping prior forms of sexual sociability among men who have sex with men. This in turn has led to the emergence of new sex, drug and HIV prevention practices. How do we account for the participation of material objects and technical devices in the emergence of new practices, pleasures and dangers? What is the role of research when faced with such events? This lecture approaches these questions as matters of ontological politics and explores them in relation to the phenomenon of ‘PNP’ or ‘chemsex’.