“Trying to Stabilize”

Ethnography of Substance Use in a Male Psychiatric Ward

Abstract

In this article, I intend to conduct an ethnographic analysis of the various uses (consumption and exchange) of psychoactive substances by individuals admitted to a male psychiatric ward. In the reported experiences of consumption, particularly of psychiatric medications, coffee, and cigarettes, the boundary between the (extensive) medicinal use and the (intensive) non-medicinal use of these substances is constantly blurred (Vargas, 2008). Coffee and cigarettes are used by patients to counteract the “side effects” of psychotropic drugs, constituting a kind of unofficial therapeutic use of these substances. At times, the prescribed medications themselves are compared by patients to illegal drugs or their hallucinogenic effects, exploring the limits between recreational and medicinal use. Beyond the effects achieved through their consumption, coffee and cigarettes fuel a system of exchanges in the daily hospital life, forming a veritable economy among the patients. While psychiatrists promote the use of psychotropics as a positive way to transform patients into “different people”, for many of them, psychotropic drugs turn them into “robots” or “zombies”. Exploring the different tensions involved in the use of substances by patients in a male ward can reveal the socio-chemical arrangements that individuals in psychiatric hospitalization find to modulate their own treatment.

Keywords: Psychotropic Drugs. Psychiatric Hospital. Intensity. Assemblage.