Does drug prohibition provide safety within society, or does it merely conceal our freedom, and the freedom of low-income and minority communities to protect the middle-classes?
This project focuses on a Foucauldian framework to analyse the power dynamics between the systems that are supposed to protect us, and addicts’ abilities to control their own forms of therapies. It also analyses the freedom of addicts themselves, and whether the therapies currently in place helps these people to break out of their situations and take control over their own lives, or whether it just slots them into a position that conforms with societal norms at current.
I also analyse different future options for therapies for low-income and minority communities breaking from their drug addiction with psychedelic therapies and psychoactive substances.
The aim of the essay is fundamentally an attempt to breakdown the lives of addicted people and the ways in which we can continue to support them and provide them with the freedom that as humans, we deserve.