ABSTRACT
The decision-making, rational individual has proven to be an important figure for both sociological and public health understandings of drug use. A prominent line of argument in sociology has been to rationalise otherwise, in accordance with dominant ideals of rationality, irrational practices of intoxication. A central tenant of the harm reduction movement in the UK, as a response to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the 1990s, was to position drug users as rational citizens, who, given the correct information, technologies and facilities, will make informed choices to reduce drug-related harm. Through both works by Weinberg and Poulsen, the body and embodiment are foregrounded in a resolutely more-than-human way, made up of human and non-human processes. This again disrupts the dominant recreational drug user and harm reduction figure as a rational decision-maker. To centre on human rationality and reason in drug-taking is to neglect the role of material things, objects and technologies in processes of subjectivation.
