ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a consideration of harm, health, and well-being linked to drug use within Disneyized play spaces. It argues that harm reduction initiatives must acknowledge the temporal risk distortion that can occur in nightlife tourist resorts, music festivals, and other play spaces that interweave drug use as part of the experience. The social atomization of late modernity along with changes in patterns of leisure mean that many young people often live virtual social lives, with human connection mediated via the screens of tablets and smartphones in a dull ‘urban somnambulism’. The emotion and the sensuality of these connections are hard to capture in words alone, but the privilege of ethnographic immersion adds depth by prioritizing the voice of participants and engaging with the social context. The dominance of survey research at festivals therefore leaves a gap in the evidence base, with the role of space and place “often treated as passive and peripheral”.
