ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses risk and pleasure is developed to explore how women experience the use of substances such as ecstasy, amphetamine and cocaine within club scenes. The clubbing women discussed in the chapter recognized the 'double standard' and the constraints that operated upon them, and they deconstructed these with varying degrees of success when they encountered them. Female clubbers negotiate their identities in a social world that has increased possibilities and opportunities, but also contains increased risk and uncertainty. Trying to fit female clubbers who are recreational drug users into this category does not give an adequate insight into their behaviour nor their challenges to this narrow stereotypical bad girl image. How women plan and view their own drug use in the context of their participation in club scenes is important as media panics about clubbing lifestyles represent young women as victims of unscrupulous drug dealers, and as being passive and uneducated about the use of drugs.
