ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 puts to work an idea that concepts matter in how participants conceive of and therefore experience their drug use. The chapter explores what happens when participants are asked to think about their drug use. Treating the thinking process as an embodied event reveals some of the many difficulties participants have in trying to hold certain thoughts of the body or mind, and self or social separately. Considering a ‘zone of exchange’, implicating the body, drug and concept, it becomes impossible for participants to think about their drug use in singular terms, specifically, as they try to imagine its pleasures. That is, pleasure is commonly opposed to addiction, and as these concepts circulate (in the drug service, media, popular culture) and plug into bodies through these ‘zones’, knowing one’s drug use and embodiment in these singular terms becomes impossible. Pluralising thought and the body in this way allows for a serious consideration of the tensions in participants’ conceptualisation practices.
