Contribution short abstract:

Introducing some trends in the anthropology of drugs and drug use that might be of importance to this panel

Contribution long abstract:

I refer to a recent debate in the Norwegian public sphere about the merits of psychedelic science to make a intervention about commoning and uncommoning in the anthropology of drugs.

Contribution short abstract:

This paper traces the processes and politics around Daridorexant, the first insomnia medication that can be prescribed long-term in Germany. I discuss how attempts to common Daridorexant rely on emphasizing the ‘commonness’ of insomnia and on ‘uncommoning’ the idea that sleeping pills are dangerous.

Contribution long abstract:

Daridorexant was launched on the German pharmaceutical market in 2022. It is the first drug in Germany that has been approved for long-term insomnia treatment, i.e. it can be prescribed for more than four weeks (which is the limit for other insomnia medications, notably benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, that are known to be addictive). Promotors of the drug, and the related change of policy, have celebrated it as a ‘game changer’ while critics are skeptical both of Darideroxant’s actual efficacy and of what the shift in policy may imply for how insomnia is understood and treated.

Based on ethnographic observations at sleep medicine conferences, my paper traces the politics and contestations around drug-based therapy for insomnia in Germany. I discuss how attempts to ‘common’ Daridorexant rely on emphasizing 1) the high prevalence of insomnia; 2) a massive treatment gap and 3) on ‘uncommoning’ the idea that sleeping pills are dangerous. The latter, in particular, also depends on shifting common ‘psychological’ understandings of insomnia to more biological ones. Supporters of Daridorexant mobilize ideas of patient well-being, clinical expertise and evidence to render the drug acceptable. These marketing strategies are often convincing, even though it is well-known that trials and experts have been commissioned by the pharmaceutical producer. My paper shows how the (un)commoning of drugs happens through the skillful manipulation of complex legal, clinical, economic and moral rationalities which makes it hard even for critical researchers to disentangle economic interests from patient well-being, evidence from advertisement, and good drugs from bad ones.

Contribution short abstract:

An ethnographic account of the organization of cocaine production and trafficking in the Chapare, Bolivia. Rather than a free market where people can seek out the highest price, cocaine production is rooted in a local moral order that values people and place over the laws of supply and demand.

Contribution long abstract:

In the Chapare, Bolivia producing and trafficking cocaine is a common practice – almost everyone is directly or indirectly involved. This paper provides an empirical account of the organization of the local drug trade with a focus on everyday social relations, where networks of social ties, debt, and reputation shape decision-making. Rather than a free market where people can seek out the highest price, cocaine production is rooted in a local moral order that values people and place over the laws of supply and demand. In tracing out the common set of understandings regarding exchange practices this paper contributes to debates on the organization of illicit markets, the role of drugs in agrarian transformation and the ‘commoning’ of drug cultures on the supply side.

Contribution short abstract:

Sodium pentobarbital (SP) shifts between commoning and uncommoning: once a sedative, now central in assisted dying and executions. This talk explores SP’s dual role as healer and killer, tracing its governance across markets and laws, and revealing its entanglement in life-death worlds.

Contribution long abstract:

Originally synthesised in the 1930s as a common sedative and sleeping aid, sodium pentobarbital (SP) gained popularity as a widely used barbiturate but soon became associated with numerous accidental overdoses and suicides. As awareness of its dangers grew, SP was largely replaced by benzodiazepines, which carried a lower risk of overdose and addiction. However, SP’s uncommoning as a therapeutic drug coincided with its re-commoning in highly specific contexts, particularly as the preferred drug for inducing death in assisted dying procedures in Switzerland and for administering lethal injections in the United States. This paradoxical trajectory from therapeutic drug to a substance primarily valued for its lethality reveals the complex governance of psychoactive substances across shifting socio-cultural, political, and economic landscapes. This presentation explores SP’s life-death worlds through the lens of commoning and uncommoning, offering two critical insights into its global circulation and local applications. First, SP’s dual role as a pharmakon—both a healer and a killer—underscores its ambivalent status as a common good in medical settings while also becoming uncommon in broader pharmaceutical markets. Second, the tension between SP’s commodification and criminalisation highlights how market dynamics, legal frameworks, and public health discourses reshape its accessibility and use. By ethnographically tracing SP’s shifting trajectories, this paper reflects on how psychoactive drugs become common or uncommon in specific settings and historical moments, as well as their broader entanglements with life-death governance.

Contribution short abstract:

Amid a broad “psychedelic renaissance,” how does a once-stigmatized psychedelic—DMT—become newly “common” through shifting legal, medical, and cultural frameworks? By examining the emergent DMTx protocol, this paper explores the dynamic processes of un/commoning in contemporary drug cultures.

Contribution long abstract:

DMT, a naturally occurring psychedelic known for its intense alterations of consciousness, has long been embedded in Indigenous spiritual traditions. Yet colonial and prohibitionist drug policies rendered it “uncommon” in most parts of the world. Now, amid a broader “psychedelic renaissance,” DMT is re-emerging in the Global North—no longer confined to underground communities, but increasingly legitimized through therapeutic research, clinical trials, and public discourse.

My contribution spotlights the DMTx protocol—a method for prolonging DMT experiences via IV infusion under study at Imperial College London—to examine how these highly dynamic and contested processes are reshaping psychedelic substances. By tracing how medicalization, scientific inquiry, and shifting regulations turn DMT into a potential shared resource, we also see how these frameworks risk overshadowing Indigenous cosmologies and spiritual uses. Thus, state authorities, research institutions, and commercial interests may “re-uncommon” DMT by restricting it to sanctioned practices or to the privileged experience of a select few.

In bridging biomedicine and spiritual traditions, DMTx exemplifies the potential for both synergy and friction. These dynamics highlight how attempts to decriminalize, normalize, and professionalize psychedelics can broaden access yet produce new exclusions. Ultimately, the shifting status of DMT underscores broader questions about the politics of knowledge, ethics of care, and the contested nature of “commoning” in global drug cultures. By examining knowledge, power, and social practice, this paper advances the anthropology of drugs, raising critical questions about who shapes the future of these substances, on whose terms, and what this means for emerging psychedelic commons.

Contribution short abstract:

This study investigates the ethical complexities and their biomedical basis within ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Using interview data obtained in Norway, suggestions for critically examining and shaping ethically sound practices in the medicalization of psychoactive drugs are offered.

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution presents an investigation into the un/commoning of drugs by means of examining the ethical challenges and their construction encountered by medical doctors and psychologists working with ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) in Norway. Drawing on 16 in-depth interviews, it focuses on the dynamics around ketamine in public and private psychotherapeutic contexts, analyzing how a drug characterized by an ambiguous regulatory and historical status is recontextualized within the dominant ethical norms of biomedicine. This research uses critical medical anthropology and social bioethics as frameworks to examine three key areas of concern: access to care, informed consent practices and therapeutic alliance. In line with this, barriers to distributive justice and accompanied meaning-making practices on the side of the interviewed health professionals are identified. Further, established informed consent practices and their limitations are assessed given the change in consciousness induced by ketamine and the consequent unpredictability of experience. Special emphasis is given to communications about efficacy, off-label use and stigma between patients and professionals. This includes how professionals navigate patient expectations to ultimately establish a robust therapeutic alliance. Aligning with the workshop's themes, this research examines the changes of a drug towards becoming a legitimate treatment option for mental disorders in the trenches of shifting regulatory frameworks and societal re/perceptions, while addressing structurally shaped ethical concerns. The findings provide insights into the development of ethically sound practices for novel health interventions as well as contributing to broader discourses on the commoning and medicalization of psychoactive substances.

Contribution short abstract:

Here I explore the connectedness between distinct bioprospecting projects for the development of new immunotherapies and their therapeutic and regulatory experiences in Brazil and Europe. I focus on aspects of the mobility, re-hierarchization and use of liminal substances that were once ostracized.

Contribution long abstract:

While the standard use of palliative immunosuppressants to treat diverse immunopathologies has been questioned by multiple actors over decades not only at centres of knowledge production in Western countries but also in the Global South, substances that were previously tabooed seem now to reappear as potential therapeutic agents. That seems to be the case for those such as deltorphine, melittin, beta-glucana, and cannabinoids, among others, which are undergoing processes of gradual rehabilitation conducted by experimental biomedical actors, occasionally together with non-biomedical experts. If so, how is this taking place and what would that mean?

In this paper, I report on my anthropological comparative investigation of distinct bioprospecting projects for the development of new immunotherapies and their therapeutic and regulatory experiences in Brazil and Europe. My aim is to analyse from a transnational, historical and relational perspective aspects of the mobility, re-hierarchization and use of substances with potential antigenic power that were once forbidden and/or stigmatized; particularly in the context of disputes between immunosuppression and immunostimulation as competing therapeutic models, and of related commercial, moral and legal frictions. For that, I use research materials co-produced through longitudinal fieldwork to discuss evidence-making practices.

One of my points of reflection consists in paying attention to the connectedness of promissory liminal substances to medical colloidal perspectives that co-shaped the development of so-called biotherapies in the interwar period. With it, I seek to unveil oft-unseen connections between multiple substances that are mostly addressed independently from each other, such as their common properties as unspecific immunostimulants.