Rethinking the Drug Pleasure Versus Harm Binary via Chaosmos: On “Euphoria,” “Overdose,” and the Politics of Coming To

Research on opioids predominantly focuses on risks and harms, and there is less research on pleasures, including those experienced while overdosing (e.g., nodding off and losing consciousness). While it is important to identify positive experiences from opioids, static and binary thinking about the use of opioids and their effects (i.e., pleasure vs. harm) does not capture the turbulences of the lived experience. This article draws from an interpretive phenomenology involving individual interviews among 20 people who use opioids in two small urban settings in Ontario, Canada. The focus of the study was on pleasure and euphoria. Participants described disorderly experiences seeking out and consuming potent drugs with unknown contents and varied outcomes, yet there were also imbedded elements of order. Through their daily use, they described the effects of getting high, including overdosing, as pleasurable. However, this was not a static state. Participant experiences of “coming to” were turbulent and involved both order and disorder. The inconsistencies in coming to were shaped by social and spatial dynamics. These experiences complicate dominant narratives on euphoria and overdose and illustrate continuums of both disorder and order—an in-betweenness. Deleuze and Guattari's conceptualization of chaosmos is helpful in understanding the constant state of flux of opioid use and its effects and these findings challenge the pleasure/harm binary in drug policy research.