Living ‘Addiction’ in states of disruption: a transdisciplinary approach to drug consumption and recovery in the Middle East

This project tackles the question of how people in the Middle East have experienced ‘addiction’ and how governments and social agents have reacted to changing drug phenomena in states of disruption (war, revolution, human displacement).

It explores the consumption of mind-altering drugs in Iran and Lebanon, and their respective displaced communities (Afghans, Syrians), unearthing an alternative framing of pleasure/illness/care and ways of living ‘addiction’ that differ from the West-centric scripts on health/illness.

Focusing on the life trajectories of past and present drug consumers during and after dramatic political change, armed conflict and human displacement, it questions how states of disruption affect the lived experience of ‘addiction’, how people make use of mind-altering drugs in dealing with unsettling conditions, and how health institutions and social agents transform their public agenda because of them.

The project considers the case of drug consumers, ‘addiction’ scientists, and religious/spiritual healers.

This leads to the reframing of the cultural, scientific and political environments that have made ‘addiction’ into a biomedical and ethical category in the contemporary Middle East.

It adopts a transdisciplinary approach to ‘addiction’ using regional archives, bottom-up oral history, ethnographic immersion and visual data collection, engaging them in debates across history, politics and anthropology.