Abstract
The non-medical use of psychotropic drugs, for instance, taking “smart pills” to enhance cognitive performance and anti-depressant drugs to control mood, constitutes a major problem in discussions of enhancement. Such a departure from legitimate medical purposes in using prescription drugs has brought about various ethical, legal and social issues, mainly in the United States. The desire here is to utilize the psychoactive (or brain activating) effects of drugs in order to maintain pharmacologically the condition of mind (or brain). In the present study, I try to situate this psychoactive practice as a desire for mental maintenance in contemporary consumer society, drawing upon Mike Featherstone’s discussion of the practices of “body maintenance” (e.g. diets and anti-aging). In engaging with this issue, I refer to two particular cultural phenomena of the 1950s and 60s in the United States, namely, the “psychedelic movement” and “human potential movement”, both of which display a tendency to valorize such “altered states” through psychoactive substances or other techniques. There are some differences between the psychoactive practices of the 1950s and 60s and contemporary ones. One difference can be seen in the development of technologies to enhance the possibilities and concrete realization of psychoactive practices. The other is the fact that contemporary psychoactive practices are rooted more in mental causes, i.e. either in individualistic motivations or for the purpose of social adaptation. Both of these differences suggest that contemporary psychoactive practices have a new status as commercial products. In this paper, then, I attempt to examine how the desire for altered states has been transformed in consumer society into a commercial product called mental maintenance.
