Cultures and Materialities of Imagination: New Drug Practices and Engagements in a Digital World

"In our current digital era, imagination and the cultural and material conditions by which it is developed are more crucially than ever implicated in the experienced adversities and contradictions of drug use.

The technological changes of society underscore the need for rethinking dominant understandings which portray addiction as an immediate and even mindless relation between a person and a substance or behavior, only minimally affected by subjective significance and historical alterations of everyday life.

Indeed, from ancient mythology to our modern times drugs have been part of our cultural history.

Understandings and practices of their uses have developed through cultural ideas and cultural-material conditions like traditions, rituals and routines.

Today, the omnipresence of digital media in everyday life is massively changing and expanding such cultural and material conditions.

Digital media equip people with associations between