Stabilising Stimulants: Amphetamine Dependence and Methamphetamine Addiction

Abstract

Alcohol and heroin have traditionally been constituted as the classic drugs of addiction. In recent years, however, the amphetamines, a group of synthetic stimulant drugs, have assumed an increasingly prominent place in debates on addiction. In this chapter, we explore influential psychological and neuroscientific research on amphetamine and methamphetamine as case studies in changing realities of addiction. We argue, in turn, that ‘amphetamine dependence’ in the 1990s and ‘methamphetamine addiction’ in the 2000s emerged in repeated and vigorous research attempts to define them as stable objects for policy and practice purposes. In tracing this process of definition and stabilisation, we identify a range of crucial changes in the meanings of, and collateral realities enacted in, addiction, with the most significant being that the definition of addiction was revised to emphasise its psychological component and to encompass a wider range of drug use patterns. We also consider the collateral realities constituted in the neuroscience of methamphetamine, which has increasingly come to be invoked as an explanatory paradigm, in order to highlight its emerging role in research attempts to stabilise and extend the application of methamphetamine addiction to various patterns of consumption.