“When I take it, it will give me the strength to work…”: Tramadol consumption, performance enhancement and the production of masculinity

A growing body of research has investigated non-medical consumption of pharmaceutical opioids in Africa, especially for performance enhancement. This literature is, however, delinked from current research on performance and image enhancement drugs (PIEDs) use, part of which has explored how PIEDs consumption is implicated in the production and reproduction of masculinities. This study merges these two literatures to explore how young men constitute masculinity through non-medical tramadol use for performance enhancement, highlighting the political-economic and socio-cultural contexts that shape and rationalize this consumption. It draws insights from the works of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour to inform analysis of 39 in-depth interviews with young men who consume tramadol non-medically in Nigeria. Accounts counter discourses of non-medical tramadol consumption that emphasize harmfulness, enacting this consumption as ‘technologies of the self’, practices through which consumers defined themselves as men. They further highlight how tramadol consumption for sexual and work performance enhancement is veridicted within its ‘modes of existence’, namely the economic conditions and cultural norms that shape how young men perform masculinity. The study questions contemporary approaches that aim to prevent the negative consequences of non-medical tramadol consumption through penalization. Although it is important to emphasize the potential negative consequences of non-medical tramadol consumption, it is equally necessary to understand that harms and benefits constitute a knot of experience, rather than mutually-exclusive phenomena. Recognizing, and attending to, the complexities of non-medical tramadol consumption invites collaborative interventions that harness the knowledge and safe consumption practices of consumers.