Between the Substance Agency and the User’s Control. Instrumental Drug Use Among Drug Users in Warsaw

The focus of this article is on instrumental drug use and the problem of agency in interaction with psychoactive substances. Most of the Euro-American discourse formed around drug use stresses the individual loss of self-control related to drug use. This paper is located within those critical studies of drug use, which challenge the notion that regular drug users are deprived of agency in their interaction with psychoactive substances. During my fieldwork among drug users in Warsaw, I got the impression that psychoactive substances can be treated as a tool for altering the state of the human mind, which can be employed in various ways and controlled by the user. Still, this tool is a dangerous one and cannot always be fully subject to human agency. Based on case studies, I analyse the functions of drugs for the users and their intentions regarding use. The ethnographic exploration of individual drug use trajectories is a starting point for the further consideration of the process of negotiating agency with psychoactive substances.