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Fentanyl
Social Somanaesthetic
Valery Vino
As the fentanyl epidemic ravages North America, we must consider its bearing on social aesthetics. To this end, our reportage acknowledges atomic, vernacular, medical, statistical, and futuristic angles. We would also like to call the reader’s attention to a void in the celebrated texts, such as Shusterman’s Somaesthetics of City Life, that turn a blind eye to the acute social ills, including our topic and dire poverty, troubling our communities today.[1]
Like other human-made opioids, fentanyl was designed with the poppy plant’s chemical structure in view and intended as a medication to relieve chronic and surgical pain. Consumed orally and intra-nasally via patches and eye droppers, fentanyl molecules rush and latch onto opioid receptors expressed on the surface and inside the brain cells responsible for modulating feelings and emotional responses.[2] This process of molecular trespassing sparks dopamine neurons, which activate pleasure circuits, numbing worries and pain.[3] Like other opioids, over time this analgesic has infiltrated the streets.
The dark market analogs are up to fifty times stronger than heroin. In a world where it is next to impossible to find peace of mind, philosophically speaking, one only needs a few dollars to procure a microscopic amount of fentanyl to experience euphoria, followed by a purely synthetic ataraxia.
To know what our bodies can do in the twenty-first century, one should see illicit fentanyl in action. On one hand, we witness paralympians and their adaptability; on the other, from Miami to Vancouver, streetspaces occupied by people “nodding out.” In the words of a long-time user and friend, straight after “the taste, the body fades in and out of consciousness, and people typically lean over to the point of almost falling over.” Ordinarily, to get the blood flowing when waking in the morning, it is natural to stretch the body, as though you wanted to welcome the whole world. A person high on fentanyl, on the contrary, can’t help but stand or sit hunched over, as if one was crawling inside one’s shell. Meanwhile, the subconscious labors to maintain a social posture.
One thing the fentanyl crisis is symptomatic of is abject social atomization. Many victims are people who are ordinarily susceptible to drug dependence, people who have little means, like generous welfare and community, to find their purpose in the meat grinder of racial capitalism. As put by Marlo Hargrove Sr., a black activist from Baltimore, “people are dying drastically: they know there is a possibility of dying from it, but [struggle] to suppress the feeling that I have to live everyday on Baltimore streets, of being homeless, of being disabled….”[7] The street user knows each hit can spiral into their demise—the risk one gravitates to while balancing between life and death.
Because of astronomical toxicity levels, the threat of addiction is extreme, and especially when crisscrossed with other heavy narcotics, overdosing is frighteningly common. Corpselike, somatic rigidity (“wooden chest”), irregular heart rate, and dyskinesia, ranging from dance-like muscle movements and chaotic twitches to rolling around a surface,[8] when one overdoses on fentanyl, the brain gets flooded with dopamine and instead of melting in tranquility and shutting down, the body goes mad.
Also known as “Slo” or “Tango,” fentanyl claims bodies not only in the streets, but also in school and art circles. From 2019 to 2021, overdose deaths by adolescents increased by 109% with fentanyl being involved in 84% of the cases.[9] In 2022, on average twenty-two adolescents died each week in the U.S. alone.[10] Owing to its explosive compatibility with other drugs like cocaine, and in some cases dealers’ dishonesty,[11] fentanyl is a common cause of death among artists. Prince, Mac Miller, Tom Petty, and Coolio, among others, are gone. Most recently, the avant-garde scene was shocked when the bodies of The Soft Moon (Jose Luis Vasquez), Silent Servant (Juan Mendez), and his spouse Simone Ling were found breathless in an L.A. loft in a cluster fentanyl overdose.[12]
In 2023, for “the first time in U.S. history, fatal [fentanyl] overdoses peaked above 112,000 deaths, with young people and people of color among the hardest hit,”[13] as the narcotic creeps into Latin America,[14] some parts of Africa,[15] and Europe.[16] At a loss, officials are divided as to whether it is a public health or criminal justice issue. Mindful of these two departments, let us ask a question: If contemporary aesthetics is vital to a radical social change, which seems to be the consensus, can we help by facing a calamity of such depth and magnitude?
Yes and no. We already have a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips that, to begin with, should encourage the philosopher to resist associating opioid users and their environments exclusively with derangement and danger.[17] We are also reminded by pragmatists that bonds between philosophy and medicine are deep and extensive in many traditions, including somaesthetics. Since its inception, Richard Shusterman’s lifework has earned an international following. That said, the para-discipline does not discourage students and experts nested in academia to leave community-oriented matters on the margins of professional activity.[18] So, having all the potential, somaesthetics is yet to help in easing a social issue of local significance. We may ask, then: does the fentanyl crisis register on the radar of aesthetics? Let us foreground another bond here, one between aesthetics and contemporary criminology, triggering a lively scholarly discussion elucidating the nucleus of our senses with cognition and action in relation to crime, milieu, and social justice.[19] As well-established by Andrew Millie, in the seminal Philosophical Criminology (2016), “aesthetics has a key role to play within criminology.”[20]
Unlike precursors, contemporary aesthetics fosters care and health, which happen to be the perennial subjects of medicine, and also shares far-reaching roots with criminology. Since we envision aesthetics integrated with communities and other disciplines, then let us conclude that aestheticians are in a position to adapt, collaborate, and play a meaningful role in mitigating a disaster like the fentanyl plague, or any comparable event to come.[21]
Valery Vino
valery.arrows@gmail.com
Doctor Valery Vino (he) is a philosopher and part of mongrel matter, based in Australia; please see our open aesthetic literacy in three volumes (2023) and philosophy of final words (forthcoming): mongrelmatter.com
Published on September 10, 2024.
Cite this article: Valery Vino, “Fentanyl: Social Somanaesthetic,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 22 (2024), accessed date.
Endnotes
[1] Richard Shusterman, ed., Bodies in the Streets: The Somaesthetics of City Life (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
[2] Quynh N. Vo, Paween Mahinthichaichan, Jana Shen, and Christopher R. Ellis, “How μ-Opioid Receptor Recognizes Fentanyl,” Nature Communications Vol. 12, 984 (2021).
[3] S.W. Johnson and R.A. North, “Opioids Excite Dopamine Neurons by Hyperpolarization of Local Interneurons,” Journal of Neuroscience Vol. 12, no. 2 (1992): 483-488.
[4] Samuel Tobias, “Why the Drug Poisoning Crisis in B.C. Won’t be Addressed by the New Decriminalization Policy,” The Conversation, February 7, 2023. https://theconversation.com/why-the-drug-poisoning-crisis-in-b-c-wont-be-addressed-by-the-new-decriminalization-policy-199239.
[5] Dominic McIver Lopes, Personal Communication, February 1, 2024.
[6] Michel-Antoine Xhignesse, Personal Communication, February 3, 2024.
[7] Channel 4 News, “The Impact of the Deadly Fentanyl ‘Plague’ on one American City,” YouTube Video, 10:10, May 3, 2023.
[8] Mai-Lei Woo Kinshella, Tim Gauthier, and Mark Lysyshyn, “Rigidity, Dyskinesia and Other Atypical Overdose Presentations Observed at a Supervised Injection Site, Vancouver, Canada,” Harm Reduction Journal Vol. 15 (2018): 64.
[9] Lauren J. Tanz, Amanda T. Dinwiddie, Christine L. Mattson, Julie O’Donnell, and Nicole L. Davis, “Drug Overdose Deaths Among Persons Aged 10–19 Years — United States, July 2019–December 2021,” Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report Vol. 71, no. 50 (2022): 1576-1582.
[10] Enrique Rivero, “About 22 High School Age Adolescents Died Each Week from Overdoses in 2022, Driven by Fentanyl-laced Prescription Pills,” UCLA Health, January 8, 2024. https://www.uclahealth.org/news/about-22-high-school-age-adolescents-died-each-week
[11] Lamentably, it is not uncommon to mix cheap fentanyl with other drugs—in “a cocktail”—to increase potency.
[12] Megan Palin, “Soft Moon Musician and DJ Among Three Found Dead in LA Loft of Suspected Fentanyl Overdose,” New York Post, January 22, 2024.
[13] Brian Mann, Aneri Patani, Keiser Health News, and Martha Bebinger, “In 2023 Fentanyl Overdoses Ravaged the U.S. and Fueled a New Culture War Fight,” NPR, December 28, 2023.
[14] Will Grant, “‘People Will Keep Dying’: Fentanyl Crisis Grips Mexico’s Border Cities,” BBC News, February 7, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68101263.
[15] Reuters, “Sierra Leone Declares National Emergency After Steep Rise in Use of Deadly Synthetic Drug Kush,” CNN, April 16, 2024.
[16] Pieter Haeck, “Europe Must Prepare for Fentanyl Surge, EU Home Affairs Chief Says after Warning from US’s Blinken,” Politico, September 21, 2023. https://www.politico.eu/article/us-blinken-urged-eu-to-prepare-for-fentanyl-surge-ylva-johansson/
[17] Please see an investigative documentary also featuring Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside from the perspectives of First Nations women, who have nowhere else to go. Vice, “Why are Indigenous Women Disappearing Across Canada?” YouTube Video, 21:26, February 18, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpzMWPQ8bpw&lc=UgxH4Tn0Szih3NdWPpx4AaABAg.A-xTAH-u3giA2-NoonPfgv&ab_channel=VICENews
[18] The events run by the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture are oriented toward academic research, rather than, say, collaborations with local youth centers. We would not have mentioned the latter alternative, if it was not for the likes of The Highlander Research and Education Center and La Escuela Popular Norteña, co-founded by María Lugones.
[19] See, for example, Alison Young & Hristijan Popovski, “Small Things in Everyday Places: Homelessness, Dissent and Affordances in Public Space,” The British Journal of Criminology Vol 63 (2023): 727-747; or Bill McClanahan & Nigel South, “All Knowledge Begins with the Senses: Towards a Sensory Criminology,” The British Journal of Criminology vol 60 (2020): 3-23. Relatedly, in the camp of aestheticians, we have important discussions revolving around crime and the arts, e.g. Sondra Bacharach, “Street Art and Consent,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 55 (2015): 481-495.
[20] Andrew Millie, Philosophical Criminology (Bristol: Policy Press, 2016): 51-69, where the author coins “an aesthetic criminology.”
[21] We owe a debt of gratitude to the reviewer for their friendly guidance, and to the Journal’s team for their vision and dedication.