The Social and Psychiatric Aspects of Psychotropic Drug Use

Abstract

Men use drugs to enhance their purposes. But cultural norms, social regulations, peer groups, and the family differ in the purposes which they value and the permissible means for their expression. We are condemned to private experience but designed to be linked with this range of tutoring agencies. These agencies give our private experience a certain meaning, regulation, and negotiability. We cannot be born alone or become human alone; yet in our limited span of life we alone must endure, decide, or acquiesce and generate, accumulate, and exchange experience with others. We regulate ourselves and in so doing are regulated.