These two little monosyllabic words - “Sex” and “Drugs” - are flashing street signs that hide a multitude of pleasures and sins. They name two taboos, or spot fires, or energetic eruptions in culture and in psyche, places that are not well covered by language no matter how many words we use to dip into them, distort them, warn about them, avoid them, channel them. Yet the existential richness of those experiences can be amplified, sometimes discovered, in evoking them linguistically.
Sebastian Job, Ph.D teaches at NIDA (the National Institute for Dramatic Arts) and is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney. His research focuses on the psychological, cultural, and educational potential of traditional and new psychoactive substances.
