Chronos and Kairos

Intoxication and the quest for transcendence

In the midst of the ordinary time (kronos), extraordinary time (kairos) happens
Mark Freier 2006

Introduction

As an anthropologist and drug researcher I have long been fascinated by what appears to be an
ancient yet universal urge to transcend consensus reality. In traditional societies this was, and is,
typically expressed through elaborate ceremonies which often fused breathing techniques with
rhythmic sound and movements, occasionally combined with some form of very potent but ritually
regulated psychedelic. Stuart (2004) mentions the ayahuasca ceremonies of the northwest Amazon,
among the Machiguenga people of Peru, the mestizo congregations of Brazil, peyote among the
Huichol Indians of Mexico as well as many West African tribes like the Bwiti who use Tabernanthe
iboga regularly in initiation rites, to name just a few examples. Although there have been significant
changes regarding patterns of use, the types of substances that are available or deemed acceptable,
intoxicants have played an important role and function in almost all historical and contemporary
societies (Grund 1993).
According to some authors, the urge towards intoxication and altered states of consciousness
may in fact be a natural human need, or drive. In his book The Natural Mind, Dr. Andrew Weil writes
“It is my belief that the desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous
to hunger, or the sexual drive” (Weil 1972:19). Also, in Intoxication, life in pursuit of artificial
paradise psychopharmacologist R.K. Siegel comes to a similar conclusion based on over twenty years
of research of both animal and human behaviour. Here it is claimed that the pursuit of intoxication is
neither new nor is it a peculiarity reserved solely for certain deviant human populations, “Old world
explorers, medieval herbalists, ancient Greeks, Neolithic shamans, beasts, and bugs everywhere have
had accidental or intentional encounters with drugs” (Siegel 1990:9).
As Lemonick (2007) commented in Times magazine, this type of behavior should have been
weeded out of the population long ago and the fact that it has not is somewhat puzzling in terms of
evolution: “if it's hard to drive safely under the influence, imagine trying to run from a saber-toothed
tiger or catch a squirrel for lunch”. Paradoxically, rather than decreasing in the human population, or
being “weeded out”, the appetite for intoxication actually seems to be gaining momentum in many
parts of the world. Although we are hardly the first nor the most experienced variety to develop a
passion for mind altering substances, we seem to depart from our ancestors and every other species in
that “we have become the most eager and reckless explorers of intoxication” (Siegel 1990:9). What
was a natural inclination or perhaps even healthy curiosity has in many cases turned into a tragic tale
of self-destruction. As a species wired for survival, we have developed a somewhat peculiar habit of

1
getting hooked on things that can kill us. While psychopharmacology obviously plays an important
role when it comes to certain patterns of use, in order to fully understand the roots of this development
on a wide scale, the socio-cultural context within which it is embedded also merits some attention.
Seen from this perspective, rising drug trends and the widespread drive for intoxication can be
understood in light of contemporary consumption patterns as a whole and particularly, one of our most
precious commodities of all; time.

Time

It is somewhat ironic that with the invention of the clock, in an age when technology enables
us to move faster than ever before, where the flow of information, goods, and human bodies are
proceeding at speeds unimaginable just fifty years ago, there never seems to be enough time. Christie
and Bruun (2003) have pointed out four major developments that strongly influence our perception of
time today. First of all, time has become standardised and mechanised instead of being based on
telltale signs of nature, like the tide or the moon. Secondly, time has become divided into smaller and
smaller segments; where divisions between the morning and afternoon would have sufficed previously,
the days must now be meticulously divided into hours, minutes and even seconds. Thirdly, time has
become much more pervasive and obtrusive. In the 16th century, there was one village clock which
reminded people when to get up, when to go to church and when to go to bed, today time is all-
pervasive and inescapable, ticking away. Ultimately, time has changed character; from being a subtle,
subjective, seasonal flow it has become an omnipresent, objectified, linear, chronological construction,
diminishing with every second that passes by.
The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos (xρόνος) and kairos (καιρός) (White
1987). Chronos refers to chronological or sequential time as measured by calendar. It is orderly,
rhythmic, and predictable and what is today typically thought of as time. Kairos time, on the other
hand, is more vague, complex and culturally dependent, and does not really have an equivalent in
English. The least descriptive translation would be “in between time”, opportune time or seasonable
time —a moment of undetermined period of time in which “something” special happens. What the
special something is depends on who is using the word. Comparatively one could say that chronos is
quantitative time while kairos is qualitative time; it cannot be measured – it is the perfect moment, the
“now”. These two aspects of time are very similar to the distinction the French philosopher Henri
Bergson made between false time and true, or real time; “la durée pure”. False time is an offspring of
the physical sciences and can be seen as abstract, mathematical time, while true time is concrete,
living time. Like kairos, “La durée" is a stream which appears as a "wholly qualitative multiplicity, an
absolute heterogeneity of elements which pass over into one another." Such a time cannot be measured
by clocks or dials but only by conscious beings, for "it is the very stuff of which life and consciousness

2
are made". Intellect cannot grasp La durée , it must be intuited, "We do not think Real Time—but we
live it because life transcends intellect" (Bergson: 2001: 229).
This “pre-linear” qualitative notion of time can still be observed in many cross-cultural
accounts (Johansen 2001), from the Aboriginal “dreamtime” to Evans-Pritchard classic study of the
Nuer in central Africa;

I do not think that they ever experience the same feeling of fighting against time or having to
coordinate activities with an abstract passage of time, because their points of reference are mainly the
activities themselves, which are generally of a leisurely character. Events follow in a logical order, but
they are not controlled by an abstract system, there being no autonomous points of reference to which
activities have to conform with precision. (Evans-Pritchard 1969 in Loy & Goodhew 2005: 174)

Yet increasingly, as work became more and more standardized, monotonous and mechanical, a new
linear mechanical rhythm gradually replaced the seasonal flow and became incorporated into our daily
activities and experiential time frames. Along with the industrial revolution life became gradually
transformed into chronos, labour time - a commodity to be bought and sold alongside everything else,
measured and chronicled by hours, minutes and seconds. Towards the end of the 18 th century, time had
become a primarily chronological construct, an event so subtle yet profound that Foucault (1977) has
even associated the development of the modern Western individual with the birth of linear time.
Linear, or chronological time; “informs the very (deep structural) bases of Western society; from
neatly and constantly sectioned intervals of varying duration, timeliness comes to impose a certain
‘discipline’ on everything from the individual body to the institutions of the state” (ibid.:151). In this
manner, chronos can be regarded as a “social-structural, functional and ideological imposition which
places that individual – body and being – within a collective social framework at once totalizing,
integrative and disciplinary” (in Rapport & Overing 2000: 259).

This “ideological imposition” is closely connected to the cultural construction of work ethics,
where particularly in the West, work ethics are essentially ascetic and future oriented (Weber 1970).
The main objective is to convert oneself into a useful, productive tool since the value of work doesn’t
lie primarily in the actual performance itself so much as the future product of that work. Enjoyment
and happiness are principles which in many respects directly oppose these Calvinistic work ethics, in
the sense that pleasure and duty are considered to be diametrically opposed entities and the concept of
utility, or being useful, is strongly rooted in notions like responsibility and the postponement of
immediate needs for future rewards. This again is closely connected to the concept of ‘worker as
martyr’ which is strongly exemplified in the lyrics of John Lennon’s classic, “Working Class Hero”.
Accordingly, there has arisen a sharp distinction between what is referred to as time-in or work time,
and time-out or free time.

3
 A significant part of this arrangement is the idea of investment. Time, like money, is not to be
spent recklessly, but invested for future rewards. From a relatively early age, we sit through hours of
schooling; learn to be punctual for every class so that we can be well prepared for the life that awaits
us as labourers, earning our wage, selling our time. However, as we progress on to adulthood many
discover that all those years of institutionalized boredom was merely a preparation for a new type of
drudgery, employment. The cycle repeats itself as we continue to hope and to invest: “We are not to
remain in the present, but in the future. Time must be invested so as to create a future which will create
a future which will create a…Yet in this manner, time is taken from us. We cannot remain in time, only
in the future… We have lost the moment so as to maybe retrieve it on another occasion. Later, or
never” (Christie & Bruun 2003: 33)1. In contemporary society, this is what social scientists refer to in
technical terms as the “time-compression effect” which often results in increased stress, sleep
deprivation, burn out and according to a recent national poll in the US, a 37% decrease in leisure time
over a twenty-year period (in Loy & Goodhew 2005: 167).
The German novelist, Michael Ende (1929-1995) was another author who quickly picked up
on the drawbacks of commodifying time in this manner and, writing primarily for children, aspired
perhaps to save future generations from the oppressive tyranny of the clock. In his book Momo (1973),
Ende shows the dramatic consequences of consuming and investing time through the eyes of a young
girl, a homeless gypsylike street child with an unusual gift of being truly able to listen to others, and
relish the present moment. The plot revolves around her resistance to a secret army of men in grey
suits who plan on taking over the world by consuming other peoples time. The men in grey convince
their clients that if they deposit their “time savings” in the Time Bank they will accumulate more
leisure in the future. In order to save enough however, people must speed up their work, cut social ties
and gradually eliminate any activity that gives life meaning, consequently diminishing all joy in life.
“It had ceased to matter that people should enjoy their work and take pride in it; on the contrary,
enjoyment merely slowed them down. All that mattered was to get through as much work as possible
in the shortest possible time…” (ibid.: 67).
In many places, industrialization and the transition to a free market society resulted in massive
forced migration and dislocation of the rural poor into urban slums and foreign colonies. The
underlying discontent and overwhelming sense of lack that these conditions perpetuate are also a
major driving force behind consumerism which generates; “ever-more-powerful management,
advertising, and surveillance techniques that keep people buying, selling, working, borrowing,
lending, moving, and consuming in ways that are optimal for ‘the economy’” (Ibid. : 20). Therefore,
“in order to understand consumerism, we need to understand how and why we consume time…the
implication is always that the next thing we buy will end our lack” (Loy & Goodhew 2005: 167, 176).
Lenson (1995) identified this mechanism as “consumerist metaphysics”, a system which
thrives on lack, dissatisfaction and the “engine of desire” to perpetuate the act of conscious
1
My own translation from the original text in Norwegian

4
purchasing. These desires must never be completely gratified however, there must always be a missing
something, “something that must be owned to bring about positive feelings. But once the next object is
bought and possessed, giving a brief moment of satisfaction, hunger must be stimulated again. It is a
losing battle” (ibid: 198). Since consumerism relies on this dynamic and is itself both a cause and
consequence of it, the cycle repeats itself, creating highly fertile grounds for a free-market society
which relies on the myth that improving the outer environment will bring inner comfort and well
being. In this manner, our collective consciousness becomes highly future oriented, “we remain
trapped in the future because that provides the only way we can think of to address our sense of lack.
We try to ‘progress’ faster and faster because we do not know what else to do…The more we suspect
we are headed nowhere, the faster we need to run” (Loy & Goodhew 2005: 178). In lack of a better
alternative, the chances that a considerable portion of the population will seek to transcend this grim
chronometry altogether by consuming substances that do in fact seem to provide a quick, albeit
temporary, escape is not only feasible, it is guaranteed (Wallace 2000).

Time-Out

Most contemporary lifestyles are filled with ‘free-time’ like afternoons, weekends, holidays
and vacations, but in many cases simply turn into another type of agenda, although this time crammed
with “recreational activities” there to entertain or at least distract the tired worker from everyday
drudgery. In fact, work ethics are so deeply embedded in our collective psyche that too much free-time
is even frowned upon, as the Norwegian saying goes lediggang er roten til alt ondt, or ‘idleness is the
root of all evil’. Since time is collectively perceived as a type of commodity to be used constructively
and invested, many people with too much free time on their hands experience this not as liberating, but
as a burden. For the unemployed, the elderly, and many young adults who are deprived of the
opportunity to invest time for future rewards, time-out becomes “dead time” or something to be killed,
as in the expression “killing time”. Also, and somewhat paradoxically, since modern technology has
enabled far more flexibility in terms of how, when and where people work, the boundaries between
“free-time” and “work-time” have become even more blurred. In a bizarre almost cruel twist of fate,
time-saving technology is in itself keeping people busier than ever before (Ørpetveit 2004). Dette er
”øyblikkets tyranni”; ”Tilgjengeligheten nærmer seg hundre prosent; nå er det utilgjengeligheten vi må
slåss for, retten til å tenke en tanke som er lenger enn fem centimeter” (Eriksen 2001).
The tyranny of chronos and its consequences, experienced as both oppressive and restrictive,
came up in several interviews with respondents from my own fieldwork among hidden drug
populations in Trondheim, Norway and one in particular stood out quite prominently. Lea had been a
full-time heroin addict since her teens, until she got pregnant, became a single mother, and basically
kicked the habit for good during the first few months of her pregnancy. We were talking about the
“straight life” and I got a strong impression that this was something she considered to be highly

5
problematic even unhealthy, so I asked her to elaborate on that in terms of what she meant by the
“straight life” and why she found it so difficult.

…the straight life is basically the box or the template that you are being squeezed into, even though
you know in a sense that it isn’t you. Like an animal that willingly walks into a cage, although inside
you know you can’t be that, it feels wrong. This is something I’ve felt since early childhood, I noticed
how people were living by the clock, ruled by the clock, knowing that you have to do this and then
you have to do that, for me it felt as if the walls were closing in on me even then because you weren’t
supposed to have tight schedules or plans for every hour of the day. You were supposed to be open to
miracles, the spontaneous, and if you start to inhabit little boxes with agendas and stuff like that then
you lose the possibility for experiencing the wonderful and the magical and all that which I just
couldn’t find in the everyday, ordinary world ( ibid.: 172).

Lea, like many others, turned to drugs because for her it was the anti-thesis to the “straight life” and a
way to escape from the everyday, ordinary world. Explorers of intoxication, specifically those
venturing beyond the accepted realms of alcohol, prescribed medication and tobacco fixes, are in some
ways inhabiting multiple realities. They willingly shed the secure foundations of mundane existence in
exchange for a small, chemically induced slice of freedom, and are often prepared to pay a very high
price. For many, stolen moments of illicit consumption represent the only chance of escape from the
“straight life”, the stifling “cage” of what is perceived as an empty, meaningless and mechanical
existence.
David Lenson (1995) has written extensively on the relationship between the oppressive reign
of chronos and the drive for intoxication in contemporary society. He calls the drive for intoxication in
this context the “toyland syndrome”, a regression that is really an attempt to return to the point where
development began to go wrong in the first place. Like a fever, it can be seen as an impulse towards
healing, even if that same impulse is considered deadly by many. In some ways, such destructive
pastimes can in themselves be seen as a somewhat healthy reaction to rather unhealthy circumstances
and not necessarily simply meaningless acts of rebellious defiance. As Lenson has pointed out;

For this reason I concur with those who find that drug use among adolescents is encouraged by
boredom, bad schools, parental difficulties, and the lack of subsequent opportunities. But this
statement is more or less empty unless it is understood that its quasi causality takes place not in
demographic and economic equations but in the very nature of time as a fundamental medium of
consciousness. It is possible that addiction is more generally a response to the negative valuation of
time in secular world outlooks: that time brings a diminution of capacity and a long decline that ends
inevitably in death. The strange popularity of the American bumper-sticker proverb “Life sucks-and
then you die” illustrates general agreement, across social classes, with such negative views of time.
Any way of escaping or disrupting this degenerative design will necessarily be attractive, and those
most attracted may be the strongest and most resistant spirits (Lenson 1995: 42).

Teenage consciousness is especially susceptible to the slow and relentless progression of hours and
minutes, being “imprisoned in schools by day and in their families’ homes by night” (Lenson 1995:
40). He mentions cigarette smoking as one way to break this “oppressive temporal wave”, by filling “a

6
long and brutally dull day” into “an endless succession of happy occasions” (ibid:41). In this manner,
each cigarette becomes a kairos, an occasion, or privileged moment that interrupts the tyranny of
chronos, the “glacier of chronometry”. Consequently, the act of ingesting even mildly mind altering
substances (like tobacco) repetitively has a profound effect on the manner in which time is
experienced by the user. Here; “What is metamorphosed in repeated drug taking is time itself, which
Kant called a ‘Form of Experience,’ that is, an element (along with space) without which nothing, not
even dreams, can be called experiences” (ibid:32). In other words, smoking, like many other
consuming habits, inserts a time-out, or “comma” within the “run-on sentence that consciousness has
become without cigarettes” (ibid:45, altering the nature of time in social realms where time is
unavoidably oppressive. After all, “Who wouldn’t want to punctuate a desert with an oases?” (Lenson
1995: 42).
This is also why “freedom” is so strongly associated with intoxication and “time-out, as one of
my respondents William, an ex-heroin addict, recounted;

…at eighteen I thought the adult world was so stupid, going to work at nine and coming home at four
doing something really boring, that didn’t appeal to me at all. I wanted freedom, to wake up when I
felt like it and do whatever I felt like doing. Maybe I was also influenced by the literature I was into at
that time, not being part of the flock, not being a sheep, and now I have become a well-adjusted sheep,
but that doesn’t get me down… I guess the whole thing with being drug free is really about personal
freedom, and when it comes to norms, and rules and laws I like to think for myself. So if I smoke
hash, well it’s my choice (Aaslid 2007: 162).

Where adulthood is experienced as an adaptation to a world of toil and compulsion, the reversal of this
development then enables a reinstatement of the free play of cognition, desire and intellect that typifies
the less developed consciousness of children. Therefore, intoxication becomes an attempt to integrate
into the bleakness of grown-up life some element of play, which again may explain or account for the
disdain my informant and many other drug users have towards the “straight life”. Here there is
“clearly something about the drug user’s character that refuses the labor, fatigue, jadedness, and
cynicism of adulthood” (Lenson 1995:89).
Our culture generally downplays play, yet it seems as if the further one moves away from the
spontaneous childhood world of play and imagination, the faster one loses the ability to simply remain
in the present, open to “miracles” and “the magical”. The adult world of responsibilities and work is
for many experienced as a “box” and a “cage” which childhood consciousness is squeezed into,
thereby closing the doors forever to the “magical” spontaneous world of play. Also in Momo, because
of their ability to live wholly in the present moment, children represent the greatest threat to the time
thieves than anything else. Therefore the men in grey forbid children’s free time so as to “prepare”
them fully for their future. “In compulsory prisonlike child depots (modern schools and day care
centers?), they are allowed only useful, educational games so that ‘they forgot how to be happy, how
to take pleasure in little things, and, last but not least, how to dream’” (in Loy & Goodhew 2005: 169).

7
Seen in this light, intoxication in general can be seen as a clumsy attempt to escape from that reality,
and engage in spontaneous play, for just a little while, until the “real world” closes in again.
All significant highs have this potential, from falling in love to communion with nature and
mystical experiences. With illegal drugs however, this potential becomes an actuality because in
addition to offering a hurried departure from everyday ordinariness these substances are forbidden and
hence so is the corresponding state of mind. Here one is both breaking the rules while simultaneously
breaking away from that consciousness which formed those rules in the first place. In this respect
forbidden forms of intoxication serve as highly suitable catalysts for what Camus described as the
“essential rebellion”, the same concept that Leach (1977) drew upon when he wrote about humanity’s
“criminal instinct”(in Rapport & Overing 2000: 384). Intoxication is in this respect an incarnation of
anti-structure, it is anarchy ingested because it has the quality of going beyond the established
normative reality by transcending it all together. This may apply to all drugs, but obviously some
drugs work better than others and people have personal and social preferences when it comes to
choosing their particular “high”. In this respect, whether one chooses uppers or downers,
hallucinogenics or pharmaceuticals, ecstasy or alcohol or perhaps even a combination of them all, it
essentially amounts to the same thing – “the acquisition of states of mind” (Walton 2001: 15) .

Marginal minds

Since intoxication creates a momentary “time-out” in everyday consciousness it is closely

connected to what Victor Turner (1982) referred to as a liminal experience. Turner originally applied
the concept of liminality to describe the ritual activity of the Ndembu as they moved from one social
status to another. This usually occurred “by way of ritual periods which were themselves asocial,
amoral, out of time, out of sight and out of mind” (in Rapport & Overing 2000: 233). Such a period
appeared in stark contrast to their everyday life which was strongly characterized by structural
situations, rights and duties. As Victor Turner continued to expand his notion of liminality, he
identified many anomalous moments “in and out of time” that didn’t belong to a normal social
structure and represented “the sense of a doorway, of a deep difference between the mundane world
and a sacred liminal time” (Turner 1982). The concept of liminality was subsequently expanded
further to incorporate anything which included “something of the anti-structural, the transitional and
the processual, the creative, the re-formative, the reversing, resistant and rebellious…” (in Rapport &
Overing 2000: 234);

From being a transitional passage between social states, then, the liminal developed in Turner’s work
and appreciation to being an ongoing (asocial) state itself. Not only was this always and everywhere
present, in some shape or form, in human socio-cultural milieux, but for Turner, it represented the best
of those milieux. It was where people related to one another as full human beings over and above their
socio-cultural exclusivities, and it was where they distilled the creativity and energy with which they

8
created and re-created society and culture, and returned to them reinvigorated, preparing to keep
giving them another try. Refusing social-structural distinction, classification and hierarchy,
fragmentation and compartmentalization, the limin(oid)al was always a threat, always polluting and
undercutting, always presenting a view upon the global and cosmopolitan, the universal and eternal.
Hence, the guardians of social structure always attempted to police the liminoidal, if not out of
existence then out of sight (time, mind) and seriousness in terms of everyday life (Ibid.).

Scientists and pharmaceutical companies have throughout the years, either wittingly or
unwittingly, provided society with a wide range of chemical substances to decorate our inner
environments with, yet despite these developments, the most widely used substance among
subcultures for the past few decades is cannabis, a mild psychedelic (derived from the Greek words for
"mind," ψυχη psyche, and "manifest," δηλειν delein ). The EMCDDA estimates that the lifetime
prevalence for cannabis in Europe is at least 65 million, or 1 in 5 European adults (EMCDDA 2006)2.
Whether mingling with junkies, hippies or clubbers, cannabis always seems to make an appearance at
one point or another, even if only peripherally, compared to other substances. This is certainly due to a
combination of factors, but one significant point that kept recurring in my interviews was specifically
related to the almost meditative, laid back, introspective qualities associated with the high itself, and
subsequently many of the users. As novelist Norman Mailer put it;

One’s condition on marijuana is always existential…One can feel the importance of each moment and
how it is changing one. One feels one’s being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of
nothingness – the hum of a high fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of
the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how
our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others (in Brownlee 2002: 11).

Almost all of the respondents who regularly smoked cannabis mentioned the countercultural
aspects as being one of the main reasons for doing so, and it is very often the fact that cannabis is
illegal in the first place that initially makes it so appealing to those inclined towards this form of
“essential rebellion”. The risk is the fascination. Besides having an overall calming effect on many,
there was a shift in values, a sense of “inner peace” and positive change of “focus” which was usually
juxtaposed against “worldly material things”, and being generally anxious, “stressed out” or
“worried”. Billy for instance, another respondent and regular cannabis smoker, also mentioned these
qualities and a change of “focus” when I asked him about his experiences;

When I was seventeen I smoked my first real joint, I didn’t notice anything at first and then I felt really
unwell, and my friend thought I got kind of strange. Then I puked so I think I smoked too much. It was
just like my first intro to snuff and alcohol, I got sick… Me and my brother started hanging out with
some guys who smoked a lot of hash, and I really liked them, especially this one guy who I thought
was really wise and cool.

2
European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, Drugs in Europe - Facts and Figures (2006):
http://ar2006.emcdda.europa.eu/download/FactsFiguresen2006Final.pdf

9
(What do you mean by wise and cool?)

Well he was very disinterested in worldly material things and more into cultivating a real sense of well
being, and having a good time, just different values, doing things and not being scared and worried
about everything but being at ease and this is one of the most important things I’ve learned from
smoking hash, that I have learned to appreciate that sense of well being and I don’t need… well I get a
certain sense of inner peace and I think I see things very clearly actually when I smoke as opposed to
when I’m clean because then I get stressed out, well not stressed out but I have a different focus, well
obviously I have a different focus but well I guess that it just has a very positive effect on me (in
Aaslid 2007: 111).

It is specifically these qualities and the tendency to create a “disinterest in worldly material things”
that Terrence McKenna has suggested may be the underlying cause for which cannabis is regarded as
an “anathema to the denominator culture” (in Lalander & Salasuo 2005: 5). He calls this the
“subliminally psychedelic effect” of cannabis stating that when it is pursued as a lifestyle it
“deconditions or decouples users from accepted values” and “places them in intuitive contact with less
goal-oriented and less competitive behaviour patterns” (ibid.). The New Columbia Encyclopaedia has
also suggested that “Much of the prevailing public apprehension about marijuana may stem from the
drug’s effect of inducing introspection and bodily passivity, which are antipathetic to a culture that
values aggressiveness, achievement and activity” (in Brownlee 2002: 11).
This is a significant observation because it indicates that although modernization has in many
respects resulted in the eradication of the traditional tribal society with its rites of passage and ritual
liminality, the liminoidal itself still remains as a potent social force mediating structure and anti-
structure in a post-modern landscape. Furthermore, drug subcultures usually begin to form during
adolescence and young adulthood, around that time when the tribal initiate would have been carefully
segregated from the rest of the clan. This included a period of; “extended retirement, during which are
enacted rituals designed to introduce the life adventurer to the forms and proper feelings of his new
state, so that when, at last, the time has ripened for the return to the normal world, the initiate will be
as good as reborn” (Campbell 1993: 10). In many respects then, cannabis can perhaps symbolize a
“gateway”, but not to heroin hell, it is instead a gateway towards the anti-structural since it represents
a key symbol of the counterculture; it is anti-structure rolled up in a joint, celebrating simply being,
subjectivity and the veneration of inner landscapes (Aaslid 2007).
In “Drugs, Addiction And Initiation” (1989), psychoanalyst Luigi Zoja has examined the
critical role of psychoactive substances in initiation rites among traditional societies and the degree to
which they have become both meaningless and pathologized in contemporary society. According to
Zoja, the pervasive abuse of drugs in our society can in large part be ascribed to a reappearance of the
collective archetypal need to transcend one's present state at any cost, and that a longing for something
sacred underlies our culture’s manic drive toward excessive consumption. In a contemporary setting
where modern life denies us access or awareness of this integral need for renewal, drugs sometimes
become a desperate, although futile, attempt at initiation. By comparison, in tribal settings, initiation

10
provided personal regeneration and radical change, and is essential to the process of growth and
maturity and the acquisition of meaning. As Grob (1992) has pointed out, from a transcultural
psychiatric view, very little has been done to examine the context of adolescent drug use and abuse
based on ethnographic data from societies ranging from foragers and hunter/gatherers to developing
and advanced agriculturalists. Here drug use among adolescents may be part of near-universal
transitional rituals marking passage into adulthood (Dobkin de Rios & Winkelman 1989). Compared
to the critical role of initiation rites in traditional societies, in Western society drug use has become a
major problem; “The sacred and reverent utilization of psychoactive substances among tribal peoples
has become a profaned and pathological phenomenon now defined as drug abuse” (Grob 1992).
In his book The Taboo of Subjectivity (2001) Alan Wallace refers to the “no man’s land of
consciousness” which has developed as a result of the widespread dominance of scientific materialism.
This materialist ideology “assumes that when the environment and the body, and specifically the brain,
are brought under control, the mind is brought under control”. The curious consequence of this is that
neuroscientists have made enormous progress when it comes to exploring the brain in relation to the
mind, but when it comes to investigating the nature of consciousness itself “their research is inhibited
by ideological taboos” (ibid: 132). Accordingly, when techniques for controlling the outer environment
and maintaining physical health fail;

…chemists have produced a stunning array of drugs to control the mind, such as those to enable
people to relax, to become mentally aroused and alert, to sleep, to relieve anxiety, to overcome
depression, to counteract attentional disorders, to improve the memory, and to experience euphoria,
bliss, and even alleged mystical states of consciousness. But the vast majority of such drugs cure
nothing, and their desired affects on the mind last only as long as one continues to digest them – a
point which is not lost on the pharmaceutical industry which profits enormously from this fact. With
the mainstream acceptance of legal drugs for coping with psychological problems, it should hardly
come as a surprise that a sizable portion of the population in the industrially developed world avails
itself of illegal drugs in its pursuit of happiness and even spiritual enlightenment (Wallace 2001: 163).

From this perspective then, the excessive pursuit of intoxication can actually be seen as an extension
of scientific materialism in today’s desacralized consumer society. Just as the industrialized world
modifies the outer environment in a relentless pursuit of material gain and a seemingly endless array
of creature comforts, the use of drugs becomes an attempt to engage and expand the inner environment
of the mind. Many drug subcultures have been particularly fascinated with consciousness and one of
the reasons why intoxication is so difficult to control is precisely because “it is lustrously coloured
with the deepest dyes of subjectivity” (Walton 2001: 271).
The “taboo of subjectivity” appears to have resulted in a new generation of “psychonauts”,
defined by Jonathan Ott as “one who ‘trips’ or embarks on shamanic odysseys of discovery in the
universe of the mind; a mental voyager”. These psychonauts do not in any way regard themselves as
“drug addicts”; they usually prefer psychedelics for philosophical or spiritual reasons, and otherwise
have a highly pragmatic attitude towards their use. They are often exceptionally learned and in many

11
ways regard their explorations of consciousness as simply a convenient means for supplementing their
education where other formal learning institutions fail to do so. Mick for example decided already at
the age of eighteen to try everything that he could because; “it’s another way of perceiving reality,
different states of consciousness, a different way of seeing things, the nature of intoxication is that it’s
another way of being and seeing, another way of existing and it’s exciting”. This is how he describes
his ensuing relationship with drugs;

Heroin was the last thing I tried and I was very sceptical but that was because I knew that it was very
risky. So I was in a different town and tried it there for three to four days together with these junkies
who would inject themselves then fall over with the needle still hanging in their arm and when they
woke up it was straight to town to get more. But I smoked it then and that was also very conscious. It
really didn’t appeal much to me though, it was more like an absence of a high, everything was flat and
there you are watching the world’s worst TV series when it would really be much more fun being
outside in the sun walking a dog. There was nothing really, not at all like LSD or mushrooms where
you see the world totally differently. I only planned to do it once, so that I knew what it was like and
how it worked. I just wanted to know what it was like, it was actually pretty disappointing, I thought it
would be a lot more intense.

(What about amphetamines then?)

…As I see it, if you use drugs to regulate your feelings, like if you’re upset to compensate for that
feeling, then I think it can get dangerous and you can get psychologically dependent on it because it
becomes a way to escape. However, if you use it at parties and in that context, it will have a different
effect on you psychologically.

(So you only use amphetamines at parties then?)

Not only at parties, if I’m going to paint a house for example then it’s very good because it makes
boring work a lot more fun.

(How much do you use then?)

It varies a lot, I hardly ever buy it, usually I just get it at a party where someone has some and I get it
from them, so as I see it the worst thing I know is being at a party where people have been using speed
and not using any yourself because then they will talk a hole in your head so you might as well join
them. I have been to a lot more parties where other people are using and I’m not though, it depends on
what I am doing the next day. If they start at 6pm then I might but at 11pm then I often won’t. It
depends if it’s practical or not. Some people really fall in love with a drug but it’s never been like that
for me.

(When did LSD, mushrooms and ecstasy come into the picture then?)

That was in high school. I tried LSD first. We had heard a lot about it but we were completely
unprepared, the experience was totally beyond everything. I’ve never used a lot though, maybe ten
times total during twelve years, mushrooms about the same. It was really fascinating and exciting but
it’s really difficult to describe because it’s a way of seeing the world that I don’t think we have
concepts for in our language. You need poetry or paintings to describe it because it’s a totally different
way of perceiving the world, you see different things and notice different things and suddenly you get
telepathic, it’s just really difficult to describe but I had a goal of using mushrooms once every fall.

(Why is that?)

12
The associations, thoughts or ways of thinking do something to your head so that you think differently
afterwards. You get ideas and inspirations that are really fascinating and also with creativity, things
like that. Due to practical reasons though I never got to use it that much so in reality it’s only been
once every two or three years.

(Are you very critical in terms of context and setting, who you use it with, things like that?)

Yes, very. I’m strict about that, although I know I can use it anywhere without freaking out. But I have
my own recipe for LSD and mushrooms; that you should be in the woods somewhere and you need a
plan, going from A to B for example, because it’s very hard to decide when you’re tripping. At least I
can’t decide much, decisions become difficult. Also you need to be together with people you like,
there’s no point in being with people you don’t like. I took some mushrooms last year together with
my girlfriend and that was really nice, I also wanted to do it this fall but I couldn’t find any so I’ll have
to wait until next fall.

(So you don’t feel like you’re finished with it then, or that you’ve learned what you can learn from it?)

I don’t know if I’ve learned so much in terms of finding truths but I have thoughts that I would never
have thought otherwise and it has been a gateway to new perspectives that I can reflect upon
afterwards, a different way to see the world.

I have a philosophy where I don’t want to sell myself to one perspective alone but to be open, like
whether or not there is life after death. When you don’t have a fixed opinion you are also interested in
more things and you can appreciate more things and also come into contact with many different types
of people. Also the trip in itself is worth it, it’s like being on vacation. Like have you learned anything
from being in the Canary Islands? Maybe not but it was nice with a little sunshine and a positive
experience, a vacation in your head (In Aaslid 2007: 110).

Mick uses a series of striking metaphors to invoke this quality of exploration; “it’s like being
on vacation… a vacation in your head”, where he describes his experiences with LSD for example as a
“gateway to new perspectives… a different way to see the world”. In many cases the phenomenology
of intoxication begins with an urge to explore and expand subjective states of consciousness, and this
is perhaps one of the most underestimated drives in human nature, lying at the root of a many bizarre
and sometimes hazardous pursuits. In this context, as Andrew Weil has astutely observed; “the issue is
consciousness”, “the most obvious, immediate, powerful example if nonmaterial reality as well as
something all of us carry around in our heads” (Weil 1998: 202). Even though different types of drug
subcultures have in one form or another long existed, “never before has it included so many intelligent
‘rational’ ordinary, middle-class people. It is this shift of membership that has made us (that is, the
thinking, rational middle class – the people who formulate conceptions of society) suddenly aware of
drugs and, through them, of consciousness” (ibid). There may be several reasons contributing to this
trend where industrialization, modernization, and globalization certainly play a prominent role. One
thing is certain though; mind altering substances have unquestionably become a force to contend with
and it is highly unlikely that they will simply vanish into thin air. While intoxication in some shape or
form has always been a part of every culture, specifically in the context of ritual and religion, it seems

13
that today, altered states play an especially significant role in terms of providing a different or
alternative inner landscape to what many perceive as a dismal and oppressive external reality.
Paradoxically however, for many individuals in contemporary society, the very means
enabling temporary transcendence become the source of a new, although slightly different, type of
drudgery. Here, intoxication as time-out becomes that future reward, in a somewhat bizarre yet highly
destructive downward spiral where time-out becomes transformed into time-in as the addicts every
waking moment is geared towards securing the next fix. As another respondent, Luke, told me; “It
became too important, that’s when the show really started, the high became the main thing, being out
of it, we got high we didn’t seek visions anymore….it became destructive towards the end because it
became a pattern. In the beginning it was important to separate from conventions, break out, try new
thing, expand and blast boundaries and all that. Then finally breaking boundaries became
conventional, a habit in itself” (Aaslid 2007.: 153). In some respects then, what started out perhaps as
an attempt to break out of the mold of conventional society and the dogged pursuit of more evolves
into a parody of the very thing it was meant to escape from in the first place.
Although the underlying dynamics of addiction are quite similar whether the object of ones
cravings be sex, drugs, food or a new pair of shoes, there are obviously significant differences as well.
The heroin addict for instance will encounter more difficulties and take higher risks to generate a
considerably more intense and effective (and thereby more addictive) time-out. Here, the “pursuit of
junk” becomes a life project in itself; eventually resulting in what Sørhaug (1991) calls the “junky
paradox”, trapped between two states of autonomy and dependence. In many respects completely free
from personal ties and obligations, the ultimate ego trip, if it wasn’t rooted in an almost inconceivable
dependency; that is physical addiction, the constant need for more heroin, abstinence and increasing
tolerance (in Aaslid 2003:32). In addition to the biochemical roots of substance abuse, however, there
is a highly significant socio-historical component underlying addiction as well which should not be
underestimated (Reith 2004).
The dynamics of addiction are strongly embedded within a matrix of consumer metaphysics,
powered by the engine of desire, in relation to the time-in/time-out dialectic.
This becomes especially apparent upon examination of the phenomenology of drug addiction, where
the addict is somehow eerily transformed into a shadow version of what is known in neo-classical
economics as the “economic man” (Sørhaug 1996). This represents an idealized individual decision
maker acting primarily in his own interest within the economic system, as far as his information and
options for operating within a market permit. Rules of logic guide his rationality in the constant
pursuit of the maximum benefit for the minimum input of resources. The addict, writes Sørhaug, is
perhaps “the closest we can come to a genuine empirical example of the ‘economic man’ ….motivated
by continual, quantifiable profit function where every kind of relationship and value can be compared,
classified and applied to maximize benefit in the form of drugs and intoxication” (ibid: 195). They are
therefore acting even more rationally than businessmen and consumers who are often confused by

14
moral barriers or wishes and needs which can’t be compared. In the words of one informant, “nothing
else matters, the only thing you give a shit about is dope and money, everything else is just a means to
that end” (Aaslid 2003).
If there is one thing that drug addicts and the average consumer have in common it is the
constant need to gratify new desires and a general inability to simply remain content in the present
moment. Lenson has made a similar observation of stimulants like amphetamines and cocaine in
particular, which he maintains;

hold a particular horror for Consumerism because they resemble the macroeconomy so closely,
because they are a kind of parody of the routine engines of desire. They represent a kind of allegory of
a world driven by appetite alone, and point out all too clearly the way in which the intellect can be
recruited into the service of desire (Lenson 1995: 116).

Seen from this perspective, the addict is not absent from the economic picture in our society but rather
present in a destructive way, in a quest exemplifying a “negative sacrifice” where only the destructive
part of the act survives, trapped in a consumerist nightmare and personified in the shadow, or
“negative hero” (Zoja 1992). After all, “every age develops its own form of pathology, which express
in exaggerated form its underlying character structure” (Lasch 1979). It is perhaps also for this reason
that drugs and drug addicts make the perfect scapegoat, representing our “collective shadow” (Stein
1990) which in turn makes them a highly “suitable enemy” (Christie & Bruun 2003). The function of
this type of scapegoating is primarily to prevent the real issues from coming into the light altogether,
and taking responsibility for them. It therefore comes as no great surprise that the “war on drugs”
originated in a country that more or less epitomizes consumer society and individual competitive
success, namely America where drug users have long been regarded as “public enemy number one”,
highly overrepresented in prisons and greatly overshadowing a vast range of greater social ills. As one
researcher has pointed out, it appears that Americans are “addicted to their addicts”, and that they “talk
about substance ‘addicts’ in order to avoid not to talk about far greater addictions that are normalized.
In focusing our attention on ‘addicts’ and various chemical ‘substances’ we are directing our attention
away from cultural psycho-dynamics that are an inherent part of the problem of addiction” (Stein 1990
in Aaslid 2003: 91). In the words of Andrew Weil;

The antagonistic outward appearance of drugs... conceals a force, which is, for us, the missing
opposite. It is nothing other than the reality and power of the nonmaterial, the nonrational, and the
nonordinary, which we have denied for so long, and by wearing the mask it does, it compels us to take
it into account, to integrate it into our conscious conceptions (Weil 1998: 203).

Although commonly regarded as reckless victims of their own vice, Lenson is quick to point
out here that the enemy isn’t drugs, nor are they victims merely because they fought on the wrong side
in the War on Drugs. “The fallen, instead, are soldiers of play” in a tragedy that has been “played”
when it ought not to have been: “the drama shouldn’t have been put on in the first place. There

15
shouldn’t be a choice between drugs/death and not-drugs/life. There ought to be a world of joy and
play, a neo-childhood, accessible to all and not punishable by the forfeiture of health or life itself”
(Lenson: 1995:87). In theory at least, it should be possible to gain access to a world of joy and play by
other means, not necessarily involving mind altering substances, although this appears to be the easiest
and most common method applied today. This is also closely connected to the mechanization of time
and contemporary work ethics, since intoxication is essentially a fabricated “antichronology”, it
resembles the childhood world of play. This is why drugs and forbidden forms of intoxication are so
closely related to the concept of freedom. Although the drive to rise above or beyond that which we
perceive as everyday concrete normality is in itself ancient and widespread, the rise of chronos in
conjunction with industrialism, consumerism and materialism in much of the developed and
developing world has made the yearning for transcendence greater than ever before.

Kairos revisited

Currently, our disenchanted one-dimensional worldview leaves little room for the presence of
mystery and magic, “with the demise of the divine and the numinous realm, with the denial of sentient
experiences and our dreaming nature, all our inner experiences, which follow alternative values to
those of objective materialism, are marginalized” (Morin 2003). This denies and estranges us from the
very life force that “animates our bodies and selves” and connects us to “the therapeutic powers
within” (ibid.), creating a looming void and perfect conditions for perpetuating the addictive illusion
of consumer metaphysics.
Since “play” is generally devalued and regarded as a childish waste of time in the adult world
of toil and compulsion, it is no wonder that many turn to drugs and intoxication as an alternative.
While play has perhaps not received all the attention that it deserves, it is far more than just a series of
physical movements. Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga has explored many of the
social, psychological, and spiritual components of playful activity, even comparing it to deeply
expressive acts like dance and religious ceremony. According to Huizinga, play is in fact the root of all
creativity, and goes beyond the confines of purely biological activity since there is always something
“at play” which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to action. It is free
activity which stands consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious” yet absorbing the
player utterly and intensely. In this respect play is “in between time” like kairos; it is a liminal or
threshold activity in that it both transcends ordinary life while simultaneously entailing participation in
something greater than the self. It is not connected to material interest and proceeds within its own
boundaries of time and space (Huizinga 1938) 3. As Joy & Goodhew point out;

3
From “Beyond the Blue Door: Surfing and the Transforming Self” a paper presented by Jerome Lynn Hall at
the 2007 Spring Meeting of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness

16
We become free of objectified, commodified time insofar as life becomes more playful. That is
because play is what we are doing when we do not need to gain something from a situation. When we
do not devalue the here-and-now in order to efficiently extract something from it, then there will be
the time - the being-time – to smell the roses as we do our work with pride and loving care… (Loy &
Goodhew 2005: 178).

One of today’s leading researchers on creativity and the brains behind positive psychology, Dr.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick- sent-me-high-eee), has identified a similar phenomenon
called “flow” as being the key factor in determining an individual’s happiness and well-being. The
metaphor of flow refers to the sense of effortless action that many people reported feeling in moments
that stand out as the best in their lives. “Athletes refer to it as ‘being in the zone, ’religious mystics as
being in ‘ecstasy,’ artists and musicians as ‘aesthetic rapture’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1997: 29). It involves
"being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every
action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole
being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost".4 This is not the kind of happiness that is
dependent on positive external circumstances, but is of our own making. During flow there is a higher
level of functioning, more creativity, a deeper sense of involvement and increased self-esteem and
confidence. Flow then becomes a welcome contrast to “psychic entropy”, our normal state of
consciousness- a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable (ibid.). This state provides flashes of
intense living against the dull background of everyday life, and in addition to greater well-being and
happiness, flow leads to increasing complexity and growth in consciousness (Csikszentmihalyi 1990).
A parallel model which is receiving increasing consideration within the scientific community,
and has been successfully applied in cognitive behavioral therapy for almost a decade now, is
mindfulness-based intervention. Mindfulness5 can be described as “an awareness of moment by
moment experience arising from purposeful attention (i.e., meditation), along with a non-judgmental
acceptance of these present-moment experiences” (Kabat-Zinn in Leigh et al. 2005). Research
suggests that mindfulness-based therapies may be suitable for a wide range of areas like the reduction

4
From “Go With The Flow”, an interview with Csikszentmihalyi in Wired magazine Issue 4.09 Sep 1996.
Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.09/czik.html?pg=1&topic=
5
A concept like mindfulness may seem at first glance like a nice idea with little practical value in coping with
serious afflictions like depression, stress and substance abuse, many of which have a strong physical basis which
visibly affects the circuitry of the brain. Fortunately, the brain itself is far more flexible and adaptable than first
believed and recent findings even suggest that something as elusive and seemingly insubstantial as “the mind”
can actually affect the physical structure of the brain. Current research that has evolved from the Mind-life
dialogues between Buddhist teachers and western scientists from a number of disciplines have yielded ground
breaking results in the filed of neuroplacticity using seasoned Buddhist monks and novices as subjects (Lutz et.
al. 2004, Begley 2007). Here fMRI imaging was used to detect which regions of the monks’ and novices’ brains
became active during meditation and in each case, the monks with the most hours of meditation showed the most
dramatic brain changes. The fact that these measurements remained higher than usual in post-meditation implies
that this type of mental training may induce both short-term and long-term neural changes. In short, these
findings suggest that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally; “Just as aerobics sculpt the
muscles, so mental training sculpts the gray matter in ways scientists are only beginning to fathom” (Begley
2004).

17
of chronic pain, anxiety, preventing depressive relapse as well as for the treatment of substance-abuse
disorders (Ibid.). Regarding the latter, according to Marlatt’s relapse prevention model, addicts are
devoted to the next fix because of the great difficulty in accepting the present moment. As Burroughs
(1982: 170) has written; “The addict runs on junk time. His body is his clock, and junk runs through it
like an hour glass. Time has meaning for him only with reference to his need”. Addiction is therefore a
mindless state characterized by the need to “fix impermanence” by grasping onto the highs and
avoiding the lows. Mindfulness in this sense is learning to let go of the desired outcome, to practice
non-doing as an alternative to the addictive fix” (Marlatt 2002), therefore “Where mindfulness is,
addiction is not. Cultivation of one leaves lees room for the other” (Bien & Bien 2002). Curiously, in
one study of ex-opiate addicts the state of addiction itself was described as a period of ‘lost time’; an
inability to visualize the future where individuals spoke of amnesiac episodes and ‘narcotic slumber’
which sometimes lasted for the duration of their addiction. Recovery, on the other hand, was described
as a “regaining of a sense of temporality; a re-animation of the future and an ‘awakening’ of the
previous state” (Reith 1999).
The costs of leading a hectic, stressful and chaotic life can be as equally damaging to the
physical organism as mindful living is healing. As Kabatt-Zinn, reflected in an interview with the
Washington Post; “We are moving so fast, it is harder to know who we are… We're living great lives,
but we're never there for them. . . . We have no time to linger or savor. We are starving for that." The
antidote, he says, is "paying attention, on purpose, . . . in a systematic way, in the present moment."
(Simon 2005). Unfortunately, in a case like this the solution to the problem is so simple that it could
quite easily elude “even the most gifted minds. "

Discussion

The aim of this paper has been to explore the frequently overlooked yet powerful core
dynamic between kairos and chronos as it relates to intoxication and transcendence within a
contemporary matrix of consumer metaphysics. Although drug and alcohol research has been both
extensive and rigorous in the past few decades, there is a conspicuous lack of native theory,
specifically when it comes to the actual experience and significance of intoxication itself. Research is
mainly concerned with the medical, psychological and social causes and consequences of intoxication,
while that which lies in between the causes and consequences, that which pertains to the experience
itself, is largely ignored or avoided altogether. Intoxication therefore becomes a kind of “black hole” in
theories and descriptions, invisible, yet somehow still making its presence felt (Sørhaug 1996:182).
Lacking a more refined phenomenology of intoxication, conventional categories separating the “good”
drugs from the “bad” drugs are blindly adhered to. This in turn creates a highly superficial yet
politically correct depiction of intoxication in varying degrees of acceptability, based on their legal
status which may or may not correspond to the potential harmful effects of the substance itself.

18
 In order to fully comprehend the dynamics of intoxication, one must also be able to transcend
those categories, focusing not only on what are perceived of as problematic aspects, but also on the
more frequently overlooked subjective elements and deeper implications of this somewhat perilous
pursuit. Here it soon becomes apparent that intoxication may serve an important function in the quest
for transcendence, like consumer metaphysics, they are short term solutions which, when taken to
extremes, generalise into long-term problems. Most of today's standard answers to substance abuse
disorders take a direct, head-on, allopathic stance which assumes that addiction exists as a thing in and
of itself and that by dealing with the issue, the urge, the triggers, the substance or chemical itself, the
problem may be solved. An alternative approach, based on the experiences and accounts of users
themselves, regards addiction as individual attempts at re-creating systemic wholeness within wide
scale and all-pervasive ecological imbalance. It answers very specific behavioural and emotional
needs and represents in each person a specific drive for integration and balance for which no other
answer is currently available. Furthermore, since subjectivity is always embedded within a larger
socio-cultural context, personal narratives are also a “narrative of social critique”, where addiction for
example “reveals a kind of ‘felt truth of the culture of our times’… Paradoxically, while modernity
and free-market society may be the source of addiction, addictions to all sorts of practices may provide
the seeds of personal meaningfulness for many” (Granfield 2004: 31, 32). Consequently, addiction
cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration how it is expressed in a behavioural and
socio-cultural context.
For many people, intoxication is a quest for transcendence, it opens the doors to a long
forgotten world of spontaneous childhood joy and play, and recreates a sense of “owning ones own
time”, where the only thing that matters is the moment and the particular state of consciousness one
happens to find oneself in at that particular time. Here there is no striving for future rewards; the
substance induced state is that future reward, a time-out, or comma within the “run-on sentence that
consciousness has become”. In this respect intoxication is without a doubt an escape mechanism, but
not from what is commonly thought of as the one and only “true” reality, it is an escape from yet
another fabricated state of consciousness, based on the perpetuation of insatiable appetites within an
exceedingly limited representation of time and space. It is this limited, flatland version of reality that
many experience as unbearable, yet lacking access to any other means by which to break out of the
conventional box, intoxication quickly becomes an appealing and instant source of refuge. Although
risky and in itself fabricated, it still serves a vital function in terms of creating an open space where
consciousness is not bound by the straight jacket of Cartesian coordinates, but can float freely and
unimpaired, at least temporarily, on a wave of uninhibited delight. Failing to understand these
underlying dynamics results in a highly reductionistic and essentialist analysis of intoxication where
“drugs” or “alcohol” become the main culprit for destructive behaviour, while the deeper mechanisms
and root causes of addiction are left largely unexplored.

19
 Although time informs the very fabric of our being, the phenomenology of time is seldom
subject to much intellectual speculation yet whether we like it or not, time and most importantly, how
we use it, concerns us all. Seen through the perspective of kairos and chronos, the quest for
transcendence is in itself a healing impulse, whether it is enacted through play, flow, mindfulness, or
intoxication, these are all ultimately expressions of the same dynamic, the creation of a momentary
“in-between” zone, and an attempt to remain in that space. The crucial difference however, is that
unlike play, flow and mindfulness, intoxication is based on an external locus of control, so there is
always the added risk of addiction as one repeatedly attempts to recreate that first magic moment of
chemical bliss. Kairos, is “an opportune moment” but only if seized by those who are willing to
remain completely naked in the here and now, only then does “presence” become a core capacity that
is essential for accessing the field of the future (Senge et al. 2005). Otherwise, for many people the
greatest potential regret may be clinging to a false sense of security instead of seizing the moment and
honoring it for what it is when it is here.

References

Aaslid, Flore Singer (2007): Facing the Dragon: Exploring a conscious phenomenology of
intoxication. Doktoravhandlinger ved NTNU, Trondheim.

Aaslid, Flore Singer (2003): Dirty Needles and Magic Medicine: An anthropological inquiry into the
journey from junky to methadone client. Trondheim Occasional Papers in Social Antropology, 10.
NTNU, Trondheim.

Alexander, B.K. (2004): “A Historical Analysis of Addiction”, in Rosenqvist, P., Blomqvist, J., Koski-
Jannes, A., and Ojesjo, L. (eds) Addiction and Life Course. NAD Publication No.44, Helsinki: NAD
Publications (pp.11-27).

Bateson, G. (1972): Steps to an Ecology of Mind, New York: Ballantine Books.

Baudelaire, C. (1997): Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology, translated and edited by Louis
Simpson, Story Line Press.

Begley, S. (2004): “Scans of Monks' Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning” – From
the Wall Street Journal - November 5, 2004 retrieved from
http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/News/Meditation_Alters_Brain_WSJ_11-04.htm

Berge, T. (2007): Oppmerksomt nærvær: En fellesfaktor i psykologisk behandling. Tidsskrift for

Norsk Psykologorening, 9, 858-859.

Bergson, H. (2001). Time and Free Will (1913). Boston: Adamant Media Corporation.

Bien, T., & Bien, B. (2002): Mindful recovery: A spiritual path to healing from addiction. New York:
John Wiley.

Brownlee, N. (2002): This is Cannabis, London: Sanctuary Publishing Limited.

20
Burroughs, W. (1982) The Naked Lunch. London: Paladin.

Campbell, J. (1993): The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.

Christie, N. & Bruun, K. (2003). Den Gode Fiende: Narkotikapolitikk i Norden (1985). Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget AS.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper
and Row.

Csikszentmihalyi , M. (1997) Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New
York: Basic Books.

EMCDDA (2006): “Drugs in Europe - Facts and Figures” in 2006 Annual report on the state of the
drugs problem in Europe and 2006 Statistical bulletin. Embargo: 23.11.2006
http://ar2006.emcdda.europa.eu/download/FactsFiguresen2006Final.pdf

Ende, M. (1973) Momo. London: Puffin Books.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1969. The Nuer. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dobkin de Rios, M. and Winkelman, M. (1989) “Introduction”. In “Shamanism and Altered States of
Consciousness” M. Dobkin de Rios and Winkelman, M. (eds.). Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 21:1:1-
17.

Eriksen, T. (2001): Øyeblikkets Tyranni. Rask og langsom tid i informasjonsalderen. Oslo: Aschehoug.

Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish, New York: Pantheon.

Freier, M. (2006). “Time Measured by Kairos and Chronos”. Retrieved from

http://www.whatifenterprises.com/whatif/whatiskairos.pdf

Granfield, R. (2004): “Addiction and Modernity: A Comment on a Global Theory of Addiction”, in

Rosenqvist, P., Blomqvist, J., Koski-Jannes, A., and Ojesjo, L. (eds) Addiction and Life Course, NAD
Publication No.44, Helsinki: NAD Publications (pp.29-34).

Grob, C. et al, (1992) "Adolescent Drug Use in Cross-Cultural Perspective." Journal of Drug Issues.
Winter 1992; 22(1): pp. 121-138.

Grund, J-P.C. (1993). Drug Use as a Social Ritual: Functionality, Symbolism

and Determinants of Self-Regulation. Rotterdam: Instituut voor Verslavingsondersoek

Johansen, A. (2001). All verdens tid. Oslo: Spartacus.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003) “Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present and future”, Clinical
Psychology: Science and Practice 10 (2003) (2), pp. 144–156.

Kaza, S. (2005): “Introduction”, in Kaza, S. (ed) Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the
Urge to Consume, Boston: Shambhala.

Lasch, C. (1979): The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations.
New York: Norton.

Leach, E.R. (1977): Custom, Law and Terrorist Violence, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

21
Lemonick, M. (2007): “How We get Addicted” in Time Magazine Jul. 05, 2007.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640436,00.html

Lenson, D. (1995): On Drugs, Minneapolis: Minnesota Press.

Leigh, J., Bowen, S., Marlatt, G. A. (2005): Spirituality, mindfulness, and substance abuse. Addictive
Behaviors, 30(7), 1335-1341.

Lilleaas, U. B. & Widerberg, K. (2001): Trøtthetens Tid, Oslo: Pax.

Loy, D. and Goodhew, L. (2005): “Consuming Time”, in Kaza, S. (ed) Hooked! Buddhist Writings on
Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume, Boston: Shambhala.

Lutz, A.; L. L. Greischar & N. B. Rawlings et al. (2004): "Long-term meditators self-induce high-
amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice", PNAS 101 (46): 16369-73,
<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/46/16369>. Retrieved on 2007-07-08

Marlatt, G.A. (2002) “Buddhist philosophy and the treatment of addictive behavior “
In Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 9 (1), pp. 44-50.

Marlatt, G.A. (2005)

Plant, S. (1999): Writing on Drugs, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Rapport, N. and Overing, J. (2000): Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts, London:
Routledge.

Reith, G. (1999): “In Search of Lost Time: Recall, projection and the phenomenology of addiction” In
Time & Society 1999; 8; 99.

Reith, G. (2004): “Consumption and its discontents: addiction, identity and the problems of freedom”.
The British Journal of Sociology 55 (2), 283–300.

Senge, P., Jaworski, J. Scharmer, O.C., Flowers, B.S. (2005): Presence: Exploring Profound Change
in People, Organizations and Society, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Siegel, R.K. (1990). Intoxication: life in pursuit of artificial paradise. New

York: Pocket Books.

Simon, C.S. (2005) “Mr. Mindfulness”, special to The Washington Post. Tuesday, July 12, 2005.
Retrieved from
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/07/11/AR2005071101135.html .

Stein, H.F. (1990). “In What Systems Do Alcohol/Chemical Addictions Make Sense? Clinical
Ideologies And Practices As Cultural Metaphors”. Social Science & Medicine, Vol.30 (9): 987-1000.

Stuart, R. (2004): “Hallucinogen Use by Juveniles: A Cross-Cultural Perspective”, October 2004.

Retrieved from http://www.maps.org/ritesofpassage/youngpeople.html

Sørhaug, C. (1991) “The Magic of Boundaries: AIDS, Medical Knowledge and the World of Drugs”.
From The Behavioral Research and the Prevention of AIDS Conference, Oslo (8-9 Nov.1990),
NORAS-Konferanserapporter,Vol.2: 1-35.

22
Sørhaug, Tian (C ). (1996). «Identitet: Grenser, Autonomi og Avhengighet». In Fornuftens Fantasier:
antropologiske essays om moderne livsformer.Oslo: Universitetsforlaget: 151-169.

Turner, V. W. (1982): The Ritual Process (1969), New York: Cornell University Press.

Wallace, A.B. (2000): The Taboo of Subjectivity, New York: Oxford University Press.

Walton, S. (2001): Out of It, London: Penguin Books.

Weber, M., (1970): The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Unwin University
Books.

Vøllestad, J. (2007). Oppmerksomt nærvær: Meditative teknikker som utgangspunkt for psykologisk
behandling. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening, , 860-867.

Weil, A. (1998): The Natural Mind (1972), Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

White, E. C. (1987): Kaironomia: On the Will-to-Invent. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Zoja, L. (1989): Drugs, Addiction and Initiation: the Modern Search for Ritual, Sigo Press. Boston.

Ørpetveit, B.M. (2004): Når fri tid blir arbeidstid - Kategorier i endring. Hovedfagsoppgave i
kulturvitenskap. Universitetet i Bergen.

23