This excerpt provides a brief summary of how psychoactive drugs transform human culture as posited by Wadley (2016). Wadley (2016) stated that the use of psychoactive drugs takes place in all human societies. The way an individual thinks, acts or feels can be easily altered by a small dose of psychoactive drugs. Archaeological and ethnographic research has revealed that drugs form core components of culture that are important to social and religion life as well as creation of civilization, world economy, and cultural identities (Wadley 2016).
According to Wadley (2016) drugs influence culture in three ways namely; the economic value of drug taxation, the interrelationship between intoxication and cultural production, and the significance of drugs in popular discourse (Wadley 2016). Psychoactive drugs influence structural, behavioral and material aspects of culture through various mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms include motivating people to participate in production and consumption, modifying moral and pro-social behavior, making employees to willingly work and accept delayed payments, heightening people’s inspiration for colonialism and trade, and many others.
Over the past decades, psychoactive drugs have shaped human culture in number of ways. First, new types of social control have emerged as a result of psychotropic drugs. These drugs are capable of manipulating human psychological state, a condition referred to as ‘’teletropy’’ by Smail (Wadley 2016). Teletropy in return creates a type of governance (autotropy) in which followers voluntarily manipulate their emotions. Second, psychoactive drugs have become integral component of social stratification (human-constructed ‘niche’). This helps new generations to cope with emerging social environments which are totally different from which their predecessors experienced. Last but not least, drugs inspire global trade and act as colonizers’ instruments to govern common people. Additionally, drugs give colonizers or rulers the power to expand their territories and control human labor.
In conclusion, psychoactive drugs shape human culture through weakening barriers of inherited behaviors and promoting participation in actions that are not linked to optimal fitness rewards (Wadley 2016).
References
Wadley, G. (2016). How psychoactive drugs shape human culture: A multi-disciplinary perspective. Brain research bulletin, 126, 138-151.
