Discussing the Clinic and treatment of drug addiction: from discourse to subjective constitution¹

Abstract

Drug addiction as a subjective style is a way to denying the phallic social bond, in which the drug serves to surplus-jouissance in a unity made by I-Other. In a culture that is already beyond the pleasure principle, happiness is in the consumption of jouissance objects, thus, the use of drugs is a social symptom of the Capitalist Discourse. Given the complexity of this topic, this article, based on Freudian and Lacanian Psychoanalysis, aims to address some preliminary prospects for understanding this phenomenon and its treatment. If drug addicts give up of their desire, how can they resist the drug’s annihilating jouissance? What will hold the drug addict’s on life? We seek to answer these questions. One possible treatment is offering the subject, by the opportunity of speaking, new records of jouissance mediated by language, able to compete with the body’s jouissance, not aiming to prohibit the drug consumption, but diversify the demand.

Keywords:
drug addiction; psychoanalysis; capitalist mode of production