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Richard Alpert, senior partner at Evergreen Investments, must decide which of his two best employees to promote to the position of managing VP. He had initially preferred Charlie Pace over Daniel Faraday, but that decision had become less clear-cut when Alpert inadvertently overheard an office conversation and learned that Pace was taking Adderall, a stimulant primarily prescribed for people suffering from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Pace did not have ADHD and apparently obtained the medication by deceiving a physician. Alpert is faced with a number of questions, including whether it was fair to Faraday—or any other high-performing employee—to be passed over for promotion in favor of someone who illicitly boosted his performance with a substance he did not medically need.

The purpose of this paper is to understand contemporary psychostimulant use among members of online discussion fora. Two objectives are addressed: to describe accounts of practices related to psychostimulant use, and to examine how these pharmaceuticals may shape contemporary subjectivities.

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of three online discussion fora belonging to Reddit. Drawing on actor-network theory, psychostimulants are envisaged as networked actants to understand the underlying logics related to their use. Non-participant observation of r/Adderall was carried out over an 18-month period. A qualitative analysis of postings on the three selected fora was also performed.

For each discussion forum, a network comprised of human and non-human actors was observed: members of the forum, psychostimulants as objects and subreddits as agentic spaces. This study reveals the emergence of multiple subjectivities associated with psychostimulant use: productivity, wellness and enhancement‐related.

Findings open to a wider debate regarding public health’s and healthcare professionals’ understanding of psychostimulant use outside of the clinical setting and how this may contrast with how psychostimulant use is practiced in context.

This research shows new online socio-cultural spaces formed around psychostimulant use. Calling upon a web-based ethnographic approach, this research presents a new perspective on the contemporary use of psychostimulants.

Esports has been emerging as a multi-billion dollar industry by attracting players, viewers, advertisers and investors across the globe. Even though there are plenty of professional titles present, only a few have been considered mainstream due to lack of formal governance mechanisms, presence of corruption and cheating mechanisms. “Doping” is one such practice where the players try to gain unfair advantage over their competitors, causing major hindrance in esports development. This qualitative study would draw insights from their perceptions about different doping mechanisms and possible recommendations to curb them.

This study has analyzed the semi-structured interviews of selected esports professionals to draw insights from their perceptions about different doping mechanisms and possible recommendations to curb them. This qualitative study would explore the content of their interviews for extracting relevant themes and subthemes.

The findings of this study have made significant contributions to deeply lacking literature about the esports industry and barriers it faces in order to be considered as a legitimate sport. The study has extracted contemporary and new emerging themes about the rising trends in the industry and their impact on society and the way we see sports as a whole. Moreover, this study dwells upon the rampant drug abuse persisting in this industry and how it offers itself as a barrier to the legitimization of esports as a viable global industry.

This study provides an on-ground reality reports on esports and various malpractices rampant in the industry by conducting interviews with various industry professionals and analyzing them through a thematic analysis method using an inductive approach.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prevalence and patterns of substance use among Canadian social workers. With legalisation of can professional regulatory bodies are pressed to consider implications of substance use for their members.

An online survey collected data about demographics and substance use prevalence and patterns. Statistical analysis involved pairwise comparisons, binary logistic regression models and logistic regression models to explore correlations between substance use and demographic and work-related variables.

Among the respondents (n=489), findings indicate that past-year use of cannabis (24.1 per cent), cocaine (4.5 per cent), ecstasy (1.4 per cent), amphetamines (4.3 per cent), hallucinogens (2.4 per cent), opioid pain relievers (21.0 per cent) and alcohol (83.1 per cent) are higher than the general Canadian population. Years of work experience and working night shift were significant predictors of total number of substances used in the past year. Use of a substance by a person when they were a student was highly correlated with use when they were a professional.

Prevalence of substance use among social workers was found to be higher than the Canadian population; potential due to the anonymous nature of data collection.

This study has implications for social conceptualisations of professionalism and for decisions regarding professional regulation. Previous literature about substance use by professionals has focussed predominantly on implications for increased surveillance, monitoring, and disciplinary action. We contend that since substance use among professionals tends to be concealed, there may be exacerbated social misconceptions about degree of risk and when it is appropriate to intervene.

The correctional system continues to face challenges with responding to and managing methamphetamine use among incarcerated individuals. This study aims to uncover what resources and policies could better help correctional workers deal with these challenges. The authors also examined methamphetamine’s impact on correctional work and staff well-being.

An online survey was distributed to correctional workers (n = 269) in Manitoba, Canada, featuring questions about their experiences related to methamphetamine use in populations under their care, what supports are needed to adequately address the concern, and the potential effects on self and their occupational responsibilities. Using NVivo software, survey responses were analysed using an emergent theme approach.

Correctional workers believed policies and protocols for managing methamphetamine use and withdrawal are currently inadequate. Correctional workers reported having monthly contact with incarcerated individuals experiencing methamphetamine withdrawal, posing safety concerns to them and other incarcerated individuals. Respondents proposed more education and training on managing incarcerated people withdrawing from methamphetamines, related to the symptoms of use and withdrawal and how to support persons detoxing. Increased human and material resources were reported as being needed (e.g. more nurses onsite and better screening devices). Respondents also desired more medical intervention, safe living spaces for methamphetamine users and programming to support addiction.

The current study unpacks correctional workers’ perspectives, support desires and their experiences managing methamphetamine use amongst incarcerated people. The authors discuss the required knowledge to respond to gaps in prison living, re-entry and related policy needs.

This chapter takes a critical look at the sociological notion of ‘medicalisation’ in relation to recent trends and developments in neuroscience, neurotechnology and society, taking memory, medicine and the brain as our prime focus and the disease category of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as our empirical case study. Five relational nexuses in particular are identified as relevant to these developments and debates, namely the bio-psych nexus, the pharma-psych nexus, the selves-subjectivity nexus, the wellness-enhancement nexus, and the neuroculture-neurofuture nexus. We show that developments in memory medicine and the shifting boundaries of cognitive health, as embodied and expressed in the case of MCI, shed further valuable light on these issues and the interconnectivity of these relational nexuses. As an emergent disease and susceptibility category, MCI illuminates not only the fuzzy boundaries between normal and abnormal cognitive functioning, but also the working of neuroscientific, neurocultural and pharmacological interests, which, in this case, are already claiming MCI as the next locus of enhancing the mind and optimising aging. Thinking both within and beyond medicalisation challenges us to find new ways to critically understand the ideas about life and health as they travel, translate or migrate from (neuro)scientific and clinical spheres to cultural life and patient experience.

Contemporary society is characterized by extreme acceleration (Rosa, 2010). Time has become a scarce resource and individuals are forced to adhere to the demands of speediness. This condition is connected to the increased performance now required in many areas of daily life, an increase so profound that some authors refer to ours as a “doping society.”

This chapter argues that the practice of quantification exponentially increases the “managerializing” of the user. In this sense, the quantified-self (QS) can be thought of as something that helps people to organize their activities in the manner of the market. Individuals thus become self-entrepreneurs who, in keeping with the standard aims of neoliberalism, make use of their collected data in a fashion analogous to the way results are determined in a corporation’s Research & Development department. The self becomes an assortment of analyses by which measures of behaviors and habits are made, all in the name of producing an “objective report” on the user’s characteristics. The ultimate aim of all this is to improve certain parts of life so as to increase and optimize our productivity.