The practice of drugs and prescribed medicine grows its roots since as early as the middle ages with pharmacy and apothecaries that had hit or miss options based on the knowledge and tradition of the folk of the ages. The start of the 20th century we see the rise of Aspirin and the globalization of drugs. A boom in discoveries and new medicines that were soon mass produced by the pharmaceutical industry. Today an estimated 55% of Americans regularly take a prescription drug. We had experienced a growing control over pharmaceutical drugs throughout the 20th century and into today’s world. With the growth and evolution of drugs and their availability beyond the lab and pharmacies the common folk is able to get drugs of pharmaceutical or non-pharmaceutical grade from street dealers and the internet. We had come to a new understanding of drugs, and with our natural love for categorizing things into good and bad we commonly see drug use as “doctors orders” or “getting high”. Are we then to look at all recreational use of drugs as wrong and unlawful? With drug regulation and control evolving different drugs and substances are being given different labels today. Psilocybin and marijuana which were once associated with hippie culture and having criminal classifications are now looking at widespread medicinal use and legalization. As research and public views on drug use have shifted towards a more liberal stance, what has not changed is pharmaceutical dominance in global drug use. Pharmaceutical drugs continue to grow and become common in the world today. As current medical practices generously give opiate filled drugs to patients the rise of a drug addiction cycle grows. Heavy dosage from surgery followed by more opiates from prescriptions pose a difficult fight to not become addicted. Despite the various dangers from overdose to addiction, the widespread image of drug use and supply continues to keep pharmaceutical drugs as dominant images that appear in various forms of media leaving the world to rely or look at drugs as a means of healing.

Recreational drug use can be defined as changing the user’s perceptions, feelings and emotions, use of a psychoactive drug induces an altered state of consciousness for pleasure. The first cultural artifact of the time is Juice WRLD’s song Lean With Me. His widely popular song he released in 2018 on his album Goodbye & Good Riddance is one of his most streamed songs on most music platforms. At 19 years old Jarad Higgins’ career took by storm in 2018 with the release of Lucid Dreams and All Girls Are The Same. Lean With Me largely revolves around the topic of the rappers personal drug use and his rise to fame with his new Hollywood life. The song is not like most contemporary rap songs with trap like beats but is more focused in the genre of emo rap and rock. The song includes a guitar line with a rap like drum and bass in the background. The chorus is sung in more of a slow and sunken voice, “Lean with me, pop with me. Get high with me if you rock with me. Smoke with me, drink with me.” with “Fucked up liver with some bad kidneys”. The lyrics is clear about the kind of drug use that the rapper describes. He displays a lifestyle of pharmaceutical drug use with smoking weed and drinking. By the tone of his voice and style in the chorus he almost says the lyrics rather than singing it. He doesn’t really change pitch in the chorus giving it this normal voice like the rapper were to be speaking to the audience. Juice WRLD illustrates this picture for the audience to display these drugs as remedies in a sense. He invites the audience or whoever he speaks to in the song to come with him on this phase of leaving reality and being away from the world. In the second verse of the song there is a change in pitch and volume by the rapper, he begins to sing “ smoke with me, huh, pop with me. Ayy, Gucci store, come and shop with me. If I overdose, bae, are you gon’ drop with me? I don’t even wanna think about that right now. Let’s get too high, reach a new high”. In the song he has a more panicked voice singing up to the overdose line. His voice is louder and sounds more scream like with the words being sung longer. However, this shifts back to normal starting at “I don’t even wanna think about that right now.” THis transition illustrates this part of the rappers life where he faces his drug usage habit and its dangers. He mentions overdose but by his voice and lyrics he dismisses it with the mention of using drugs to silence and muddle his growing worry of his current drug use. The song brings to light a culture of recreational drug use that many can relate to by its simple narrative of the situation. The battle of pleasure and consequence. In the song the situation shows the reliance on more drugs to calm the unrest of drug use. The song describes drug use as pleasurable and euphoric but comes at a price of wanting to stay in an “altered state” forever. Away from reality but, brought back into the real world when the damage presents itself. This is all muddled and altered by further drug use to avoid reality and the pain of heavy drug use.

The next cultural artifact I chose to look at is Limitless the movie. The movie focuses around the main character Eddie Morra and his discovered use of NZT-48. NZT is a fictional drug that is seen as a “smart drug” or nootropic. The nootropic world of drugs classifies drugs that can increase cognitive performance. Starting the movie Eddie lives in a small small urban apartment and is presented as having no future. Finished with college and going nowhere he is poor and barely making ends meet. The film has a common sci-fi trope of “unlocking” the brain the idea that humans use a small percentage of their brain and by the help of these drugs we can access all of our brain’s power. In the beginning of the film Eddie takes the NZT pill and is in a scene where he speaks to his landlords wife. Who is arguing with him about not paying for the apartment and sucking the life out oh her husband. He suddenly feels the drugs effect kick in when he sees another one of himself walk up the stairs in the film. He sees a clone of himself and through cgi effects a visual of a brain glowing up with though the neurons is shown. This is when the films colors become more saturated and small clips of little details in the setti gare shown like the corner of the book in the woman’s bag, a light, focus on the womans lips and facial features at a close distance. Music becomes loud and picks up dominance in the sounds of the scene. This clip montage is followed by a high field of view shot to show the whole room in one picture. With the music and chaotic camera angles tension is build up for the viewer. This all is suddenly silenced by Eddies line where he interrupts her tangent to ask is anything wrong in law school which he guessed by seeing the corner of her book in her bag. Although he didn’t study law he remembered seeing it in college while he was flipping through books at a girls house. He says that this he had remembered by unconscious memory and didn’t know it was there or if he had it recorded. He quickly understood the drug narrating that “everything was there all I needed was the access”. The access being this new pill he just took as as he was just able to remember small memories that a normal mind would naturally forget and pay no attention to. As though all the things he had ever seen were able to be accessed and used constructively. He continues to recommend law paper advice that he was remembering information from “Andrew Mason from The Odd Museum Show, a half read article, and a PBS documentary was all bubbling in my frontal lobes mixing itself into a sparkling cocktail of useful information”. People often leave half an article unread, had skipped through a documentary and watched a few minutes, etc. But, we don’t really learn it at a professional level like Eddie was displaying in the scene. Aside from the quick accomplishments that happen after taking the pill the film itself becomes brighter. As though the color presets were switched after the effects of the drugs kicked in. Scenes prior were pale and monotone in color but, this was changed with the taking of the pill. We see this with something as simple as the light color, where the iridescent white changes to a warm white adding color to the room. The audience is to believe a drug like NZT can make all those small useless bits of knowledge that isn’t complete on a specific topic enough to make you an expert. The world after his first does is bright for most of the film until Eddie runs out of NZT. This is when we see the whole process come to a collapse. Although Eddie was able to accomplish so much taking the drug daily, his success hits a standstill when Eddie becomes paranoid and hallucinates beginning to bring back similar video editing from the beginning of the film. The lights get a colder white tone and the colors grow monotone again making the world blend together in darkness. NZT has this strong withdrawal that makes it seem like the user is to start at square one before the drug habit. The film shows more behavior and images similar to the start of the film before Eddies first encounter with NZT. The drug can help a person accomplish and improve their life in record time but stopping its use almost makes the user destroy what they have made of themselves from NZT. As though it were to revert the positive impact on the user. The strong message of dependency on a NZT is seen from Eddie as he uses the brain power from the drug to reach new heights in his career and life. But the dependency is tough to overcome and shows that users must continue usage or all their work collapses. Without the drug the person is sick of their normal cognitive abilities seeking to go back to NZT.

As we see nations decriminalize drugs and an increase of once illegal drugs become legal the culture of drug usage continues to linger along with society. People have come to a point where drug discussion and media is not taboo and private. Societal awareness and acceptance of the workings of drugs have drawn an image for drugs. A means of medicine or recreation, both of which still exist close to most people despite the known dangers. Recreational drugs are seen as two faced making users feel good and high but become addictive and take a toll on the users health. Slowly habits corner users in and we see this happen in Lean With Me by Juice WORLD. He is aware of his situation as an addict and his music conveys what he experiences. As listeners we still nod our heads to the beat but understand the morbid lyrics. Despite the addiction the availability of the opioids is high as its mass produced and made easily available by prescription or illegally. It’s the popularity and availability that makes most rap songs include verses about percocet, promethazine, and other opioids. Limitless shows a unique drug story that greatly benefits the user cognitively and socially as long as the supply amounts to it. Here we see a single pill transform a man and the film to better. But we see the problems arise when there isn’t anymore pills left, side effects come to light. As the amazing effect wears off the benefits leave the user and one can not perform as well as on NZT. Its our love of shortcuts in a sense that keeps humans looking for efficiency and getting something faster. Weather it’s trying to quickly escape reality via psychoactive drugs or trying to quickly gain an edge over others cognitively. Getting high is a part of the culture and we can see this by the size of the pharmaceutical industry and the estimated illegal drug industry.