Williams, Margaret A. Adams. "'You Don't Know What It's Like': The Lived Experience of Drug Dependence." Massey University, 2002.


A Heideggerian interpretation of the lived experience of drug users. So cool!


I had been thinking that I really, really wished someone would write something like this. I almost thought I was gonna have to write it myself (DIY forever), but now I don't have to because I can just read this instead. Thanks Williams, I love it!


Much like Heidegger and his beloved peasants, Williams understands through analysis what dependent drug users know by way of actively experiencing.

Too bad the nature of the Heideggerian ego-death ("Dasein falling") is that of "practical working knowledge without the conscious realization of understanding"; I figure this may have something to do with why it is that peasants and drug addicts seem to be somewhat alike in that neither group typically writes theory or philosophy. If only it weren't so...

However, I think there is greater inherent value to be obtained from listening to a person share their ideas and lived experience using plain language and in a very direct way—of letting people be the authors of their own narratives—than we may often realize; because, to put it one way, why would one find it necessary to read Heidegger in order to relearn what they had already learned by simply becoming addicted to drugs instead?

What I'm saying is, Being and Time is undeniably a good and smart book, but although Heidegger's name may be on the front cover, it's the peasants who were the real authors; because without them, Heidegger couldn't have written the book, and he wouldn't have known how to use a hammer, either.


Can't stop thinking about this...

I'm reversing my (mis-)understanding of Heidegger. The nature of Heideggerian Being (and of the knowledge contained within the direct experience of Being) is not that of an ego-death, but of the failure to ever even have an ego-birth in the first place.

Once we have already had an ego-birth, it is impossible to ever achieve a true ego-death; the best we can do is to take a momentary ego-nap, maybe go to ego-sleep for the night.


I wish I had never developed an ego. You can't just keep on hammering forever. Eventually, you'll finish building your house.

    (Sometimes you get so lost in the act of hammering that you tear down your house just to build it back up again.)

    (Imagine if we used our energy to build houses for other people, too, instead of endlessly tearing down and rebuilding our own house...)

Peasants, in my experience, are the craftiest bastards of them all.