Rhetoricians of health and medicine have typically focused on the interpretive and semiotic aspects of the practices involved in these disciplines, but in recent years scholars in this field have increasingly insisted that the material aspects of these practices are themselves rhetorical (Graham; Teston; Pender). When we turn to the problem of drug use and recovery, however, we are confronted with a medical phenomenon that is clearly both material and immaterial in the same instance—that is, the effect of a drug (or a compulsion to use it) is variable by situation and by subject yet also irrevocably tied to our physiology. To study the rhetorics of potent substances thus requires engagement with the inherent semiotic, immaterial aspects of the material forces we encounter. From the “Higher Power” of the Twelve-Step tradition to the flights of fancy (whether escapist or spiritual) of drug cultures past and present, substances and their use or dis-use provoke engagement with an immateriality that eludes total description and explanation yet continually presses us toward action. So although the concerns of drugs and recovery obviously confront us with neurochemical effects and bodily compulsions, addressing them as rhetorical phenomena also necessarily draws into view the persuasive power of rituals, therapeutic practices, and out-of-the-ordinary experiences. To attend adequately to the material rhetorical forces involved, we need to attend to the ways that researchers, clinicians, lay advocates, and those using or in recovery each pose varying in situ relations of the material and the immaterial in order to advance claims, organize efforts, and manage affects and impulses.
Toward this end, my dissertation rhetorically analyzes two cases in the history of drugs and recovery that each problematize the reduction of this concern to scientifically observable biochemical material. First, I discuss attempts to research and develop a psychedelic drug therapy to treat (among other things) alcoholism. Then, I discuss the emergence of the Twelve-Step recovery model in the early history of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). Through this analysis, I argue that if rhetoricians are committed to an understanding of persuasion as a material-semiotic phenomenon—at least for the purposes of addressing drugs and recovery within the rhetorics of health and medicine—then we must admit the rhetorical weight of the shared immateriality that shapes each person’s will, judgment, and perception. This is not to say that rhetoric is somehow anti-scientific or beyond science; rather, I propose that the scientific and medical project of attending to drug use and recovery confronts rhetorical phenomena that have tended to confound attempts to provide a rational, universal account of materiality. These same phenomena have, in turn, undergirded attempts (such as the two I study) to respond to addiction and alcoholism in a way that extends beyond a purely medical conception of the problem.
Although psychedelic therapy and the Twelve-Step model are very different practices, both exemplify the rhetorical interplay between psuche (mind, soul, life) and pharmakon (drug, poison, cure). As elements of rhetorical theory and practice, psuche and pharmakon have each been regarded as ambiguously positioned between the material world and the spiritual or immaterial world. From Plato’s denigration of writing as a dangerous pharmakon that threatens the health of the psuche (Derrida; Davis; Kopelson), to contemporary concerns over the rhetorical power of the psychopharmaceutical industry (Rose; Emmons; Wilson), rhetoricians have long been concerned over the relations between persuasion, potent substances, and the care of mind, soul, or self. My project furthers this line of inquiry by demonstrating how efforts to understand and manage the effect of a pharmakon on a psuche must take into account the more-than-material rhetorical force of that encounter. As shown in these historical cases, the effect of such an encounter (whether it is intended to be spiritual, therapeutic, or psychopharmacological) can never be fully reduced to a measurement or a pre-defined purpose. The task of rhetoric, in this context, is thus to facilitate pragmatic, non-reductive understanding and management of this relation between psuche and pharmakon.
Through a historiographic discussion of published research and archival materials, I examine the psychiatric inquiry into hallucinogens such as LSD that occurred in North America between the late 1940s and early 1970s. I argue that this collection of amateur experimenters and clinical psychiatrists formed a unique rhetorical ecology, demonstrating the difficult negotiation between the unavoidably persuasive work of therapeutic practice and the disciplinary imperative of materially-focused scientific practice. I use contemporary rhetorical theory (Muckelbauer; Prenosil; Derkatch) focusing on doxa (belief, opinion) and pistis (proof, appeal) to analyze how this ecology of researchers and clinicians contributed to the emergence of what would be called “the psychedelic experience” through their attempts to describe and explore this phenomenon as a psychiatric tool. I then further this analysis by discussing the ecstatic visionary experiences that led to the development of both psychedelic therapy as well as A.A. Through this discussion, I examine how each case demonstrates a rhetorical negotiation between individually-felt relations to the spiritual or extra-human sphere (Mailloux; Asay) and collectively-formed rhetorical tools such as narrative genres or therapeutic procedures (Anderson; Hyde and Kopp). Finally, I dig more deeply into the early history of A.A. (1930s to 1950s) to examine the way that this fellowship’s first members drew on a strategic array of religious rhetorics and psychological theories to develop a set of heuristics and practices that facilitate recovery. I argue that A.A.’s practices of building spiritual capacity through the Twelve Steps and building personal identification through sharing with a group together promote a simultaneously material and immaterial rhetorical ecology (Hawhee; Rice; Rickert). My project thus addresses the rhetorical question concerning materiality by asserting the relevance of apparently immaterial phenomena, such as drug experiences or spiritual encounters, for our attempts to articulate persuasion as material-semiotic action. The analysis I provide contributes to wider efforts in rhetorical studies to account for the relation between traditionally authoritative (i.e. “Western”) forms of truth such as science or medicine and forms of truth that are ignored, marginalized, or suppressed for one reason or another. By addressing substance use and recovery, this project also contributes to rhetorical work on psychiatry and psychotherapy, as well as studies of the rhetorical relation between disciplinary medicine and lay practices of self-help and wellness.
Deanna Tomasin McCormick 