Cultures of Addiction By Jason Lee

Although Luke Davies in his 1997 novel, Candy, provided a more substantial and at times romantic description of the female character (after all, the novel is named after her), her purpose too is to fulfill the needs of the male protagonist’s addiction through prostitution. Indeed, her name, Candy, is synonymous with the heroin they use—denying her the autonomy of her own experience of addiction. This highlights a perceived interconnectedness of women and illicit drugs. As Stephen Kandall pointed out in his book Substance and Shadow: Women and Addiction in the United States, “Many drugs retain highly ‘sexed’ female nicknames…cocaine is often referred to as Girl, Girlfriend, White Lady; heroine as Aunt Hazel, White Girl; marijuana as Aunt Mary; and depressants as Pink Ladies.”²⁶ Such gendering of illicit drugs positions both drugs and women as one and the same. Nancy Campbell, in her book Using Women: Gender, Drug Policy, and Social Justice, suggested that both the female addict and the drugs she uses are simultaneously viewed as “the curse of civilisation,” epitomized by U.S. drug policy dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, where both are seen as a “contaminant,” an “overshadowing menace”—destabilizing the foundations of civilization.²⁷

Such an insidious connection, making the addicted woman analogous to civilization’s destruction, is also present in Aldous Huxley’s portrayal of the character Linda in Brave New World. Although her character description cannot be said to be unsubstantial, it highlights, however, the stereotyped image of the female addict again as passive and also as degraded and denigrating to society—both the “obscene mother and unreal savage”:

Linda, on the contrary, cut no ice; nobody had the smallest desire to see Linda. To say one was a mother—that was past a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasn’t a real savage, had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like anyone else: so couldn’t have really quaint ideas. Finally—and this was by far the strongest reason for people’s not wanting to see poor Linda—there was her appearance. Fat; having lost her youth: with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and that figure (Ford!)—you simply couldn’t