Introduction

This paper theorises drug markets through the concept of digital territory. I hypothesis that territorialisation is a critical process involving onshoring and binding the market as a virtual, bounded place.

The availability of controlled substances is mediated through two broad and interrelated distribution types. Social supply between friends and acquaintances relies on a moral economy of sharing and reciprocity (Coomber et al., 2016). Transactional commercial supply on the other hand emphasises profit and market mediate relationships, and sometimes validates predation and exploitation (Ancrum and Treadwell, 2017). New modes of drug distribution reshape both these distribution forms. One has been the emergence of online cryptomarkets. These are specialised markets hosted anonymously using the Tor network (Barratt and Aldridge, 2016). They present as shopfronts where vendors sell an array of drugs. Buyers pay using a cryptocurrency, typically Bitcoin, and the drug is delivered to them through the postal or courier system. Buyers are encouraged to leave reviews of the product and the vendor. Lively discussion forums discuss the quality of the drugs sold and the professionalism of vendors among other topics.

Figure 1 shows a listing from a market specialising in Cannabis. The listing typifies the way in which drugs are presented for sale. The vendor ships from Spain and offers shipping within the EU, and adds charges for express shipping. Discounts are provided for larger orders. Prices on this market vary in relation to the offline market. It is impossible to verify the content independently, however taken at face value some appear to be cheaper but many are higher priced, reflecting the ability of vendors to command more lucrative prices due to claimed higher quality (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2019). Higher prices may also reflect a premium for perceived safety of the buying process and quality of the product, demanding a comfort premium in addition to the normal risk premium paid for in illicit drug sales (Rhumorbarbe et al., 2016). Therefore we can see immediately that cryptomarkets promote particular kinds of market relationship between buyer and seller: a focus on quality, safety for both parties, greater choice and a tendency towards promoting high value, bulk buys (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2014). Cryptomarkets are also the focus of methodological innovation. Due to their open design the cryptomarkets have facilitated the emergence of new digital trace methods to track changes in the drug markets such as the DATACRYPTO crawler (Décary-Hétu and Aldridge, 2013). These innovations allow for early notification of market changes such as the emergence of fentanyl and other novel synthetic opioids (Lamy et al., 2020).

The emergence and reach of cryptomarkets

Cryptomarkets emerged in 2011 with the launch of Silk Road on the Tor network. Its openness and anonymity signalled the arrival of a new type of drug diffusion (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016). After Silk Road was shut down in a law enforcement operation many other markets proliferated, sparking rounds of innovation and disruption between market administrators and law enforcement (Afilipoaie and Shortis, 2018). Disruption tended to demonstrate the resilience of the illicit drug market ecosystem (Décary-Hétu and Giommoni, 2017). Recent estimates put the cryptomarkets as a substantial but definite minority of the drug market overall, around €750000 Euro per day for sites serving European locations  (Christin and Thomas, 2019). The Global Drug Survey records steady growth in use among its respondents, from 4.7% in 2014 to 15% in 2020 obtaining at least some of their drugs from darknet sites in the previous 12 months (Winstock, n.d.). Products sold range widely, with an emphasis on cocaine, cannabis, novel psychoactive substances, sedatives and stimulants. Most illicit drugs are available in some form but the product balance tends towards the ‘psychonaut’ user profile (Cunliffe et al., 2019). Alongside that there are many self-identified dependent and addicted users who find the predictability, professionalism and stability of supply a significant benefit (Bancroft, 2019).

The cryptomarkets are part of an ecosystem of messaging apps, webpages, discussion servers and social media platforms that service the drug market, mainly based in Europe, North America and Australasia (Moyle et al., 2019). They serve the end point of the global trafficking network, supplementing and sometimes replacing the trafficker to supplier/user stage (Dittus et al., 2017) and mostly supplying to consumer countries (Demant et al., 2017). Though sometimes depersonalised they are evolving and also provide the basis of dealer to buyer direct dealing (Childs et al., 2020). The cryptomarkets are best seen as one part of a larger flexible social and technological structure which facilitates rapid arrangement of deals between parties and expands the range of drugs sold. Drug sellers and buyers move around within it depending on the changing landscape and their specific requirements. This system generates an informal feedback loop allowing dealers to make more rapid decisions about what segments of the market to service.

Cryptomarkets are a focus for the gentrification hypothesis which suggests that a combination of long established social, economic and technical conditions is serving to reduce the importance of violence and predation in drug distribution. Drug delivery has displaced street or house based exchange in some circumstances, drug markets have become segmented by class and race, and the opportunities for combining drug dealing with other vice exploitation crimes has declined (Curtis et al., 2002). Cryptomarkets extend some of these developments, seeking to emphasise conflict resolution, cooperation and professionalism and punish predation (Martin, 2017; Norbutas et al., 2020), attractive to buyers and dealers (Martin et al., 2020). That may serve to reduce some of the harms of the illicit drug market (Aldridge et al., 2017) while at the same time concentrating risk and systemic violence among an already marginalised segment of the drug user population who have little access to drug delivery methods. While the cryptomarkets do put gentrification to the fore they also shift power in the marketplace and create new opportunities for vendors to develop exploitative or coercive strategies and techniques (Moeller et al., 2017).

Effect on purchase and drug diffusion

Cryptomarkets are designed in order to expose specific attributes of the drug being sold. Depending on the valued characteristics of the substance these might be the intoxication effect, texture, smell, appearance, potency, ease of titration, activity in combination with other substances, and pharmacokinetic behaviour. Generically these are referred to as quality, which means many different things to different users (Bancroft and Scott Reid, 2016). Whether and in what way the specific drug being sold is effective is the subject of extensive discussion on each market’s associated forums. The informational context is supplemented by the use of independent drug checking services by vendors and buyers. This can mislead and give users a false sense of security but on the other hand it normalises drug checking as an expected part of drug sale and consumption cycle (DoctorX, n.d.)

The impact is to foreground each drug being sold as a specific branded consumer product with pharmacological attributes that can be closely assayed. It draws on and brings together users’ cumulative experiential and subcultural knowledge, in common with other online drug user forums which examine not just the quality of each drug but what the drug is as a categorical object (Bilgrei, 2016). Behaviour is changed also. Easier availability may reduce temptation to hoard (Barratt, Lenton, et al., 2016) but the tendency towards vendors selling only in larger quantities may counteract that. The benefits of making large purchases means that purchases are often made with the intent of social supply (Demant et al., 2018).

Most users of the cryptomarkets are not novices and already have established experience in the face to face market. In the main they are attracted by predictable supply, choice and reduced risk. Users are predominantly male and young (Barratt, Ferris, et al., 2016). Some events such as COVID driven lockdowns have drawn large numbers of new users into the darknet (Barratt and Aldridge, 2020). Many new entrants just as quickly leave when they find the cryptomarkets do not suit their needs. Successful users need to learn and socialise themselves into the system to make it work to good effect.

Conclusion: The shifting territory of the digital drug market

The cryptomarket distribution system is a critical part of the move to drug distribution by delivery, whether through the postal system or tailored distribution services. They may be being supersded in technical prowess by well crafted custom build systems that use messaging apps (Power, 2020a, 2020b). As a whole set these systems bypass the face to face market and therefore are not immediately open to the kind of incidental interventions that harm reduction services may make. Having said that users often will be consuming at places where services may be present, such as raves and festivals but the rise of at-home delivery means that both distribution patterns and locations of consumption are changing. Consumption may take place much more at home, especially with the impact of COVID globally (Matheson et al., 2020). COVID has affirmed and extended existing inequalities (Chang et al., 2020) and the digital market has contributed to that. More affluent, better connected users have used their digital nous to continue drug consumption with little interruption. Those who do not have access to these distribution modes have been thrown back on a shifting and sometimes predatory street market. The impact of the darknet has to be seen in this context, as one component of an evolving social-technical infrastructure for drug distribution and consumption.

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Figure 1, Cannazon market (10/6/2021)

… and unlike 99% of press releases these actually tell you something and are worth reading

DarkSide is a Russian based ransomware group which on May 7th 2021 shut down the East Coast US fuel pipeline network owned by Colonial Pipeline. The group’s ransomware was used to lock up the pipeline network with damaging consequences for economic activity in serval US states. DarkSide are the classic crime as a service (CaaS) outfit, renting their capacity to clients and offering service support to victims to make paying the ransom easier. CaaS is a business model where the crime group provides the tools to engage in ransomware attacks, such as the hacking and encryption system and cashing out services. Its clients take the risk and the group take a cut of the profit.

The attack was the culmination in a growing series of infrastructure attacks. They issued a statement clarifying that it is not involved with the Russian government. They were very keen to say they were motivated by money rather than politics:

’We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie us with a defined government and look for other our motives.

Our goal is to make money, and not creating problems for society.

From today we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences for the future’. 10/5/2021

The group seems keen to start at least appearing like it is limiting its operators to less ethically and politically charged targets. The Bleeping Computer article linked below shows the extent to which an international CaaS operator has to operate in a tricky geopolitcal climate. It attempted to shift its hosting operations to Iran in 2020. However that create a problem for it. The companies who would pay the ransom and the outfits that negotiate payments such as Coveware would then be guilty of violating US led sanctions against Iran. No profit! That may explain why they are so keen to distance themselves from the Russian government and to assert that they will limit their operations. The latter statement just reasserts a claim they made in 2020 however so there may be more chaff than anything else here. The outfit does have an interest in targeting organisations who can pay and so this seems like a fairly rational response to embarrassment caused by misbehaving clients and an attempt to protect its business model.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/darkside-ransomware-will-now-vet-targets-after-pipeline-cyberattack/

Markets embed a specific kind of illicit drug culture

I wanted to think through how the specific configuration of digital illicit markets shape subjectivity.

The purpose  is to outline how a specific type of online drug focused marketplace produces drug dealer and user subjectivities. Typically, illicit drug distribution can be characterised as taking place between three different distribution modes. In one corner is social supply with principles of mutuality, reciprocity and a flat network distributing arrangement (Coomber and Turnbull, 2007). In another is distribution through market exchange which prioritises the cash nexus, profit/value incentives and relationships mediated by consumption (Felstead, 2018). Finally there is a third mode, that of ideologically driven, altruistic supply that emphasise the drug and use as in a political, ideological or spiritual relationship (Tupper, 2008). That broad brush typology disguises many nuances and subtleties in practice (Hammersvik et al., 2012). The distribution modes may involve varying degrees of exploitation and obligation, they may promote practices of care or generate harm, they may expand drug distribution or keep it within a tightly bound social and cultural context (Belackova and Vaccaro, 2013; Coomber and Moyle, 2014). Different distribution modes and self presentation may occupy the same technical infrastructure and market space (Bakken, 2020; Demant et al., 2018).

The generalisation of markets as a mode for illicit distribution and organisation has had wide ranging effects on how drug users obtain and consume drugs. As has happened more broadly in capitalist societies we have seen an expansion in the conscious use of market forms for identity formation, self-creation and expression (Dijck et al., 2018). Market principles value certain qualities in both products and users: professionalism, the capacity to make objective judgements, to act as self directed, accountable agents, and invite drug users to express themselves as instrumental, reflexively hedonistic consumers (Turner, 2018). Digital technologies are both disruptive and confirmatory. They transform opportunities for illicit drug exchange, the formation of cultural collectivties of drug users and the capacity for self creation. They also confirm and reproduce some existing hierarchies, especially those between self identified recreational and dependent users. They create new spaces for trade and discussion, define new attributes, and foreground the experimental and the competitive (Martin et al., 2019). That has implications for we understand normalisation as happening through markets. The drug distribution mode affects the parameters of normalisation for example with social supply contributing to normalising particular use patterns (Coomber et al., 2015).  We can welcome self organising digital markets as promoting and embedding norms of destigmatisation and harm reduction but also be aware of where its foregrounding of a market focused engagement with drug distribution can lead us. It may concentrate market power, promotes bulk purchase, create supply chain risks and ultimately increase dealer power.

Cryptomarkets are one such and form the focus of this chapter, are hidden, anonymous marketplaces which mostly deal in illicit drugs along with some other illicit goods and services. They are hosted on the Tor (‘The Onion Router’)  darknet. Tor is developed and operated by a network supported by The Tor Project foundation. It emphasises the benefits of privacy and security.  The system uses encryption and signal routing to hide participants’ digital identities. The markets are hosted by administrators who connect their servers to the Tor system. This is called ‘onion hosting’. Along with the use of a distributed cryptocurrency, typically bitcoin, it allows transactions to take place in relative anonymity. Drugs are bought and sold, and delivered to the buyer using couriers, the postal system, or dead drops. Mostly they handle the ‘last mile’ of the drug trafficking system with sellers, buyers and market hosters mostly based in more affluent countries, and within that representing a more connected and affluent fraction of users (Dittus et al., 2017). Users are a specific demographic – not necessarily more affluent but adept at this kind of market. Cryptomarkets function as a drug distribution ecosystem and forums for drug users and sellers to meet virtually and examine the drugs being sold, the reliability of sellers and the desirability of particular drug effects. They also provides sites of contestation of the illegality and stigmatising of illicit drugs (Barratt et al., 2016; Hübschle, 2017).

I am focusing on market modes of distribution and the effect they have as it provides an opportunity to examine how the process of drug distribution shapes intoxication subjectivities and the drug as a specific type of object with tangible characteristics.  Market based drug distribution embeds some basic principles about drugs as objects: that they are commodities, they are interchangeable. It also frames drug users as specific types of subjects: they are consumers, they are focused on product qualities and reward customer service by dealers. It emphasises competition between drug dealers and between consumers. Just to pause here: not every market really does that in practice, and as we will see, apparently open and consumer led markets can in fact concentrate power among a small number of providers who can set the terms of trade. In this way the illicit drug markets function much like capitalism everywhere. An apparently open, free and voluntary relationship really depends on the consumer adapting themselves to the terms of trade offered. It narrows the drug users’ self perception to that of a drug consumer focused on calculated, planned hedonism, meaning an expectation of pleasure along with with a risk reflexive subjectivity (Bilgrei, 2019). That is a powerful ideological effect of a market society and culture. The focus of this chapter will be a specific element of that, how drug buyers in cryptomarkets construct, assess and reward potency as a tangible quality of the drugs they are buying and using.

In capitalist societies markets are often presented as naturally occurring creations, places where people with something to sell and and others with a need to fulfil meet in mutual exchange. This is a powerful view in understanding some qualities of illicit markets, and moving away from pathologizing the actions of drug dealers and users within them. Markets are places of competitive exchange and the come into being to address problems of stability, predictability and reliable valuation (Beckert and Wehinger, 2012). Markets are also inventions, social constructs which institutionalise, design in and reward specific ways of being. Players in illegal markets face various problems. They have to succeed in making their activities work together despite being disparate, remote, fleetingly interacting. It is a problem of ordering interaction in ways that will lead to the expected outcome. Market actors want to exchange but they want to do it at a price that suits them. That can be tricky to agree, hence formal pricing mechanisms are handy. Every participant is risking something, and this is more the case in illicit markets. Therefore participants use proxies to reduce that risk – platform loyalty, brand loyalty, vendor loyalty, and markers of quality and reliability which of course may not be that reliable. It is an oddly precarious thing. Markets can only solve these problems if they are culturally, socially and institutionally supported (Beckert, 2009). Drug markets are institutionalsed whether in the street (Coomber and Maher, 2006), social media (Moyle et al., 2019) or the darknet (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu, 2016).

Digital illicit markets and cryptocurrencies promise greater transparency, democracy and accountability but this is not necessarily borne out in reality (Bratspies, 2018; van der Gouwe et al., 2017). To the extent to which these qualities do come about they are due to the efforts of participants and sometimes involve circumventing or resisting the centralising, profit driven logic of the markets themselves. I argue that the cryptomarkets discipline users towards a specific set of stances, and they adopt a tendency to reify, quantify, and engage in cost benefit analysis and rational use discourse about their drug consumption.

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Surveillance has been the big idea of criminology for some time. It appears to be a ubiquitous fact of life in modern societies and an organising principle present in most walks of life. It is present in the lives of call centre workers and bus passengers. It is the go to for any attempt at civilising a location.

Critically, surveillance assemblages modify post-hoc rationalities as well as they produce targeting and risk prediction matrixes. They shift the mode of surveillance from the human to the non-human and automated, and from the organisational to the intimate. People are rewarded for participation in an implicit social credit system. The system makes profiling ordinary (e.g. Muslims in Japan are risk profiled by the police). That changes how we understand forensic data for example, it’s no longer post but is no pre- event (Mantello, 2016). In some ways this is old school surveillance with many data layers but the main innovation is its capacity to produce target selection. Doing so collapses key distinctions eg. between present and future culpability, hence the ‘pre crime’ label.

There are plenty of private sector examples to draw from. One, the Hitachi visualisation suite, gives some good instances of how this might work. It overlays social media analytics, dispatch info, gunshot sensors, CCTV with info about weather and traffic. As the sensing infrastructure becomes more developed this will only be added to. Picture a live feed from every Ring video doorbell with AI analytics. We shouldn’t be too tech led in assuming the whole concept of the disciplinary society needs to be remade.

How accurately can you describe the point of view opposing yours on an issue that is core to your sense of who you are? I’m not talking about a nice debating position but for example if you think that Scottish Independence or Unionism is fundamental to your sense of self, how far are you able to accurately describe the reasons the other side have? When it’s something that makes you angry or baffled. The answer to this question tells you about the extent of the epistemic divide in your society. This isn’t a call to all just get along because that is part of the problem: we aren’t grasping the power of vertical integration of self, context and information spheres.

Lecturing recently about the commodification and marketisation of disinformation I drew a lot on the work of Thomas Rid (2020) who has written an accessible history and theoretical study of information operations. As he shows overall disinformation operations are about the intent, rather than the form, of the operation. For that reason tactical moves like disclosing a campaign’s existence can be effective if the aim is to generate uncertainty. According to Rid (2020) what they do is attack the liberal epistemic order. This order has some features: that facts have their own life, independent of values and interests: that expertise should be independent of immediate political and strategic interest. That institutions should be built around those principles – a relatively impartial media, quiescent trade unions, universities, even churches and other private institutions, are part of the epistemic matrix undergirding liberalism. 

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this order has been eroded from multiple angles over the past decades by processes that have nothing to do with information operations. Independent media institutions like established newspapers have become uneconomic and replaced with a click-driven, rage fuelled, tribalist media. Increasingly the old institutions mimic the new. So the Independent newspaper evolved from a staid, slightly dull, irritatingly liberal, paper to a outrage driven, highly partial, publication reliant on a high throughput of offence driven eyeballs. The independence universities and the professions has been similarly eroded by the imposition of market driven governance on higher education, the NHS, and other bodies. 

It also doesn’t take a genius to note that the liberal epistemic order was always less than it was cracked up to be, as studied in the work of the Glasgow University Media Group among others. If we look at the history of trade union politics in France and Italy we see a fractured information order without a public square consensus. The erosion of this may be overplayed – for example, most UK citizens still get their news from the BBC. However survey data notes that there is a definite loss of trust among supporters of specific political viewpoints (Brexit, Scottish Nationalism being two). The liberal epistemic order was therefore neither as robust nor as liberal as it proclaimed itself to be and may have been contingent on a specific configuration of post-World War Two Bretton Woods governance. My view is that there’s something there that matters (in terms of the erosion of the public square and the deliberate use of IO to interfere with public life) but also that what is being attacked had already systematically weakened itself or been weakened.

The focus on fake news can mislead from the extent of informational control in digital capitalism. We can point to some specific developments more recently: the financialisation and datafication of disinformation markets, and the vertical integration of political power with distributed media which makes use of of a distributed labour infrastructure which is agile and available. This uses some of the same infrastructure of doubt and uncertainty which is employed by spam and ransomware operations. The same creation of a supply chain and use of financialisation processes such as auctions for services. These methods underpin a doubt infrastructure that can be deployed expose the information economy and polity to attempts to manipulate information for strategic ends as well as everyday annoyances. They deploy semiotic tools. Rather than generating propaganda, these methods generate confusion. The recent history of disinformation strikes at a number of question at the intersection of information science, sociology of markets, sociology of technology and the philosophy of knowledge: how can disinformation be defined, recognised and how can systems be made resilient against it. There are several thorny ontological and epistemological questions e.g. between the politics of knowledge, preference falsification, technical and social verification. We don’t easily know what disinformation is when we see it so we need agreement that we are in fact talking about the same thing. 

One way of doing that is to reframe the issue. It cannot be about pure information (no such thing) or uncontested knowledge (undesirable) but creating local, critical spaces where communities can decide on the informational priorities that matter to them. Returning to my starting point, we need to understand an epistemic contradiction: the most liberal viewpoints demand the most closure when they attempt to grasp the motives of others. People who voted for Britain leaving the EU have a much more accurate understanding of the Remain side’s motives than Remainers do of theirs. My hypothesis is that epistemic gap is due to the Remain side having a much more socially integrated multi layered knowledge structure which operates through everyday spaces (work, university, neighbourhood) in ways that the Leave side does not. The reason the EU vote was a surprise to many was that this conceptual integration around Leave is more fragmented, less socially/culturally powerful, but still there.

Rid T (2020) Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This is the draft text of an article I completed during our staff/student writing workshop, revised from earlier.

Waiting for the delivery man: Temporalities of addiction, withdrawal and the pleasures of dope time

Abstract

A range of work published in the drug field has reinscribed drug user experience as embodied  – challenging researchers to think of pleasure beyond transgression and leisure, into the routine micro-time, embodied, material, domesticated, habitual, remote intimacy. The paper examines changes in the material culture of illicit drug use and addiction discourse in the light of changed modes of drug distribution due to the expansion of digitally mediated markets. The concept of dope time is introduced as one kind of social time that is a part of how opioid dependent users present and talk about themselves. Dope time is generated by both the supply system and the experience of addiction and drug consumption. It can be time spent waiting for drugs to arrive, time waiting for dopesickness to start, or to stop, or time in the clinic waiting for treatment. It is also used as a mechanism of social control, such as deliberately introducing waiting as part of treatment regime to test if the addict is ‘serious’. This paper examines the changing quality of heroin or ‘dope’ time in the context of the shift towards digitally enabled drug markets using qualitative and ethnographic data on user experiences. It draws on data from darknet cryptomarket users who buy and sell using the hidden digital infrastructure. It argues that dope time in the darknet changes to being much more defined by the infrastructure. There are obdurate times dictated by the delivery infrastructure, such as shipment times. Its salience is defined by the drug user’s sense as to whether the time spend waiting is intentional. If he or she regards delayed shipments as the responsibility of the vendor or due to deliberate indifference on their part then this time is experienced more harshly. Dopesickness becomes more painful, and anxiety grows where that is the case. One reason for that is that the user is concerned that the drug may not arrive at all. That feature of the infrastructure then changes the texture of dope time for the user. This is partly a matter of greater convenience and choice but also reshapes the idea of time into one mediated by systems rather than interpersonally.

Introduction: The Time Infrastructure in Illicit Digital Markets

‘When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start’ (Burroughs, Junky, 1977)

Time is culturally significant in popular accounts the life of dependent drug users. Burroughs (1977) wrote of ‘junk time’, describing the drug users as in essence a mechanism for obtaining drugs, dependent on the internal ‘clock’ of addiction and withdrawal. Though this is a reductive and inaccurate framing, it does describe on element of social time and drug user. Junk time is one culturally salient element of the drug chronotype which encompasses a range of rhythms and trajectories embedded in consumption rituals, biographies, treatment systems, criminal justice processes and other structuring factors which shape the time of the drug user (Fraser 2006). Time can be used as punishment.  Deliberately producing waits for treatment is one way of inducing dopesickeness as a punishment for wayward addicts in treatment (Bourgois 2000). Waiting can be a clinical imposition and a clinical-treatment construct. Letting dependent users wait means they are ‘proper’ patients rather than manipulative addicts (Bourgois 2000).

In this chapter I intend to examine one particular way in which time is structured for drug users, through the times of the marketplace. I do this through a study of experiences of time among users of cryptomarkets, anonymous digital markets used for drug purchase. It matters because the way in which markets structure drug buying is critical to both the way in which users position and identify themselves and experience their drug use. The paper pulls together the findings of many studies of cryptomarkets that have examined the way in which the buying process shapes buyer identity and behaviour (Aldridge and Décary-Hétu 2016; Barratt, Lenton, et al. 2016).

The cryptomarkets are open, private markets hosted on the Tor darknet which take advantage of some of these features. Combined with distributed accountings systems like bitcoin or monero they allow transactions to take place in relative anonymity, with buyer, seller and host unknown to each other. Drugs are purchased and delivered through courier or postal systems, or less typically left at dead drops. Online drug markets create new contexts for dealing and risk, and Aldridge and Askew (2017) describe illicit transactions in this domain as ‘‘stretched’ across time, virtual and physical space, and handlers.’ The reconfiguring of time and space is a key feature which reshapes the experience of drug users interacting with the market. It changes the time spent obtaining the means to buy drugs, obtaining drugs and consuming drugs (Taylor 1993). For example, drug use patterns are changed by the cryptomarkets’ tendency towards requiring larger and larger purchases, encouraging stockpiling and self-titration over a period of weeks and months.

Developing that, this paper uses the concept of social time. It defines time as a multiple set of cultural, structural and disciplinary rhythms (Sorokin and Merton 1937). In that sense, time is created from cultural referents and material determinants (Munn 2020). Social time allow us to understand the combination of drugs as technologies, the market infrastructure, and users’ self and their orientation to a future self. It applies concepts of eventalisation, trajectory and career in order to do this. It tells us how online communities are developing these ways of understanding drug use through processes of asynchronisation and the creation of a community developed drug ontology (Bilgrei 2016). The paper does this in the context of the developing understanding of the interaction of human and non-human in producing drug use contexts (Dennis and Farrugia 2017). A range of work published in the drug field has inscribed drug user experiences as embodied and material. In doing so it challenges researchers to think of pleasure beyond transgression and leisure, into the routine micro-time, embodied, material, domesticated, habitual, remote intimacy times (Dennis 2019; Duff 2011). I aim in my work to examine the connection between materialised market economies and social time, by examining the combination of technologies, practices, users that makes up the illicit economy. Structuring elements are contingent and produce ontological instabilities and reconfigurations of users and contexts as they produce stabilities and configurations (Duff 2014).

Time matters because we are overwhelmed with technical and disciplinary times over other social rhythms. Neoclassical economics and data capitalism both establish conceptions of time that are critical in disciplining society and which create their own socialites, values and hierarchies. Extractive data capitalism presents its own time modes as natural and inevitable (Zuboff 2015). We often encounter this in technical times of nanoseconds and processor theft, the destabilisation of the gig economy and the rapid fire demands it places on labourers within it.  Licit and illicit economies of intoxication have grown more like each other in terms of production, distribution and consumption, labour organisation and digital services.

Markets function effectively when they are routinised. As noted by Collier and colleagues (Collier et al. 2020) the infrastructure of illicit digital markets is often hidden from the view of observers and participants. This infrastructure involves a large array of routine labour dependent on shared infrastructure. A wide array of services are provided such as hosting, site design, call centres, franchise management, data analysis and banking/cashing out (Kremez and Carter 2021). The growth of service crime drives down the cost of involvement in illicit digital markets for vendor and buyer. However this initial efficiency can lead to further inefficiencies which then require other services to manage.

To take a simple example, markets are typically thought of as places of instantaneous exchange. When a drug transaction is agreed, cash or electronic currency is transferred immediately. However this is not the case. Bitcoin, the supposedly decentralised currency, is often used for online drug payments. As bitcoin has become more valuable as a commodity more investment has flooded into producing (‘mining’) it electronically. That investment has however not led to the payment procedure becoming more efficient. The system has become bogged down and transactions can take hours to clear without further payment. The response has been to create a technical and social infrastructure to manage that using a combination of exchanges and trusted partners to make the system work. The transactions are stretched over time and embedded in this trust infrastructure (Bancroft et al. 2019).

In this chapter I explore further effects of the cryptomarket infrastructure, largely through the ways in which it structures the time of waiting – waiting for exchange confirmation, and waiting for drug delivery. The chapter began when reviewing data I had collected from a leading cryptomarket I noticed how often concepts of ‘dopesickness’ (heroin withdrawal) were showing up in the same codes as references to time and waiting. That led me to examine how llicit sociality incorporates platform and computational effects in the subjectivity of drug users involved in these platforms. It is central to how they inhabit these digital spaces.

Findings

Heroin’s bio-time

Waiting can be traced through the classic ‘waiting time’ of the dopefiend where time appears as a quality to be manipulated by the dealer. The queue is a typical ordering principle. Market time management practices are observable in face to face markets, for example a free for all can be contrasted with the ordered, governed queuing in a street market (Kleiman 1988). Time can be spent waiting for drugs to arrive through the delivery system, or time waiting for dopesickness to start, or to stop.

Withdrawal is the primary frame for understanding heroin dependence (Walmsley 2016).. It is central to science and subcultural understandings of heroin addiction. Dependent opiate users in the 18th century using substitution with alcohol to cope with withdrawal, or mixed opium with wax as a self-care method. Withdrawal steadily came to be viewed as a process to dangerous to be left to self-care, one that could be traumatic, deadly or just impossible for the user to embark on themselves. In the UK in the early 20th century maintenance was being used but this was strictly class based. The abrupt withdrawal method was used for ‘dangerous’ drug addicts such as prisoners. The Abstinence Syndrome Intensity scale was developed by 1944 to quantity withdrawal. Symptoms of withdrawal were objectified, no longer reliant on subjective self-report. The individual addict could no longer ‘speak’ their condition. Psychological dependence was excluded from the understanding of addiction at the time.

There was a change in the 1960s and 70s away from complete abstinence as an aim – critique derived from recognition that detoxing just led to addicts reusing immediately on discharge. No permanent cure was being offered. Two truth producing mechanisms were worked into diagnosis: urinanalysis and the Opiate withdrawal scale. At this point treatment was moving to exclude ‘pseudo-addicts’ and the reverse, addicts who claimed to be clean but were not. These truth mechanisms framed the patient as untrustworthy, a framing many addicts accepted.
 From the 1980s on – heroin withdrawal was defined as destablisiing risk management strategies, making the subject resistant to rational, looking ahead decision making.
Language is now changing, influenced by neuroscience, which now reunifies addiction as a set of neurobiological mechanisms at work.

When buying drugs for delivery waiting is part of the experience. In the Global Drug Survey 2014, 50.9% of users who had drugs delivered mentioned waiting a long time for the product  (Barratt, Ferris, and Winstock 2016). What that meant is subjective but this is something where the face to face and local delivery markets have an advantage. The explosion in drug delivery is partly a matter of greater convenience and choice but also reshapes the idea of time into one mediated by systems rather than personally.

The first time concept I identify is the bio-time of heroin. It is a combination of the bio-pharmacokinetic qualities of heroin which become known through the pharmacological repertoire and the embodied experience of dependence and withdrawal.

Users described a journey towards heroin use, in this account the use of heroin consumes the self in both the ‘nod’, the happy state, and in experiencing  withdrawal:

Basically I’m trying to say everyone is different, some are more hedonistic than others, some can simply handle the anxiety, some maybe even enjoy the lifestyle, everyone is different in their use so it really all depends on the type of person. Basically I use because I used to be depressed all the time and hated my medication, weed wasn’t too helpful either (sorry weed, still luv u), but once I started messing around with dope I realized I was either blissfully ignorant and happy all the time, or just going mad with cravings.

The experiencing of heroin dependence was an encounter of the body as obdurate and wilful. Many heroin users combined their use with benzodiazepines, as in this account:

‘Also for me after dose adjustmens it takes about 3 days for my brain to adjust and that is after taking it recreationally for about 6 weeks. In the beginning its a lot of fun but you sadly rapidly develop a tolerance to the hypnotic/sedative effect of benzos. After I successfully tapered off I will take a month brake and then only use it on weekends to smooth out comedowns from opioids or stimulants. It is a lot of fun on its own or as a little helper if you need to catch some sleep after a stimulant binge but taking it recreationally for more then a couple of days in succession is a waste.’

This was part of their pharmacological repertoire. I continue with a typical account of a pharmacological repertoire from a thread reviewing opiate vendors. A developed pharmacological repertoire is typical for experienced users who will have elaborate sets of drugs and drug use practices to manage.

“So if you run out of heroin or just decide to stop using, you will want to drink kratom during the period you would normally be [dope]sick (about 10 days for me). After that, you can keep drinking it (because why not… it’s awesome) or you can stop at any time because unlike suboxone, it doesn’t cause withdrawal or dependence — I would know, I’ve been drinking it with friends for 3 years and we can (and do) stop anytime, with no negative side effects. I can’t believe every junkie doesn’t keep a stash of it, its so cheap.. and legal!

In this example the legal high kratom is being used to manage dopesickness. In this account it is preferred to the prescribed substitution therapy suboxone as it is perceives to not carry a risk of dependence itself.  The time horizon is three years long. The extended time horizon illustrates how addiction experiences are built up and change over the long term. The experience is varied and reflected in interactions and social relations with others. The ‘we can stop at any time’ claim is somewhat belied by the fact that they have continued to use it through this period. The stopping criteria are relevant in evaluating the decision to move from one drug to another. Users of methadone mentioned in the forum that they found stopping difficult and cautioned others against it, similarly to this user’s comment on suboxone.

Avoiding dopesickness was one motivation that structured users interactions with the market. It was not completely dominant however. Experiencing withdrawal was not wholly disastrous, as long as there was a sense that it would happen within a manageable time heroin. A user on the heroin thread described this process of controlled waiting

“ alright cool so I’m gonna try to snag a bundle from [vendor] in the morning before he sells out.. idk [I don’t know] why I always wait till the last minute to get more. I’m totally gonna be sick till I get something lol. such an idiot.. i had the cash days ago but im trying to not spend so much right now. ”

Information was relevant to managing dope time. Tracking information gave some predictability to deliveries, but was often not offered for reasons of security.  This example from a discussion of heroin vendors describes the work need to make the drug useable which adds to the waiting time.

“ My last order with [vendor] took a total of 8 days, which set a new record for me. … I would not have cared so much about the 8 days if it was fire, but it sadly was not …  know I did not feel so great the next day, wasn’t sure if it was the dope or lack of sleep, but usually lack of sleep just makes me a zombie. I eventually cleaned it with some dry acetone and it took out all the brownish tint and somewhat of the iodine smell. I will probably do that for every order here on out. My delima now is i’m out and I am eyeballing the leftovers from my cleaning that I let dry in a jar, my mind says no but my heart says yes! Uggh I should just toss it. ”

This malleability and uncertainty about the drug as an object is common to many users. The individualised context of use was apparent in this account and more typical of darknet market users. They tended to buy and consume individually, and were attracted to the darknet because it allowed them to do that.

Rhythms and stretches

Time terminology appears a lot in drug users accounts in the form of rushes, lost time, blackouts. There is a close relationship with pharmaceutical quality and pharmacokinetics:

‘As I mentioned earlier, I started off with a 25mg shot. I had done no opiates for the past week or two, and the 25mg shot was the perfect amount of dope to get me where I wanted to be. I booted it up, and a few seconds later I had a very familiar warm wave of relief and euphoria slowly creep from my head down to my toes… It’s not a strong rush compared to other opiates like BTH that’s high in 6-­‐MAM or hydro/oxymorphone, but it is a very comfortable rush and the way it makes you feel is just plain fantastic.’

Users combine this with understanding of the platform qualities – the times bitcoin takes to clear, escrow to be completed, and deliveries to happen.

It also has very good legs, my first shot lasted me over 4 hours before I decided to add about 10mg more to my bloodstream, and I was still feeling good before I did the second shot. I’m currently 3 hours into my morning dose and I still feel like it’s at full strength. It also may be worth pointing out that I did a speedball shot this morning, and it was just plain amazing. I’ve got some weak coke, but it’s not cut with any active ingredients like amphetamines so with a good little line of that mixed up in the shot with the CW, it was the best breakfast shot ever. 100/5’

The delivery system also provided sensory pleasures. One heroin user described the anticipation and excitement of a delivery and the smell and sight of high quality heroin:

“ Within 5 minutes of receiving I anxiously ripped the letter apart (I’ve been sick all morning so this couldn’t have come at a better time) was going to test it, but opened my paraphernalia container and realized I’m out! I was not too concerned however, because of other user referrals. So I get [vendors] gear open (all shakily from w/d) and the oh so lovely smell hits me! WHACK! I put about ~50mg out, tooted and waited a few to see if I needed more… NOPE! The product looks exactly as the picture. …  Best bang for your buck EASY!

The system was not just about avoiding withdrawal. The production of withdrawal could be sought, but also warned against as dangerous as in this thread on naloxone where a user discussing using nalaoxone to shorten the withdrawal period:

‘“ this is a BAD idea:My understanding is forced precipitated withdrawals is not just a short cut to like day 2, it’s a short cut to the most intense hell on earth because the rate at which opioids leave your receptors has an effect on the severity of withdrawals. Meaning, it’s going to be way way worse to force precipitated withdrawals then if you let yourself go into withdrawals naturally. Like way worse. There is a reason ‘rapid detox’ is usually done under anesthesia and under medical supervision.I am not a pro so I don’t know any of this for sure, but please wait until somebody who knows for sure responds. ”

Alluding to a later topic there was a sense of the body being vulnerable and punished by the administration of naloxone. Naloxone could be a serious risk. On the other hand many users described using naloxone in order to avoid dangerous overdose and in that sense it could be a safety valve. Another use of the drug was as a time skip

“ Hey again! So bit of a funny one. I was given a naloxone injector as part of a drugs training thing (with 5 doses in it). I’ve always thought that could be a great way of skipping ahead to day 2 of withdrawals. well, 1= is that possible? The other thing is I can’t inject myself and my wife flat out refuses, thinking it’s a bad idea. She always says I have bad ideas and she’s always right, so I’m inclined to side with her a bit. Sooo… 2= what else can I do with this liquid? Put it on my tongue, mix it with a drink and swallow, put it up my ass? I’m guessing it’s a full on NO. ” (Bluelight)

Naloxone could be used to manage the stretches of waiting time that users were wary of. There was a sense of time being stretched in these accounts, as naloxone and fentanyl being used to manage this empty time.

Material and governance structure

There are obdurate times dictated by the delivery infrastructure, such as shipment times. These become part of the dope time. Its salience is defined by the drug user’s sense as to whether the time spend waiting is intentional. If he or she regards delayed shipments as the responsibility of the vendor or due to deliberate indifference on their part then this time is experienced more harshly. Dopesickness becomes more painful, and anxiety grows where that is the case. One reason for that is that the user is concerned that the drug may not arrive at all. That feature of the infrastructure then changes the texture of dope time for the user. It reminds them that the power in the relationship fundamentally lies with the vendor. The user worries that they may be thrown back on an unreliable face to face market, or have to go without. Dope time becomes upended.

This user describes the anxiety induced by these platform limits

Placed a little order and will report back, but interested to hear others thoughts. I ordered and supposedly the order was “shipped” from HIDETHEDRUGS 9 days ago. In resolution now. Told him it was going there if he did start communicating about the location. 4 days ago he asked for the zipcode. Then nothing until I went to resolution. Then he asked for the zip again and said he would get back after shipping everything out. Sent it with privnote this time and then he said he couldnt open it (though I got the “note has been read” notice. He wanted it again in PGP [encrypted]. Sent it AGAIN 9 hours ago. He has been on 6 hours ago. No answer. Still waiting.

The market’s escrow system, encryption and bitcoin’s gumminess all add to this wait.

Time can be perceived as being as a punishment, by enforcing waiting: waiting to be admitted to a programme, for treatment to start, for doses to become effective. In this example of prescription methadone

‘At the clinic (the one I went to) the lowest they start you is 15mg/day. But if .5mg of Buprenorphine keeps you good I would imagine 5mgs of methadone would be along the same lines… I was in the clinic for 3 years on 140mg/day, lost my job, and had to quit cold turkey from 100 mg/day. I was sick for a month. Methadone is a road best treaded carefully.’

Waiting time became more salient in the context of medicalised methadone and suboxone prescription compared to waiting for a delivery of heroin. Waiting for medicalised substitution drugs was different in two ways. It was mediated by a clinic or other service which required the user to adapt to the service’s timescale. It also was not going to produce a pleasurable experience but solely allay withdrawal symptoms.

Conclusion

Heroin’s bio time appears as a comprehensible, graspable form of sociality which is articulated through the infrastructure of the cryptomarket. It is one way in which a recognised shared cultural understanding of time in the context of drug use is reproduced and transformed through the digital market. The experience of time waiting for the drug is now distributed through several novel systems: the market infrastructure itself, the associated payment systems, the discussion boards, and the postal/courier system. As described at the start of the chapter, many heroin users have experienced institutional time as a sometimes supportive, sometimes alienating experience. Clinical time might be perceived as protective or as deliberately hostile depending on the context, prison time as explicitly punishing. The cryptomarket infrastructure allows users to share social time constructs and to some extent manage time themselves without being subject to the will of dealers or the governance processes of the treatment and criminal justice worlds. The market itself however is not purely experienced as a convenient, consumer focused infrastructure. It produces its own governance systems and demands which users also have to adapt to and incorporate into their novel sense of dope time materialised through a digital market.

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