TABOO - TRANSGRESSION - TRANSCENDENCE

The common representation of biohacking and enhancement practices often portrays individuals using pharmaceuticals and other technologies to surpass “normal” levels of performance. However, for less visible biohackers, the goal is not to transcend normality but to approximate it—enabling them to endure unbearable tasks, conform to established roles, and maintain normative behavior in face-to-face interactions. This paper investigates the theoretical problem of (self)-control in the use of psychoactive substances. Biohackers “misuse” pharmaceuticals to regulate motivation, appear as “normies” in broader interactions, and make “boring” or “disgusting” tasks less overwhelming. These practices introduce new challenges: managing withdrawal symptoms, coping with hangovers, securing pharmaceutical supplies, and maintaining a non-stigmatized public image. 

Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s theories of technology and individuation, this study develops conceptual tools to describe the mediating role of technology in human experiences with psychoactive substances. Biohacker practices reflect a form of secondary adaptation, where vital functions are shared with external technologies, akin to machines relying on a technical milieu.

Based on ethnographic research within a community of gabapentinoid users, the article explores how they strive to imitate forms of normality while living under a militaristic dictatorship with pervasive existential threats. Regulatory frameworks, post-Soviet psychiatry, gray markets, and communal practices have shaped their biohacking into an aesthetic—“gabapentin chic” —characterized by unique forms of normality. This aesthetic, resembling heroin chic and Yami Kawaii, emphasizes everyday objects and situations over personal appearance, representing them through psychic struggles and psychopharmacological techniques.

By examining this community, the article describes how biohacking becomes both a survival mechanism and a distinct mode of existence, defined by its aesthetics in terms of both “cultural production” and the Kantian-Deleuzian sense of affective experience.