Medicamentos, consumos de performance e culturas terapêuticas em mudança

This article focuses on the use of pharmaceutical drugs and natural products to manage personal performance — i.e. the consumption of performance-enhancing substances, or what the authors refer to as performance-enhancing consumption. This in turn serves as the basis for an analytical reflection on the change in therapeutic cultures. Taking the current issue of pharmacologisation and the role of the natural in the expanding use of medicines as their points of reference, the authors show that the pharmacologisation of daily life is also emerging in fields
other than just health, giving rise to new logics in people’s relationships with this type of resource. The empirical basis for this approach was a national study on the consumption of performance-enhancing substances among the youth population in Portugal.