LSD Abuse and Gender

Men are more likely to abuse LSD; higher drug use rates are found among males across all ages. According to a study carried out in the U.S. in 2010, the rate of lifetime psychodelic drug abuse was 22% among males and 12% among females. One reason mentioned in literature is that economic downturns and the associated feelings of hopelessness and frustration may lead to increases in substance abuse with men trying to find a way to escape after losing or leaving a job (via). For short-term and long-term effects see e.g. HERE.



photograph by Gil Rigoulet via

"Out of it?" Old Age and Photographic Portraiture

Abstract: The essay examines representations of old age in photographic portraiture, focusing on works by such prominent American photographers of the last few decades as Nicholas Nixon, Richard Avedon, and Fazal Sheikh. It shows how the new aging studies, in conjunction with critical photo-history, critique American images of aging as narratives of mere decline. Visual culture, these scholars point out, conflates self and appearance, makes youth a fetish, marginalizes the old, and thus plays an important role in a much larger social and cultural devaluation of old age.



This essay questions this assumption, arguing that the camera's gaze doesn't necessarily identify the old as confused and in decline. Close readings of photographic images and series demonstrate how photographers like Avedon or Sheikh have created less constricting, more flexible representations of the old that transcend the problematic nature of the normative gaze. (Ribbat, 2011)

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- Ribbat, C. (2011). "Out of it?" Old Age and Photographic Portraiture. Amerikastudien/American Studies, 56(1), 67-84.
- photograph by Gil Rigoulet (1970s) via