All substances are poisons; there is no one that is not poison. The right dose differentiates a poison from a medicine.

Paracelsus

Essay for Dilated Pupils is a photographic catalogue of pills of various types: ecstasy, candies containing LSD, antidepressant drugs, weight loss and sleeping pills, among others, all placed on an equal footing. These pills – regardless of whether or not they are legalized – share, in their majority, a number of substances in their composition, such as caffeine, sugar, amphetamines etc. The damage that such complementary substances do to our health has been widely discussed.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a drug is any substance that, when introduced into the body, interferes with its normal functioning – including alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, chocolate, coffee, mate tea, opium, coca leaf and its derivatives, among others. From the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, we have begun to implement prohibitions of substances we now categorize as illicit drugs, often with moral and/or economic values ​​involved.

We currently treat MDMA and LSD as dangerous drugs, even though scientific studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of MDMA for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorders and LSD for anxiety disorders. Conversely, the consumption of drugs such as amphetamines, anxiolytics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants is accepted as healthy, despite research showing the damages caused by the regular consumption of these substances.

The barriers between legality and illegality have never been clear, and this process has benefited large industries and policies that lead to the extermination of the poorest populations.

This essay, therefore, portrays several pills with the intention of blurring such fragile boundaries – between legality and illegality as well as between medicine and illicit drugs.

Raphael Escobar, Essay for Dilated Pupils, 2021

Photo: João Leoci