Hangover free! The social and material trajectories of PartySmart

Abstract

This paper presents three embedded episodes in the life of a polyherbal drug indicated as a preventative measure for hangovers. Invented and marketed in 2005 by a leading ayurvedic pharmaceutical company in India, PartySmart is a reformulated compound based on ayurvedic, biomedical and phytochemical sources. This creative process has involved multiple translations, resulting in hybrid pharmacological models, including, for instance, ayurvedic post-digestive tastes and biomedical effects on enzymatic activities. These modes of therapeutic action are conceptualizations of an active drug-- i.e., a digested and metabolized drug. A problem arises, however, in the fact that the ingestion of this drug is linked to alcohol consumption in a country where it is widely considered in negative terms. For this reason, PartySmart was seen as an ambivalent presence in the firm's catalogue and thus a series of interventions aiming to uphold the image of this drug transformed both its social inscription and its materiality. This transformation also took a different, global trajectory as the drug gradually developed as a transnational pharmaceutical commodity and became a new object in new latitudes. By focusing on the social and material dimensions of this drug in these contexts, this paper calls upon science studies to expand the scope of pharmaceutical anthropology. It brings together various layers of analysis to offer new perspectives on contemporary herbal formulations as they traverse material cultures, medical epistemologies, sociopolitical borders, legal environments and social practices.

Influence of food commodities on hangover based on alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase activities

“…(2016) also confirmed the ability of starfruit to decrease the ADH activity, though not very significantly. A commercially available AHO product “PartySmart” containing grapes and gooseberry as ingredients has been reported to have a positive effect on both ADH and ALDH ( Pordié, 2015 ). Wang et al.…”

Unstable pharmaceutical values: the grey political economy of drug circulation in Cambodia

“…The firm is convinced they have been adding value to Ayurveda itself by "modernizing" the old tradition so that it fits the demands of our times. This type of firm is not uncommon among ayurvedic industries in India, but the material organization, management and personnel profile at the firm together with the reformulation, business and marketing practices have brought the pharmaceuticalisation of Ayurveda to its climax (Pordié 2014(Pordié , 2015. This is why it is difficult to distinguish these drugs from those produced by mainstream, multinational companies.…”

“…16 Creating new ayurvedic pharmaceuticals at Himalaya Wellness involves merging and mixing medical paradigms and categories but Ayurveda is somewhat downplayed. Not only do they look like biomedical drugs, all pharmaceuticals produced by the firm are endorsed by a number of scientific publications and their pharmacology is not presented in ayurvedic language, but exclusively in biomedical terms (Pordié 2015). This coupled with the fact that the drug seller was not versed in English led her to believe it was made of chemicals.…”

“…I actually came back to Cambodia in 2014 to extend the work I have been doing in India on this company since 2011(Pordié 2012(Pordié , 2014(Pordié , 2015Pordié and Gaudillière 2014). I selected Cambodia to examine the global diffusion of Himalaya's products because I was familiar with the country and the Khmer language -I worked and researched there for several years in the mid-1990s.10 There is a law on prescription drugs but it is never applied.…”

Reformulation and Appropriation of Traditional Knowledge in Industrial Ayurveda: The Trajectory of Jeevani

“…2 For critical use and discussion of the system's approach in the case of Ayurveda and its different modes of modernization, see Arnold 1993;Attewell 2007;Berger 2013;Leslie 1977Leslie , 1992Mukharji 2011Mukharji , 2016and Zimmermann 1989. Looking for a more dialectical or relational vision of the medical knowledge deemed traditional, we use Jeevani as an entry point into what we consider as a more general transformation of Ayurveda. In today's India, the pharmaceutical production based on local medical traditions, which started in the early twentieth century, is experiencing unprecedented developments (Banerjee 2009;Bode 2008;Langford 2004;Madhavan 2009;Pordié 2015;Pordié andGaudillière 2014a, 2014b;Sujatha 2011;Sujatha and Abraham 2012). 3 An industrialized world of Ayurveda is currently reinventing remedies and in doing so, it is borrowing from various sources of knowledge, which cannot be reduced to the tense dialog with biomedicine but seek to integrate various forms of local knowledge.…”