Developing an understanding of intoxicated bodily states is important for comprehending why people consume alcohol. This article sets out to investigate the intoxicated subjectivities of women who are in a relationship with another woman. Within the alcohol and other drug (AOD) field, gender, sexuality, and bodily perspectives have become more central objects of attention. While AOD studies have ascribed agency to both alcohol and the human body, how the body and alcohol together produce intoxicated subjective states has not been considered thoroughly. Through an examination of three women’s subjective accounts of intoxication, this study found that conceptualizing phenomena such as alcohol, gender, sexuality, and a predefined body as discrete, independent entities limits our understanding of the complexities of embodied intoxication. To overcome this limitation, the article draws on Karen Barad’s new materialism theory, which proves more sensitive to a range of different agents. This provides a new way of conceiving the onto-epistemological relations between these agents and challenges both common ideas about intoxication among same-sex experienced women and more general understandings of embodied subjectivity.
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