The Dionysian Naturalist

Sacred Flesh:  A Critical Interactionist Approach to Drug Use, Identity, and Liberation Wayne Martin Mellinger, PhD Book Prospectus OVERVIEW Wild Flesh is a feral hymn against the mechanized soul of empire, a defiant offering from the margins of a society unraveling in the grip of carceral logic, Christian nationalism, and corporate anesthetics. It speaks in the voice of the wounded healer, the ecstatic seeker, the addict and the outreach worker, refusing to be pathologized or silenced. This book does not ask permission. It tears open the myths that govern our understanding of drugs, of users, of healing, and of power—revealing the raw and radiant truths beneath. Against a rising tide of authoritarianism that demands submission, categorization, and purification, Wild Flesh insists on the sacred disorder of embodied life, the wisdom of altered states, and the radical act of telling one’s story with unflinching honesty. It calls not just for policy change, but for spiritual reformat...