Anthropology & Medicine

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Hangover free! The social and material trajectories

of PartySmart

Laurent Pordié

To cite this article: Laurent Pordié (2015) Hangover free! The social and material trajectories of
PartySmart, Anthropology & Medicine, 22:1, 34-48, DOI: 10.1080/13648470.2015.1004773

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Anthropology & Medicine, 2015
Vol. 22, No. 1, 34 48, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13648470.2015.1004773

Hangover free! The social and material trajectories of PartySmart

Laurent Pordi
e*

National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, France

(Received 22 November 2014; final version received 4 January 2015)

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.
Keywords: pharmaceutical innovation; pharmacologies; materiality; reformulation
regime; pathway diversions; hangover studies

‘Social drinking is on a high’, claimed a headline in The Times of India on 25 May 2006.
The press article presented quantitative data pertaining to drinking patterns among the mid-
dle and upper classes of Bangalore, a powerful industrial and economic hub also known as
Pub City. We learn that almost 40% of the 350 respondents consider drinking as an essen-
tial part of socializing, and that an equal proportion admit that hangovers affect their pro-
ductivity at work. Consider the size of the potential market: if 40% of active people in the
megalopolises of India are unable to fulfill their professional duties on the Monday morn-
ings, as the study claims, then hangovers weigh heavily on the productivity of the whole
country. The invention and marketing of a pill that prevents hangovers would not only pro-
tect ayurvedic livers in India, it would also boost the national economy. The therapeutic,
social and economic life of such a drug holds golden promises. Unfortunately, however,
we do not live in a dream world. As in many surveys and in many places on Earth, statis-
tics and numbers usually mask human realities, when they do not actively corrupt them.
A market research organization was tasked with this survey by the manufacturer of
PartySmart, a drug indicated for hangover prevention and marketed in India in 2005, the

*Email: laurent.pordie@ehess.fr

Ó 2015 Taylor & Francis

 Anthropology & Medicine 35

year before the results were made public in one of the most read and most prestigious
national newspapers. This is a form of direct-to-consumer marketing that erases the traces
of its own genealogy. Using a common practice among pharmaceutical companies, the
manufacturer deliberately disappeared from the landscape in the hope of increasing the
sales of the product thanks to the presented outcomes of the survey and to the neutrality
and credibility conferred by the newspaper.
PartySmart was invented by The Himalaya Drug Company, a leading ayurvedic
industry in India and globally. This drug signals the emergence of a new configuration of
Ayurveda, which bears on contemporary invention, manufacturing and production practi-
ces, as well as their central role in reshaping the way traditional knowledge-based phar-
maceutical innovations are appropriated and protected by law (Pordi
e and Gaudilliere
2014). This innovation regime profoundly questions the economic, epistemological, and
regulatory contexts of pharmaceutical innovation. It also influences the drugs’ materiality,
as recipes change in form, content and appearance. Based on the formulations and
descriptions of plant properties fixed in ancient texts (

sastra) while combining ayurvedic,
biomedical and phytochemical sources in its prospection mechanisms, this model consists
of reformulating remedies in order to create new, ideally global, ayurvedic medicines
adapted to the biomedically-defined ailments of a middle-class, urban clientele. This
innovation process involves multiple translations, as well as heterodox and creative epis-
temologies where nosological categories and pharmacological universes overlap. The
next section of this paper will examine a specific aspect of this complex situation: how do
drug innovators deal with multiple pharmacologies and imagine the modes of therapeutic
action of PartySmart? To answer this question requires the drugs’ trajectory to be fol-
lowed conceptually within the body, since it needs to be activated by the transformative
process of digestion to be pharmacologically significant. Indeed, like most pharmaceuti-
cals, this drug ultimately becomes part of the body (Sanabria 2009); its materiality is then
closely intertwined with body materials.
Once such new formulae are created, the industry then ‘stabilizes’ them by appropriat-
ing and registering them as ‘Ayurvedic Proprietary Medicine’ which appears to be the
quickest and most cost-efficient means to enter the Indian, and indeed the global market.
The new ayurvedic formulations belong to the category of proprietary medicines, which
are exclusively owned by licensed manufacturers and usually marketed under a name reg-
istered as a trademark. The presence of these new ayurvedic drugs on the market means
that the dynamics of compound formulations is officially recognized in India or, in other
words, that therapeutic objects such as ayurvedic pharmaceuticals are seen as flexible
since new compositions are not only considered valid but also encouraged1 (Pordi
e
2014). This provision opens up an infinite choice of options for The Himalaya Drug Com-
pany in the creation of formulations.
Contrary to common assumptions, these new ayurvedic objects are never definitively
fixed. In fact, they are transformable, adaptable, and susceptible to circumstances. Object-
hood is fragile, wrote Appadurai (2006, 15): ‘all things are congealed moments in a lon-
ger social trajectory’. The case of PartySmart constitutes a perfect example of not only
social but material trajectory. This paper will provide an ethnographic testimony to this,
while retracing the biography of the drug (van der Geest, Reynolds Whyte, and Hardon
1996) and identifying changing sets of ideas and ‘regimes of values’ (Appadurai 1986).
Particular attention will be given to the ambiguous status of the drug: what is the social
meaning of the consumption of PartySmart in a country where the use of alcohol is widely
considered in negative terms? How to address, if not resolve, this thorny moral issue?
This slippery terrain partly explains the ‘pathway diversion’ of this drug (Kopytoff 1986),
36 L. Pordi

e

which moved out of the commodity state temporarily before being reinstated and re-mar-
keted under new social (including clinical) and material conditions.
This paper will underscore the social inscription and the materiality of the drug in an
attempt to expand the scope of studies into the social lives of drugs (Reynolds Whyte,
van der Geest, and Hardon 2002; van der Geest 2011), which tend to overlook the mate-
rial formation of pharmaceuticals and to privilege their social, cultural and symbolic
dimensions. Drawing from science studies, this paper will look at PartySmart as a techni-
cal device (Akrich 1996), so as to highlight the links between its material characteristics
and the associated forms of use. Although it was originally presented differently, we will
see that this drug has been repackaged in order to look identical to other pharmaceuticals
in the company. Moreover, it is no longer promoted in the night clubs frequented by
trendy and emancipated Indian youths, but through scientific marketing directed at bio-
medical prescribers. Thus revamped, revalued and embedded in a new relational network,
this drug acquired a new meaning and gained pharmaceutical credibility. Indeed, the
object is bound to its environment here the clinical space of health professionals
because it is this environment and the practices that take place within it that ultimately
define the object (Latour 2005; Law 2002). Finally, this paper will take this issue further
by briefly following a third itinerary that will take us to Mongolia where the drug can
now be understood as a transnational pharmaceutical commodity. PartySmart appears as
a ‘boundary object’ of its kind, circulating between and within multiple worlds. The
social and material trajectories of PartySmart thus bring together various layers of analy-
sis to offer a critical reflection on modern herbal formulations as they traverse material
cultures, medical epistemologies, sociopolitical borders, legal environments and social
practices.

Overlapping pharmacologies
Time is an important dimension of drug intake. It is essential for oral medications such as
PartySmart, simply because most drugs need to be digested and metabolized to act on and
modify the body. And this takes some time. Of course, this view is linear; it ignores the
fact that healing processes may start long before a drug is ‘digested’. The idea of taking a
medicine, the smell of the waiting room in the clinic, the sight of the doctor’s white coat,
or the mood with which one embraces the disease may play a role in healing, depending
on the situation, pathology and patient. But this is not how most people comprehend the
mode of action of an oral drug, nor is it how it is understood in many existing pharmacol-
ogies. There is a temporal distance between the act of taking a drug and its pharmacologi-
cal effects. The digestive transformation of a pharmaceutical makes it an active object. It
is only then that one may study the action of a drug in the body.
The pharmacology of the six plants (or more precisely, plant parts) composing PartyS-
mart were originally introduced to the author in ayurvedic idiom. What follows is an out-
rageously simplified presentation to provide the non-specialist reader with basic elements
for comparison with other pharmacological paradigms. In this form of humoral medicine,
four main groups of qualities characterize every medicinal substance (dravya); namely
taste (rasa), potency (vırya), post-digestive taste (vipaka), and specific action (prabhava),
which is the empirical action of a drug that goes beyond the understanding of its rasa,
vırya and vipaka. To these four, one should add the physical properties (gun ̣a) of a sub-
stance, which broadly govern the action of a medicine.2 The digestive alteration of taste
(vipaka) involves temporality as the substance needs to be eaten for this to materialize. It
is not readily perceivable without being digested, as taste can be. In fact, the post-
 Anthropology & Medicine 37

Table 1. Main ayurvedic pharmacological qualities of PartySmart ingredients.

Vipaka
Botanical Gun ̣a (physical Vırya (post-digestive
Sanskrit name denomination properties) Rasa (taste) (potency) taste)

Bunimbah ̣ Andrographis Light, dry Bitter Cold Pungent

paniculata
Draks ̣a Vitis vinifera Heavy, mobile, Sweet, astringent Cold Sweet
unctuous
Amalakı Emblica Light, dry Sour, sweet, bitter, Cold Sweet
officinalis astringent,
pungent
Kasanı Cichorium Light, dry Sharp Cold Pungent
intybus
Khar ̣jurah ̣ Phoenix Heavy, Sweet, astringent, Cold Sweet
dactylifera unctuous
Bhumyamalakı Phyllanthus Light, dry Sharp, sweet, Cold Sweet
amarus astringent

digestive tastes are often considered to have a stronger action than the perceivable taste
(rasa) because they may well lead to corrections of an original theory solely based on per-
ceivable tastes. When the action of drugs disagrees with their taste, the underlying explan-
atory framework is empirically modified to match experiential evidence. Knowledge of
the post-digestive taste is acquired through inference (anumana), because it is inaccessi-
ble to the senses (Meulenbeld 1987, 9). It is the result of clinical observation and therefore
known a posteriori. These characteristics and their imbrications and implications deter-
mine the pharmacology of ingested substances (through their action (karma) on various
bodily constituents, such as the seven tissues or the disturbed humors, dos ̣a) and allow
ayurvedic practitioners to understand their modes of action. See Table 1 in the case of
PartySmart.
Whatever the mechanisms these individual qualities follow to work on the body,3 their
collective action as a compound is missing. PartySmart is a formulation a yogam the
action of which remains hard to explain in ayurvedic terms. Moreover, in contemporary
India, it is uncommon to possess in-depth knowledge of the epistemic logic of substance
association (Naraindas 2014), let alone the pharmacology of a complex polyherbal.
Today, however, these qualities are written in stone and innovative practitioners do
not question their reliability, but use them and other pharmacological principles in the
creation of new drugs. Creating new ayurvedic pharmaceuticals at The Himalaya Drug
Company involves merging and mixing paradigms and categories. The firm makes use of
biomedical sciences, such as pharmacology, on a daily basis. A large proportion of the
research and engineering staff requirements are for specializations such as pharmacy,
pharmacology, chemistry or allied biomedical sciences. The vaidyas (a term used to des-
ignate the practitioners of Ayurveda) are a minority in the firm, but they nevertheless
play a leading role as they put together new formulations or revise existing ones. Most of
the R&D staff and this also applies to business and management come from biophar-
maceutical companies in India, such as Pfizer and the like. This includes virtually all the
heads of departments, from quality assurance to international regulatory affairs, or from
formulation development to medical services and clinical trials. These people reproduce
what they know in a new framework. In this context, Ayurveda tends to disappear from
38 L. Pordi

e

the landscape as the formulation advances to clinical research, production and marketing.
Ayurvedic knowledge is ultimately subordinated to other knowledge forms.
The ways in which drugs such as PartySmart and their components are publicly pre-
sented reflect this situation. As is the case for all drugs at The Himalaya Drug Company,
PartySmart is endorsed by a number of scientific publications and its pharmacology is not
presented in ayurvedic language, but exclusively in biomedical terms. Consider the exam-
ple of two of the plants composing PartySmart (the rest are presented in a similar
fashion):4

Andrographis paniculata (Common name: The creat)

Pharmacology: It increases biliary flow and liver weight in rats. It shows hepatoprotective
action. It improves non-specific immune response. Andrographolide produces a significant
dose-dependent choleretic effect, as evidenced by increase in bile flow, bile salt and bile
acids in conscious rats and anaesthetized guinea pigs.

Vitis vinifera (Common name: Grape)

Pharmacology: It contains polyphenol resveratrol, a chemical substance that may have anti-
oxidant properties. The catechins and anthocyanogenic tannins present in Grapes possess bio-
flavonoid properties. The antioxidants present in Grapes reduce the damage caused by free
radicals and slacken the ageing process. Grapes increase the nitric oxide levels in the blood,
which prevents blood clots, thereby reducing the chances of heart attacks. In addition, the
antioxidants present in Grapes prevent the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, which blocks blood
vessels.

Similarly, the mode of action of the drug PartySmart as a compound follows the
bio-pharmacological model (although, as mentioned above, an exact ayurvedic pharma-
cological explanation is hard to reach, and it could be assumed that a basic, overall ayur-
vedic explanation such as the one below may have been made up):

When alcohol is consumed, it is mainly converted into acetaldehyde by the liver. It is the
build-up of acetaldehyde that results in hangover symptoms such as headache, nausea, irrita-
bility and fatigue. The build-up of acetaldehyde also sets the stage for major liver, brain and
heart damage. PartySmart protects the liver and prevents alcohol-related hangovers by speed-
ing up the eradication of acetaldehyde from the liver. This is accomplished by an increase in
the levels of enzymes ADH (alcohol dehydrogenase) and ALDH (acetaldehyde dehydroge-
nase) in the liver.5

Executive personnel at the firm, the PartySmart marketing manager, medical repre-
sentatives and their visual folders or published materials all speak of enzymatic activities
and accumulation of acetaldehydes, among other non-ayurvedic ideas, to explain
‘hepatic’ protection and hangover prevention. The company thus seeks ‘scientific credi-
bility’. This also forms an integral part of the branding process: it aims to reinforce the
brand by achieving narrative standardization and consistency.6
How do the vaidyas at the company react to this? There seems to be an abyss between
the ayurvedic pharmacological explanations briefly presented above and this form of sci-
entific marketing. In fact, they are not contradistinctive. As in current discourses on inte-
grative medicine, the two approaches are just seen as different ways to explain (and
sometime reciprocally justify) the same thing and these explanatory modes are inter-
changeable. The discrepancy is situational and discursive: two very distinct
 Anthropology & Medicine 39

pharmacological discourses can be found depending on the situation. In private, the

author was given a series of detailed lectures on (mainly) textual Ayurveda probably to
satisfy the desires of a foreigner interested in traditional medicine but in public the lan-
guage is biomedical. However, in practice, the pharmacology of ingested substances
shows paradigmatic overlaps and shifts.
As written above, the post-digestive taste (vipaka) is understood to often have a stron-
ger effect than vırya (potency) because it is primarily based on clinical observation.
When asked about the situations in which vipaka would have a weaker effect than vırya,
one vaidya borrowed some ideas from chemistry. He explained that since the effect of
vırya is based primarily upon the chemical properties of a substance, it dictates the effect
of the drug. There are some detailed ayurvedic explanations on the relations between the
effects of vırya and vipaka, but this is not how the vaidya framed them. He told the author
he chose to rely on chemistry because this is how he understood it in the lab. For him, the
chemical properties of a plant reflected its elementary constitution. He added: ‘you under-
stand, the five elements are ultimately a matter of chemistry. How could it be otherwise?
And when a substance is ingested the vırya does not change, both its chemical composi-
tion and its bhutas [elements] remain still. What changes is the post-digestive taste.’ This
messy departure from ayurvedic theory prompted one of the vaidyas who was sitting next
to us to interject: ‘Sir, he said to his colleague, I think you confuse him [. . .]. In fact, as
the tastes are composed of the five elements, they reveal the molecular nature of a sub-
stance which is expressed in terms of the gun ̣as [its physical properties]. This allows us to
make bridge with modern pharmacology. For example, if you look closely, you will find
that vipaka as a category of drug action has much correspondence with the modern notion
of polarity.’ The author was puzzled. As an anthropologist trained in pharmacology and
trying to understand Ayurveda for over a decade, the author could not understand the
depth of the comparison. The author also thought that this brief discussion was exemplary
of the kind of uneasy hybridity that takes place in today’s ayurvedic drug discovery.
‘But how can PartySmart’s mechanism of action be explained?’ the author asked. He
was first told again that alcohol, once digested and transformed into acetaldehyde, was
promoting liver damage. There is a reduction in fatty acid oxidation due to the decreased
activity of the citric acid cycle, and the release of free oxygen radicals that also causes
problems. The author’s interlocutors claimed that although there are few descriptions in
the ayurvedic texts regarding the direct involvement of the liver (yakr ̣t) in specific dis-
eases, a dysfunction of the liver has an array of consequences as this organ is the seat of
fire and the main site of essential (ayurvedic) physiological functions. The liver also chan-
nels all chemical and metabolic transformations in the body. They added that the chosen
herbs have effects on both the protection of the liver as an organ (essentially by destroy-
ing acetaldehyde) and the balancing of the humors. The author remained unsure of how
PartySmart was supposed to really act on the body, but understood that this drug and its
digestion provided a focus for creative innovation in pharmacology, giving antioxidant
properties to some tastes, or equating dos ̣a balancing to the control of enzymatic activi-
ties. This kind of hybrid pharmacology emerged because PartySmart did not only cross
bodily boundaries, the drug also traversed and merged distinct conceptual universes.

The rebirth of PartySmart

The temporal dimension of drug intake also helps to observe the social inscription of Par-
tySmart. This drug should be taken thirty minutes before the first drink in order to avoid a
hangover the following day. Its action takes place right after digestion but its effects are
40 L. Pordi

e

noticeable much later and under precise conditions: the user must have a few drinks for
the drug to be working in her body. PartySmart users need to anticipate alcohol intake. In
a country where the use of alcohol is generally considered in negative terms (Sharma, Tri-
pathi, and Pelto 2010), the marketing of PartySmart has raised some eyebrows. This is
why The Himalaya Drug Company, otherwise known for its aggressive promotional strat-
egies, has never presented itself as one of the world’s specialists in hangover prevention
in spite of its advanced work on the subject:7 the ambiguous status of the drug poses prob-
lem for a company that has set great store in promoting its ethical approach and moral
righteousness.
In 2005, the polyherbal was the latest addition to the firm’s range of products targeting
liver disorders. Classified in their ‘innovation category’, the PartySmart drug is said to
have been found by the research team responsible for Liv.52, the company’s flagship
product, invented in 1955. Indicated for a number of liver-related disorders, Liv.52 sells
annually more than one billion tablets and over 13 million bottles of syrup worldwide. It
is ranked seventh among the bestselling medicines in India the only herbal preparation
among the first 100 in the IMS ranking of January 2013.8 Liv.52 is one of the world’s
most enduring phytomedicines, endorsed by more than 260 peer-reviewed (but sometimes
questionable) clinical studies; it is approved by the Swiss Medical Agency as a pharma-
ceutical specialty product and prescribed as an adjuvant in the treatment of tuberculosis
in Russian hospitals, to cite just a few examples. Liv.52 sales have grown constantly for
over half a century. Making use of the legacy of Liv.52 and the firm’s claimed mastery of
liver disorders made obvious sense in the marketing of PartySmart. ‘Liv.52 was launched
in 1955 and enabled Himalaya to achieve the status of the world leader in hepatic disor-
ders. This expertise was harnessed by Himalaya in the development of PartySmart,’ reads
the drug promotion website.9 After all, hangovers also involve the liver.
In spite of its genealogy, PartySmart has always been and surely always will be, a
fringe product at The Himalaya Drug Company. Indeed, the main problem is that the pro-
motion of this product is thought to encourage alcohol consumption and therefore damage
the firm’s image. Although a recent study proved that to the contrary, hangover relief does
not encourage the subject to drink more (Piasecki et al. 2005), the stigma of both alcohol
consumption and the product itself in India has been considered seriously by the firm’s
directors. PartySmart has generated some discomfort within the company, as explained
by the CEO:

This [product] is not who we are . . . It is not really our philosophy. Our philosophy is to heal
people. We are against this idea, like you tell a guy, ‘listen you pop three of these and you go
get wasted buddy, you know, we are with you.’ It is not our message; it is not a responsible
message. Our message is ‘look after yourself, look after your body’. [. . .] How I see PartyS-
mart in the scheme of things [at Himalaya] is a long story . . . It was the outcome of some
very good research out here, and they said ‘listen, we have this fantastic product that actually
cures hangovers, why don’t we sell it?’ I said, yes let’s do it. The Chairman is very clear, he
said ‘look, I don’t encourage drinking. If a guy wants to get smashed let him go to hell, we’re
not in this space, we should be treating people who are not well. . .’ I asked what about this
product, and he says ‘fine, go ahead’. (Extracts of interviews conducted in March 2013)

Even so, after its invention in 2005 and during the next few years, PartySmart was
aggressively promoted in bars and clubs frequented by middle class, trendy youths, by a
sister firm of The Himalaya Drug Company. It had its own dedicated website, which
introduced the product, provided detailed research papers, a photo gallery of young peo-
ple having fun and a list of alcoholic cocktails and their origins and detailed recipes.
 Anthropology & Medicine 41

As a result, most users were party people, such as Vijay and his friends, with whom
the author crossed paths in the South Indian town of Pondicherry in August 2010. Inter-
ested in the party side of the city, this group of software engineers and highly educated
NGO officers in their late 20s travelled all the way from the industrial hub of Bangalore
for what they would later call ‘one of the most perfect weekends ever’. They stayed in a
hotel in the colonial town, a location that reflected their social status. They had their first
beer for breakfast upon their arrival in Pondicherry on a sunny Saturday morning. Clearly,
to them PartySmart was an adjuvant to partying. Vijay said that he had forgotten the num-
ber of empty beer bottles they left behind them before they passed out in their hotel room
late in the night, but insisted on recounting the following morning. ‘We were fine, fresh
and ready to go again . . . we never forget to swallow this nifty little pill called
PartySmart,’ he said, and burst out laughing.
As with other products at the firm, PartySmart is aimed at the middle and upper social
classes of urban India. In many ways, this new configuration of Ayurveda resembles what
classical Ayurveda was in the past. It was an elite medicine, initially serving royalty,
practiced by higher castes, and, contrary to common assumptions, use of this medicine
has always been relatively limited among the majority of the population. Moreover, as far
as alcohol consumption is concerned, one of the founding ayurvedic texts written in the
first centuries A.C., the Carakasaṃhita, underscores the fact that alcohol consumption is
only acceptable among the higher fringes of the society. This is made clear in a chapter
dealing with the treatments of alcoholism, which sets out the rules (vidhina) concerning
the consumption of alcohol and the category of persons for whom it is a poison:

Above all one must purify his body, internally and externally; apply perfume, wear clean
clothes and dress according to the seasons; wear beautiful and numerous garlands, precious
stones and ornaments; honor the gods and the Brahmins and ensure you always are in contact
with the most beneficial things. Then we can sit or lie down comfortably on the bed, or take a
seat covered with soft cushions and located in the best place depending on the season. Sur-
rounded by flowers, exalted by the fragrance of incense in the presence of good friends, alco-
hol will be drunk in cups made of gold, silver or precious stones or in fine mugs bearing the
same characteristics. [. . .] We must choose friends who bring pleasure when drinking with
them, who are affable, soft-spoken, have a beautiful appearance and are appreciated by the
notables. We will prefer art lovers, sensitive, tolerant and friendly; they will add panache to
these meetings, true festivals where we are happy to meet and drink together.

[. . .]

In contrast, [alcohol] acts as a poison for those who abuse or use of adulterated alcohol, who
at the same time follow dry and coarse diets and, in addition, are involving themselves in
physical activities. (Papin 2009: 443-444, 447)

PartySmart is promoted directly to such high-end urban consumers in their contempo-

rary manifestations, and not to the physically-strained workers and poor villagers. In
some ways, it reproduces these social differences. And this is all the more true because
alcohol consumption is sometimes associated with criminality and seen as a pathology
characterizing low castes and impoverished populations, while it is acceptable for the
upper social fringes (Doron 2011).
The company initially classified the product as a lifestyle drug, an OTC (over-the-
counter) product. However, due to the need to uphold the image of the product (and the
company), the drug was withdrawn from the market in 2009 in order to re-launch it as a
pharmaceutical specialty, available through prescription only. The original colorful,
42 L. Pordi

e

flashy packaging was replaced by a sober presentation in line with the graphic chart of the
pharmaceutical range of products. And so PartySmart looked like the other products of
this range when it was re-introduced several months later in 2010. Although the name of
the drug remained unchanged in order to keep an obvious genealogy between the old and
new forms of the product, the slogan associated with the drug and present on the packag-
ing was also revamped: in 2005 it read ‘Hangover free naturally;’ this was changed in
2010 to ‘Relieves the unpleasant after-effects of alcohol’. This is a typical case of com-
modity pathway diversion10 as the drug moved out of the commodity state before it was
reintroduced in the market under new social and material conditions. While the process
had no effect on the content of the product, the drug is now a different object because its
very status has changed: PartySmart became a pharmaceutical specialty.
This drug is now marketed to biomedical prescribers and no longer directly to
consumers although the drug’s latest website is the only one of the company to
play Dance Music. These prescribers act both as intermediaries between the firm
and the consumers and as agents conferring a new pharmaceutical credibility, a new
order of legitimacy for a product once considered to be superfluous. In other words,
they mediate social relationships and make them more acceptable. They help to
draw a line between what is morally apposite and what is not. Of course, no one is
taken in. The line is unstable and the frontier it embodies heavily porous. While this
shift has consolidated the new pharmaceutical status of the drug, the aim was also
to increase its consumers. As the CEO put it: ‘we found that there are regular users
and people who do not touch [PartySmart]’. These potential consumers could be
reached through the help of doctors and their prescriptions. Since in India, the law
governing the sale of ‘prescription drugs’ is rarely, if at all, enforced, this move was
also a clever strategy to extend this drug’s market.
The Himalaya Drug Company insists on a professional register, and a scientific rela-
tionship with the prescribers. The firm develops its market through very active scientific
marketing, which systematically mobilizes the biomedical sciences for promotion pur-
poses and uses marketing itself as a form of science.11 It is conducted in practice with the
help of medical representatives, events sponsoring and other forms of advertisement,
pitching the firm’s practice of laboratory research and clinical trials, and using the posi-
tive results of controlled therapeutic trials conducted outside the firm. These trials are
sometimes conducted by collaborators, medical researchers and clinicians, who are
enlisted to contribute to the commercial enterprise of the firm (Sismondo 2004). The
Himalaya Drug Company publishes several journals targeted at doctors in which part of
its scientific work is presented while the rest is mostly published in biomedical jour-
nals. The marketing is largely aimed at biomedical practitioners, who, the author was
told, account for 60% of product sales in India and bring credibility to the brand. This
strategy dates back to 1965 when the company employed a German national named Mr.
Karstein as a consultant to ‘develop a more scientific approach to marketing’ in order to
gain the trust of biomedical physicians. A former employee of Pfizer, this man ‘was
brought in with a mandate to train the sales force in the art of product detailing. He
directed the focus of the company towards a strong field presence and helped build a cul-
ture of winning doctor prescriptions and orders using strong clinical evidence.’12 This
explains why, to be accessible and credible to both biomedical prescribers and global con-
sumers, all therapeutic products at The Himalaya Drug Company are presented in
‘scientific language’. Biomedical physicians, for example, are given products’ mono-
graphs that comprise a collection of scientific papers or exerts of publications exclusively
written in the biomedical idiom. They are also regularly visited by medical
 Anthropology & Medicine 43

representatives a common practice for mainstream pharmaceutical companies who

introduce their range of (ayurvedic) products in the same (biomedical) language.
These medical representatives usually introduce a set of products, selected according
to their doctor specialty and location. As a way to circumvent the taboo issue of hang-
overs, the focus now explicitly addresses ‘social drinking’. The discourses of the people
in charge of PartySmart at the company, and those of medical representatives, as well as
the leaflets they leave at doctors’ offices, today repeat what the Times of India article
stated back in 2006 (they use these exact same numbers and quote the survey discussed at
the beginning of this paper). They therefore stress that for many people in today’s India,
social drinking is unavoidable (with colleagues or friends), so better help them to avoid
hangovers in order to improve their quality of life and to be more efficient at the office
the next day. The argument is built by citing biomedical papers that underscore the
product’s efficacy and its mode of action. Attempts have also been made to extend the
product’s indications by encouraging its use in the recovery days that follow extreme con-
sumption of alcohol: ‘Sometimes guys who are very smashed end up in clinics so we tell
the medical personnel to put them on PartySmart for a week because it helps to clean up
the body. The mode of action remains the same,’ asserted a member of the company.
This new promotional strategy ‘did not impact OTC sales in any way’, while ‘sales
through prescribers are much better than before. [. . .] There was an initial spike and after
that the sales stabilized’, claimed one of the leading personnel in the Business Department
while recognizing that PartySmart ranks as one of the overall lowest product sales for the
company. Despite strong scientific marketing efforts in 2010 to launch the re-imagined
product, the firm does not spend as much on marketing and promoting this marginal drug
as it does for other pharmaceuticals. It is still a fringe product. PartySmart continues to be
seen as disconnected from the company products and ethos. The problem, says the CEO,
lies with drinking habits in India:

Yes, and that is what the Chairman also says; we know PartySmart works, we know it is a
great product, we are not into giving a personal license to people who want to party. In coun-
tries where it is not taboo, then it is fine. Well . . . in India people drink to get smashed, not
really to enjoy taste. That’s the problem. (Extract of interview conducted in November 2012)

This real-life consumers’ profile, or the case of Vijay and his friends presented above,
does not match the image of ‘social drinkers’ introduced in the beginning of this paper.
Against those who use the drug as an adjuvant to partying, the company chose to officially
target the type of working people who supposedly take the pharmaceutical before busi-
ness dinners or recreational social activities. If we listen to the directors of the firm, how-
ever, PartySmart may have greater success overseas.

Marketing global hangovers

The Himalaya Drug Company reinvents ayurvedic remedies and very actively nourishes
the market in Ayurvedic Proprietary Medicines. These newly formulated drugs are
increasingly present in the global market and the firm concentrates most of its efforts in
this direction. Established in 1930 in Dehradun in the Himalayan foothills (hence the
name), the company has experienced a quick and strong development. As a leading actor
in fostering change in Ayurveda, the firm swiftly expanded its presence in India with offi-
ces in Mumbai, for example, and later relocated its headquarters to Bangalore, South
India. An advanced manufacturing unit one of the first herbal manufacturing units in
44 L. Pordi

e

India to be granted the Good Manufacturing Practices certification was established

there in 1975 essentially for financial reasons. The city was not the trendy industrial hub
it is today and the production costs were significantly lower than in Mumbai. Then in
1991 its Research & Development facilities were relocated to Bangalore. Today, the
global headquarters of all Himalaya subsidiaries, namely Himalaya Global Holdings Ltd.,
are located in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Like many firms and institutions in
India, this company now relies on the growing global awareness of the pharmaceutical
brand and the reputation of the city firms in Bangalore, for instance, are trading on its
reputation as ‘India’s silicon valley,’ and thus a hub for the knowledge-based service
economy and scientific expertise, much as Dubai is portrayed as a ‘global city’ and the
business and cultural center of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region.
The company employs over 2000 personnel, who are scattered over the production,
administrative or business branches in India or elsewhere in Singapore, Dubai, Johannes-
burg, Houston or Riga, Latvia. A specific line of organic lifestyle products is manufac-
tured in India for the US market. In early 2013, for the first time in the company’s
history, product manufacturing moved outside India, since the Middle East operations
now produce Himalaya products in Dubai. As their directors put it, they form ‘an Indian
multinational company competing with the likes of Glaxo, AstraZeneca and Pfizer’. Their
playing field is not limited to the so-called milieu of ‘alternative healing’: The Himalaya
Drug Company has entered its own Big Pharma era. By targeting India’s middle and
upper urban social classes as well as worldwide consumers, the firm has reached a growth
rate of over 20% and a turnover of approximately US$196 million in 2011.13 At the time
of writing, The Himalaya Drug Company is a success story.
The promotional materials for PartySmart also have a global flavor. Among the six
plants in the formulation, every one of them finds their origins, therapeutic indications
and effects either in ancient (ayurvedic) texts or from healing practices outside of India
(e.g. ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Arabic).14 The PartySmart consumers are thus
invited to take portions of global knowledge associated with some of the greatest civiliza-
tions of the past.
There is a noticeable presence of PartySmart in Ulaan Batar, the capital city of Mon-
golia, where the author has recently started fieldwork. Here, the firm Oaxᴎyp Tөmөp
(Tsakhiur Tumur) operates as the exclusive dealer for the Indian company. The products
are actively sold through five retail shops and promoted through aggressive marketing
mechanisms, including a strong presence on TV and radio through a range of popular
advertisements. A recent marketing operation took place on World Hepatitis Day on 28
July 2013. This is the second consecutive year World Hepatitis Day has been used. The
company organized what they called an educational event not a promotional one,
although people wore ‘Himalaya’ printed caps and Liv.52 T-shirts. During a rather small
scale event, they explained what hepatitis was about, organized some activities and (not
so) discreetly publicized their liver-related products. Naturally, Liv.52 took the fore-
ground, as a treatment for hepatitis and liver disorders, but discussions also concerned
alcohol intake and, inevitably, PartySmart.
The firm’s global presence has opened such new markets. According to the
company’s leaders, PartySmart also does well in Russia, as well as in Singapore and
Malaysia. The only drug of its kind in India at the time of research, PartySmart however
competes with a range of international products as attempts are made worldwide to come
up with the perfect hangover remedy.15 In places where people are active consumers, the
PartySmart pill is subject to first-hand investigation. For instance, journalists at the Las
Vegas Weekly volunteered to try several of the products available that claim to prevent
 Anthropology & Medicine 45

hangovers, including PartySmart (see Team Hangover 2008), and there are many Internet
forums where the effects of the pill are discussed at length.
However, not all herbal products are suitable for foreign markets. At the Himalaya
Drug Company, the Department of International Regulatory Affairs intervenes in the
selection of the final formulas to make sure none of the ingredients are banned from the
targeted countries, or even better, that one or more ingredients are part of their national
pharmacopeia. PartySmart meets these requirements. The number of ingredients also
plays a big role in reaching the global market. Whereas some of the classical ayurvedic
formulations comprised dozens of ingredients, the new generation of ayurvedic drugs
such as PartySmart contain a much smaller number of components. This type of formula-
tion is in line with the European (Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive EC
Directive 2004/24/EC, as of 1 April 201116), American and WHO recommendations or
regulations regarding polyherbals. Manufacturers are encouraged to compose their formu-
lations with up to six plants, as is the case for PartySmart, to ease controls and potential
trials. This drastic reduction facilitates market penetration. However, these new, simpli-
fied formulations, claim the manufacturers, carry the same, if not better, efficacy as the
original. What counts here is the ‘ontological weight’ (Law 1991) of their claims and
what this has to say about the flexibility of ayurvedic pharmaceuticals (Pordi
e 2014).
Once the drug gets clearance to enter a foreign market, the actual marketing is either
done by the local branch of the firm, if there is one, or through specialized companies in
charge of importing and distributing The Himalaya Drug Company products. Such is the
case in Mongolia, where the leaders of the national dealer Oaxᴎyp Tөmөp have great
hopes for PartySmart, judging by ‘the population’s inclination towards partying and alco-
hol in Ulaan Baatar’. The official target group is therefore distinct from that of India,
which makes PartySmart in Mongolia a different kind of object altogether. Indeed,
objects acquire meaning in a specific context, itself embedded in a relational network at a
specific point in space and time (Mol and Law 1994, Law 2002, Law and Hassard 1999).
This is perhaps why the author found in the head offices of the Mongolian dealer boxes of
the old, colorful English language packaging once promoted in the night clubs of India.
These leftover boxes were shipped to Mongolia after the Indian offices revised their
national strategy. Surely, spatial mobility involves a recontextualization of the object
which, in turn, transforms it (Latour 1999). But here, one can also assume that beside
financial motives saving unused boxes there also were attempts at adapting and
localizing PartySmart in Mongolia. These practices have proved to be the backbone of
the success of global businesses, such as the infamous golden arches fast-food chain
(Watson 2006). However, a question remains on the ability of PartySmart to actually con-
quer the world market. Alcohol consumption is a huge phenomenon worldwide, and to
cater to the needs and better match local perceptions of the drug in each of these places
and therefore to facilitate appropriation.

Conclusion
The social and material itineraries of PartySmart show some departures from studies in
the ‘trajectories’ of conventional biomedical drugs, which are described as traversing the
worlds of biomedical science, industry and medicine (Gaudilliere 2005). The originality
of PartySmart and of similarly conceived and reformulated herbal drugs stemming from
Asian scholarly medicine is that they traverse vaster and even more eclectic universes as
they encounter distinct medical paradigms and radically changing clinical environments
46 L. Pordi

e

of practice and use. In all cases however, the social and material existence of a pharma-
ceutical product follow multiples and overlapping trajectories.
In this paper, three separate but synchronic trajectories have been taken as examples.
The first was located inside the body, as PartySmart was considered as a pharmacologi-
cally active product. The drug simultaneously traversed matter in the form of physiologi-
cal boundaries and concepts such as pharmacological paradigms, in a unique excursion
that led to singular models explaining the fate of a digested drug and its mode of therapeu-
tic action. The second trajectory took place within Indian society. In order to uphold the
image of the drug, The Himalaya Drug Company chose to socialize PartySmart by target-
ing social drinkers and not party people anymore, as well as to medicalize it by ensuring
its promotion through biomedical prescribers. PartySmart appeared both as a vehicle of
novelties and the enactment of strategic logics, including a commodity pathway diver-
sion. By transforming a lifestyle product into a pharmaceutical specialty, the pill did
indeed change in status. This shift did not only correspond to a modification of the social
and clinical context of the drug’s diffusion and use, but also to its re-materialization along
the esthetic lines and general presentation of the pharmaceuticals in the company. The
third trajectory was global as the drug is now sold in many countries, for example in Rus-
sia, Mongolia, India or Mexico. PartySmart became a transnational commodity.
This paper has shown that it is the sum of these trajectories (and others) that defines
PartySmart today. While they do fragment the pharmaceutical object as much as they
contextualize it, these social and material trajectories are PartySmart.

Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the French National Research Agency and the European Research
Council, between 2010 and 2014. The author’s work mainly took place in Southern India, in the cit-
ies of Pondicherry, Chennai and Bangalore, as well as in the State of Kerala, and, since 2013, in the
capital city of Mongolia, Ulaan Baatar. The author would like to express his gratitude to The Hima-
laya Drug Company for allowing him to conduct repeated ethnographic fieldwork on their premises,
as well as in their retail shops and with their medical representatives. The author alone remains
responsible for what is written in this paper.
Ethics: This research went through the ethical board of the European Research Commission in
the framework of the Globhealth project. Oral consent for observation and interviews was obtained
from the industry and each individual study participant. The research followed the American
Anthropological Association ethical guidelines.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes
1. As in many countries today, innovation is considered to be an economic asset in India (Viswa-
nathan, Dovillez, and Poussielgue 2012).
2. For a presentation of the fundamentals of ayurvedic pharmacology, see Meulenbeld (1987).
On rasa, see the work by Ganguli (2014).
3. In fact, this rests on the theory of the five elements (pancabhuta). The taste of a substance, for
example, is not simply the taste of the material but is also an indicator of its elementary com-
position, which has the potential to correct, balance and better the body. The qualities of the
substances are the active components of the drug.
4. http://www.himalayahealthcare.com/herbalmonograph/the-creat.htm#5, last accessed 12 June
2014. Most pharmacological and efficacy claims in the plants’ monographs on this website
are referenced and backed up by published biomedical research.
5. http://www.partysmart.net/in/flash/stage.html, last accessed 10 May 2014.
 Anthropology & Medicine 47

6. On branding in alternative therapeutic practices, see Pordi
e (2012).

7. Only 0.2% of the overall published scientific research concerns the treatment of hangovers,
and the preliminary clinical trials showing positive results for treating or preventing hangovers
have not led to further studies (Pittler, Verster, and Edzard 2005), despite the fact that 75% of
people who consume alcohol suffer from hangovers on a regular basis (Piasecki et al. 2005).
8. IMS is the leading provider of information services for the healthcare industry, covering mar-
kets in more than 100 countries around the world. In India, the Stockist Secondary Audit
(SSA) is an audit that tracks the stockist sales to the retailer (i.e. secondary sales). It helps to
identify the potential of therapeutic categories, and to monitor the performance of specific
brands in relation to competing brands. The SSA segments the market by four zones, 18 states,
30 metros and all town classes.
9. http://www.partysmart.net/ot/flash/cs1.swf, last accessed 10 May 2014.
10. On commodity pathways and diversions, see the work by Appadurai (1986) and its influential
sources in Munn (1983) and Kopytoff (1986).
11. On scientific marketing, see the recent volume by Gaudilliere and Thoms (2013).
12. http://www.himalayahealthcare.com/aboutus/milestones.htm, last accessed 12 May 2013.
13. As a whole, the Indian herbal market is estimated to be worth approximately US$1.47 billion
and is expected to grow to approximately US$3 billion by 2015, according to the Associated
Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
14. http://www.partysmart.net/ot/flash/stage.html, last accessed 10 May 2014.
15. Such is, for example, the case of scientists at Griffith University in Australia, who are cur-
rently conducting trials on a new hydrated beer by adding electrolytes and lowering the per-
centage of alcohol that would, in itself, attenuate hangovers (Talbot 2013).
16. This European directive regulates imports of herbal products in the European Union. How-
ever, in spite of the restrictions that this directive imposed on India, the sales of The Himalaya
Drug Company have not been affected (Vijay 2011).

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