Life's a drug: why pharmaceutical art is so addictive

Machine-guns made of painkillers, ecstasy pill murals ... artists from Damien Hirst to Chemical X make pharma art to expose our numb, drug-addled ageWe live in a chemical world, where everything from pain to pleasure to survival itself can be shaped by legal and illegal drugs. Many people live on a daily cocktail of prescribed pharmaceuticals, and many more take unprescribed ones at the weekend. No wonder so many artists make pharma art. Life in the west is no longer raw even at the rawest times