Back in 2012, anthropologist Anita Hardon of the University of Amsterdam invited me to bring the Philippines into an international anthropological research project on “chemical youth,” looking into what young people were using – externally and internally – on their bodies. A preliminary phase of the project, asking people to just list what they were using “from head to toe,” produced mind-boggling lists, convincing our team we needed to look not just at the chemicals but, more importantly, the reasons for the growing “chemicalization” of young people’s lives. The project took off with funding …