Using drugs to enhance capacities for action in everyday life practices: Analysing addiction stories’ descriptions of the escalation of substance use as counter-narratives

Background

The article demonstrates how substance use can enhance capacities for action in various everyday practices and function as a productive force rather than simply a risky and harmful activity.

Methods

The data set comprises 33 life story interviews in which the participants self-identified as having experienced an addiction to substances. The data was analyzed as ‘counter-narratives’ by drawing on actor-network theory.

Results

The analysis identified four typical variants of how substance use can increase capacities for action. First, substance use can initially enhance the capacities to achieve life goals and then transform into a mediator that strengthens attachments to normal daily activities. Secondly, substance use can become linked to serving mutually reinforcing trajectories in everyday life: assisting breaks from worries, reinforcing daily continuity, and advancing life goals. Third, substance use can enable a sudden change in life direction by facilitating a radical transition to a new reality and subsequently stabilizing it. Fourth, substance use can evolve into a mediator that divides life into two assemblages: one that enables fulfillment of daily responsibilities and another that mediates freedom to pursue pleasure.

Conclusion

Generating knowledge about the relations, assemblages, and trajectories in which substance use acts as a productive force and identifying when and how it can become a mediator that limits, threatens, or impedes the capacities of actors to live functional lives provides important information for health professionals and practitioners. Such knowledge will deepen their understanding of the elements on which their prevention and treatment efforts should focus.