Contemporary Drug Problems

Drug-related deaths (DRDs) are a major societal challenge. People who use drugs are at particular risk of witnessing DRDs, and of losing people close to them to a DRD, and experiencing an overdose or other health issues themselves. People who experience sudden, unexpected, and stigmatized deaths, such as DRDs, are found to struggle more afterward than when the death is more natural and expected. Additionally, people who use drugs are more likely to experience a complicated grieving process following the loss of someone. Despite this, knowledge about the connections between a person's own drug use and reaction following bereavement from a DRD is scarce. This article makes a start at filling this knowledge gap. Based on interviews with people who used drugs and were bereaved following DRDs, the article explores how the bereaved spoke about the relationship between their drug use and losing a close friend or intimate partner to a DRD. We present four types of stories about the relationship between grief following DRDs and drug use. Informed by the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement, we discuss the stories and highlight how drug use is used to handle emotional overload, how drug use leads to uncommon expressions of grief, and how the relationship between grief and drug use may lead to an avoidance of the reality of loss. We point out that drug use and grief are strongly intertwined and how stigma associated with DRDs and drug use creates obstacles to openness and relating to social networks in support processes.

The use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) by parents is a significant public policy concern, both in the UK and other jurisdictions such as Australia. Concern about the potential risks posed to children is also paramount in family court decisions, where AOD consumption is framed as a child protection issue in itself. There is a need, however, for more critical inquiry into the ways in which parental use is understood and conceptualised in family court practice. Based on interviews with social workers, lawyers and judges who have worked in Family Courts in England and Wales, the aim of this paper is to pay closer attention to the constitution of parental substance use as a child protection problem. Using methodological tools devised by Bonham and Bacchi (2016), and adopting their poststructural approach to interview analysis, the aim was to pay close attention to the ways in which “reality” was made in and through participant accounts. The focus on the granularity of what, precisely, was said in the interviews unveiled some valuable insights into the ways in which parental subject positions were produced and maintained. For example, the ‘traumatised’ parental substance user was a recurring motif which, while rooted in a more empathetic understanding of the challenges faced by parents, could – I suggest – have unintended consequences.

In this article, we propose that the perpetual difficulties in drug treatment can be understood as a consequence of how a binary opposition of order and disorder continues to structure drug discourses and treatment practices. When drug use is seen as a disorder of addiction, recovery becomes reduced to movements between fixed points benchmarked against preexisting standards. This obscures how recovery could be understood as a process of self-differentiation where subjects develop new norms to adapt to changing life circumstances. In the article we draw on empirical material from a Copenhagen drug-treatment facility for young drug users, to analyze how change and development can be facilitated through a fundamental institutional “movability.” Drawing on the philosophy of change of Henri Bergson, the assemblage approach of Deleuze and Guattari, and the aesthetic theory of Jacques Rancière, we analyze how a particular assemblage of discourses, the organization of treatment and aesthetic spaces disrupt existing orders and open for different possibilities for participation and development for young drug users. In particular, we turn the attention to how aesthetic spaces and sensuous processes can counter stigmatization by overcoming the frame of “treatment” and the affective experiences associated with the categorization as a “drug-user” and facilitating the development of care as new ways of becoming and being-together.

As part of an interview-based qualitative study on the life-course of people who formally used methamphetamine in Aotearoa-New Zealand, this paper uses Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic perspective to trace the specific effects and particular relations involved in methamphetamine use. The methamphetamine-using trajectory for the 42 former users is a multifaceted and constantly fluctuating process involving multiple entries, exists, pathways, and restarts. By amplifying and enlightening the user, methamphetamine use begins by liberating desire through sending the user “out the gate,” but long-term high-dose use can end up constraining and repressing subjectivity and cyclically producing adverse psychological, emotional, interpersonal, and social effects. As a metamorphic process that produces transformative change, long-term high-dose methamphetamine use is a nonlinear rollercoaster ride that typically leads to a downward spiral whereby life stagnates, shrinks, or regresses. By undermining productive and transformative connections, the life of the long-term high-dose methamphetamine user typically—but not inevitably—involves revolving instead of evolving. Against a linear and deterministic popular media-generated narrative about methamphetamine use, a rhizomatic perspective emphasizes the potential for transformation by focusing upon the situational and interactional processes involved in users who undergo complex and varied temporary changes. From Deleuze and Guattari's perspective, disentangling from long-term high-dose methamphetamine use requires activating new relationships and possibilities for desire by forming meaningful biopsychosocial connections.

Introduction: Little data exists examining workers with lived/living experience of alcohol and other drug (AOD) use who are not in designated peer roles. The prevalence of these workers within the national workforce, and their levels of wellbeing, are currently unknown. The current study therefore explored the prevalence, characteristics, and predictors of wellbeing among workers with different types of lived experience (personal vs family/other) compared to those without any reported lived experience. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted of the Australian AOD workforce. Group differences were explored on variables of interest via frequency statistics, χ² tests of independence, multivariate analysis of variance, and linear regression. Results: Of the 986 AOD workers in direct client service roles, 2.4% were in a designated peer role, but 67.2% reported lived experience (34.5% personal lived experience and 32.8% family/other lived experience). Substantial proportions had not disclosed their lived experience to their workplace (27.4% with personal lived experience and 43.3% with other lived experience). Wellbeing (i.e., levels of burnout and engagement) did not differ significantly between groups. Predictors of wellbeing across all three groups included age, work intensity (e.g., heavy workloads), and finding work to be personally meaningful; additional differences between groups were also identified. Discussion: More than two-thirds of AOD workers in Australia have some form of lived experience, however this is not reflected in the number of peer roles. Initiatives that reach all workers with lived experience are required to safeguard their wellbeing, enhance recruitment and retention, and support best practice.