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    Boshears - Suburban Conference 2009

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    This study examined the social factors involved in the initiation and continuation of methamphetamine use among 100 current and former users. It found that participants overwhelmingly referenced the important role that social pressures, environments, and relationships played in both initiating their drug use and influencing whether they continued using or stopped. Initiation often occurred within familiar social networks like family and friends, and continuing drug use was supported by maintaining relationships with others that used drugs and provided access to methamphetamine. These social bonds and reciprocal relationships were key to understanding patterns of drug use, cessation, and relapse.

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    Boshears - Suburban Conference 2009

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    This study examined the social factors involved in the initiation and continuation of methamphetamine use among 100 current and former users. It found that participants overwhelmingly referenced the important role that social pressures, environments, and relationships played in both initiating their drug use and influencing whether they continued using or stopped. Initiation often occurred within familiar social networks like family and friends, and continuing drug use was supported by maintaining relationships with others that used drugs and provided access to methamphetamine. These social bonds and reciprocal relationships were key to understanding patterns of drug use, cessation, and relapse.

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    Presented at 7th Annual Suburban Studies Conference, Kennesaw State University, April 17, 2009.

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    Boshears_Suburban Conference 2009

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    This study examined the social factors involved in the initiation and continuation of methamphetamine use among 100 current and former users. It found that participants overwhelmingly referenced the important role that social pressures, environments, and relationships played in both initiating their drug use and influencing whether they continued using or stopped. Initiation often occurred within familiar social networks like family and friends, and continuing drug use was supported by maintaining relationships with others that used drugs and provided access to methamphetamine. These social bonds and reciprocal relationships were key to understanding patterns of drug use, cessation, and relapse.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as ppt, pdf, or txt
    46 views14 pages

    Boshears - Suburban Conference 2009

    Uploaded by

    pboshears
    This study examined the social factors involved in the initiation and continuation of methamphetamine use among 100 current and former users. It found that participants overwhelmingly referenced the important role that social pressures, environments, and relationships played in both initiating their drug use and influencing whether they continued using or stopped. Initiation often occurred within familiar social networks like family and friends, and continuing drug use was supported by maintaining relationships with others that used drugs and provided access to methamphetamine. These social bonds and reciprocal relationships were key to understanding patterns of drug use, cessation, and relapse.

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    Social Bonds in the Initiation of

    Methamphetamine Use

    Miriam Boeri¹, Paul Boshears², David Gibson¹,


    and Liam Harbry³

    ¹Kennesaw State University


    ²The European Graduate School
    ³DeKalb County Drug Court
    Based on our ethnographic study of 100 current and
    former users of methamphetamine, we found that
    participants in this study overwhelmingly, reference the
    social pressures and environments that initiate, spur,
    and inhibit their use or cessation of methamphetamine
    and other drugs.
    In privileging the social component of addiction, we
    contribute to the developing literature on the social
    conceptualization of addiction (May 2001, Gibson et al.
    2004, Hughes 2007, Pilkington 2007, Graham et al.
    2008).
    Theoretical Background
    Hughes (2007) proposes a “social conceptualization” of
    addiction emphasizing substance abuse “as a set of
    embodied social practices.”
    “Addiction” is a discursive practice – a narrative that
    people perform. In performing this discourse, which
    has developed within a short but history, addicts affirm
    and reinvigorate their identities as “addicts”.
    The discourse surrounding addiction itself limits how we
    can understand addiction as well as how we might
    transform the phenomenon.
    Let's reexamine our fundamental assumptions:
    Notions of Selfhood¹

    A B

    ¹ Kasulis, Thomas P. 2002. Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and


    Cultural Difference. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press.
    Notions of Selfhood

    B
    I C
    H A D

    G E
    F This is the essential purpose of the
    prison – to disallow relationships
    (Kasulis 2002) between society and the prisoner
    Notions of Selfhood

    A R B

    Spouse, Parent, Spouse, Child,


    Friend, etc. Friend, etc.

    (Kasulis 2002)
    Notions of Selfhood

    A B

    (Kasulis 2002)
    Notions of Selfhood

    E
    B F
    A
    C G
    D

    (Kasulis 2002)
    Supporting the Social
    Conceptualization
    • Initiation to methamphetamine, according to our
    respondents, occurred in familiar social networks:
    among family, friends, and co-workers.
    • As the literature has indicated (Pilkington 2007),
    security, trust and mutual accountability are central
    factors in the decision making process of drug users.
    • Without the proper social capital, access to
    substances of abuse is greatly impacted (Sexton et
    al 2005).
    • In order for the two conditions to be met,
    respondents had to perform their roles properly, in
    performing these roles, they reinforced their
    identities
    Family
    Between 2000 and 2005, 15,000 children were found in meth labs in the
    U.S. (Zernike 2005)

    “So all my dad’s friends were junkies. They were shooting Demerol, everything
    you could shoot. ...[H]e was my...dad’s best friend. ...[F]rom the time I was
    twelve I’d seen these dudes firing dope, shooting dope up until I was
    eighteen years old…But one day I come in and I said let me try some of that.
    I poured some in a spoon, shot some water in it, the dude was trying to tell
    my dad, ‘you need to help him or let me help him or something’, before he
    had it out I had it pulled up and fired it in my arm just like a champ. Just like I
    was a professional at it” (34 year old white male respondent).

    “It was with my step-grandmother…she handed me some in my hand and said,


    ‘eat it,’ and I did and it kept me up for a while” (22 year old white female)
    Pilkington (2007), “young people’s narratives are infused more with
    notions of security, trust and mutual accountability than they are with
    ‘risk’. In making drugs choices – regardless of whether the choice
    itself is to use, experiment with, or abstain from drugs – it is the
    friendship group [here we extend it to include the family] which is the
    key reference point for young people and provides a safe and secure
    context in which to make those choices” (386).

    “I know that’s why I started. My brother – I didn’t think anything he did


    was wrong, you know. He was perfect to me” (25 year old white
    female).
    This seems to support the call for an expanded sense of “risk” because
    what is considered risky behavior is no longer the outcome of
    consuming substances of abuse (i.e. having a hang over in the
    morning, becoming habituated to tobacco, developing a
    methamphetamine dependence), rather the risk is an ontological one
    – namely losing membership in an identity-forming relationship, be it
    as a member of a kinship system or peer group
    Friends
    For many, drug use provided the catalyst to new friends or social groups
    they had not had before. Drug use, and addiction, often appeared to
    be the test of compatibility between people and groups.

    “I guess having it [attention] in the private school, you know, and I guess
    being popular then and not being as popular in public school, that was
    a reason to do things I did to get that attention as the crazy guy or the
    class clown again. I guess doing drugs, it was new at the time, you
    know. Hanging out with these people, these new people, I found
    acceptance in them...” (30-year-old, white male).
    These networks of friends that are consistently using drugs together
    provide the culture and adopted norms that are conducive for
    continued use. These social bonds provide the people and
    connections to access methamphetamine (or other drugs), opening
    gateways to various settings to conduct illicit drug use, and provide
    social solidarity among the individuals involved.
    Friends as Family

    “I guess being in her house and staying with her, we were all like a
    family and that’s just what we did and I liked it. I liked the way it
    made me feel.”
    What made her feel so good was not simply the effects of the
    methamphetamine, but the familiarity itself, so it seems.
    Whether respondents were using methamphetamine with their
    actual family, or friends whom they consider family, as long as
    these purpose-full drug-using relationships were maintained,
    their drug use would continue.
    This insight is crucial to understanding patterns of cessation and
    relapse.
    To cease to be an addict is to cease to be oneself, a symbolic (but
    fundamentally real) suicide.
    Reciprocal Relationships

    “Yeah, my friends always got it. I never had to worry


    about getting it” (26-year-old, white male).
    Not having to worry about it is precisely the nature of
    culture. Douglas (1992) culture is a “system of
    persons holding one another mutually accountable.”
    That is, reciprocity is central to understanding addiction.
    • Evident in the “cooking” practices – you steal for me,
    I “cook” for you
    • It is the fundamental assumption in the 12-Step
    process

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