Department
Sociology and Criminal Justice
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2011
Abstract
This article contributes to a growing body of literature that emphasizes the social nature of drug use, abuse and addiction. Current discourses of addiction tend to focus on the individual while limiting attention on the social environment and the role of sociality. We seek to contribute a more intuitive, insiders'' perspective of the drug trajectory and a broader conceptualization of addiction. Drawing from our qualitative study on 100 current and former methamphetamine users in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), we examined the trajectories of methamphetamine use to provide greater insight on what influences drug initiation, progression, cessation and relapse from the users'' perspective. Findings show that the entire drug trajectory is intertwined with, and impacted by, sociality for the majority of drug users in our sample. Moreover, the findings of our study increase our understanding of multiple routes to recovery. We join the call for greater attention to drug use and addiction as a social behavior and future research that focuses more on the role of sociality among drug users.
Journal Title
Addiction Research and Theory
Journal ISSN
1606-6359
Volume
19
Issue
4
First Page
289
Last Page
301
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.3109/16066359.2011.566654