The Life Narrative of a Mixed-Race Man in Recovery from Addiction: A Case-Based Psychosocial Approach to Researching Drugs, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity

Abstract

This paper explores the use of a psychosocial approach to researching drugs, race and ethnicity. It produces an analysis of interviews with Bobby, a mixed-race man in recovery from addiction. Sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives are brought to bear on the data in order to consider the character of Bobby's opportunities, identifications, crises and resolutions. Despite the affective components of the wider discourse on drugs and race, the majority of previous research on the subject has focused on the production of rational explanations produced within objectivist epistemological frames. In contrast, the methods used in this project seek an explicit engagement with the irrational and unconscious aspects of researching these subjects. The paper concludes by reflecting on the value of psychosocially oriented narrative methods in this field.

Keywords::

• psychosocial
• substance misuse
• race
• ethnicity
• narrative methods

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who contributed to analysis panels, and Professor Lynn Froggett, Professor Anna Yeatman and Dr Robert Little for commenting on earlier drafts of the paper.

Notes

¹ Burnage High School, where in 1986 and South Asian pupil was murdered by a white pupil. The case led to the McDonald Inquiry which investigated racial violence in Manchester schools.

² Although as one panel member observed ‘African man and English woman’ leaves us to work out for ourselves, or to assume, that the father is black and the mother white. This is established later in the interview.

³ In Kleinian terms, this equates to the self in the paranoid-schizoid position in which the self is a ‘self as object’ (the object to whom life events occur) rather than the self as subject (the self as the creator and interpreter of one's thoughts, feelings and perceptions) (Ogden, 1990, pp. 48–49).

⁴ Short for West Bromwich Albion, a professional football team.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alastair Roy

Dr Alastair Roy is a Senior Lecturer in the Psychosocial Research Unit, School of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire. Address: Psychosocial Research Unit, School of Social Work, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2HE, Lancashire, UK. [Email: [email protected]]