‘For us it is normal’: Exploring the ‘Recreational’ Use of heroin in Russian youth cultural practice

Abstract

The rise in the availability of drugs and experimentation with them by Russian youth over the course of the 1990s suggests that drug use has become ‘normalized’ within Russian youth cultural practice. While this is indicative of the global nature of drugs markets, there remain significant differences in local patterns and practices of drug use. In Russia, one such difference stems from the high visibility of heroin on mainstream youth cultural scenes in many urban settings. This results in significant slippage between ‘recreational’ and ‘problem’ drug use that theories of the ‘normalization of recreational drug use’ fail to capture. In such contexts, heroin users talk about their drug use as everyday practices of choice and control in a way that resembles ‘recreational’ drug use. While this is a cause for concern, at the same time there is evidence that such users retain strong social – institutional, family and friendship – bonds that help prevent their slide into the subcultural isolation that normally accompanies drug dependency.

Notes

1. Respondents in the research upon which this article is based are referred to by age, gender, place of residence and drug-using status. Drug-using status is determined by respondent responses to a question during the semi-structured interview when they were invited to choose one of 14 descriptions presented to them on a card to describe their own drug experience. These responses were used to classify respondents into four broad categories: ‘abstainers’ (otkazniki) capturing respondents choosing the descriptor ‘have never tried any drug and never will’ or ‘have experimented with drugs but now abstain’; ‘experimenters’ (razoviki) indicating respondents who described their drugs experience in terms of a single or series of one-off ‘experiments’ with drugs; ‘regular users’ (regulatory) designating respondents who described their use as repeated and regular; and ‘future users’ (budushchie) describing respondents who are current abstainers but do not rule out future use.

2. Fiona Measham, Russell Newcombe and Howard Parker, ‘The Normalization of Recreational Drug Use Amongst Young People in North-West England’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol.45, No.2 (1994), pp.287–12; Howard Parker, Judith Aldridge and Fiona Measham, Illegal Leisure: The Normalization of Adolescent Recreational Drug Use (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p.157.

3. The ‘normalization thesis’ might be summarized as consisting of the following key hypotheses (see Parker et al., Illegal Leisure, pp.153–7):

• Drugs' availability: the commodification of drugs, and globalization of their supply, means that by 18 years of age most young people have been in situations where they could buy or try drugs.

• Drug experimentation: there has been a sustained rise in drug experimentation such that 50–60 per cent of young people have experimented with drug use on at least one occasion by the age of 18. Previously existing gender and social class differences in drug experimentation are being eroded.

• Drug use: there has been a sustained rise in the number of young people using drugs regularly and employing cost–benefit assessments of the risks and pleasures in making their choices.

• Being drug-wise: young people exchange drug experiences and stories whether they use or not. Abstainers begin to accommodate the drug use of others as long as it is ‘sensible’, recreational use.

• Future intentions: there is an open-mindedness about future drug use even among young adults who went through adolescence without taking illicit drugs.

• Cultural accommodation of the illicit: normalization signifies the accommodation of activities previously considered ‘deviant’ by young people themselves into mainstream cultural arrangements. This ‘desubculturalizes’ drug use and allows the recreational use of less physically addictive drugs within a range of busy study, work and leisure agendas.

4. Parker et al., Illegal Leisure, p.152.

5. Fiona Measham, Judith Aldridge and Howard Parker, Dancing on Drugs: Risk, Health and Hedonism in the British Club Scene (London: Free Association Books, 2001).

6. Tracy Shildrick ‘Young People, Illicit Drug Use and the Question of Normalization’, Journal of Youth Studies, Vol.5, No.1 (2002), pp.35–48.

7. Robert MacDonald and Jane Marsh, ‘Crossing the Rubicon: Youth Transitions, Poverty, Drugs and Social Exclusion’, International Journal of Drug Policy, No.13 (2002), pp.27–38 (p.27).

8. These might be summarized as:

• The empirical focus upon behavioural data – especially ‘life-time reported use’ data – exaggerates the prevalence of drug use and underplays the degree of continuity between the way drugs are talked about within youth and dominant discourses (Michael Shiner and Tim Newburn ‘Definitely, Maybe Not? The Normalization of Recreational Drug Use Amongst Young People’, Sociology, Vol.31, No.3 (1997), pp.511–29 (pp.515–19); Shane Blackman, Chilling Out: The Politics of Substance Consumption, Youth and Drug Policy (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2004), p.144; Shildrick, ‘Young People, Illicit Drug Use and the Question of Normalization’, p.41).

• The theoretical focus on how individuals make choices about the ‘risks’ they face in the context of information-rich environments obscures much more fundamental determinants of drug use such as the relative cost and availability of certain types of drugs (Michael Gossop, Living with Drugs, 5th edn (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p.38; Geoffrey Pearson, The New Heroin Users (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); Howard Parker, Keith Bakx and Russell Newcombe, Living with Heroin: The Impact of a Drugs ‘Epidemic’ on an English Community (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 1988); Les Johnston, Robert MacDonald, Paul Mason, Louise Ridley and Colin Webster, Snakes and Ladders: Young People, Transitions and Social Exclusion (Bristol: Policy Press, 2000); MacDonald and Marsh, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’; Shildrick, ‘Young People, Illicit Drug Use and the Question of Normalization’) and traditional patterns of inequality (Shildrick, ‘Young People, Illicit Drug Use and the Question of Normalization’, p.45).

• The thesis is either too embedded in, or disembedded from, the specifics of time and place. ‘Normalization’ has been criticized for being ahistorical inasmuch as it fails to recognize its antecedents in critiques of ‘dope fiend mythology’ dating back to the late 1930s (Blackman, Chilling Out, pp.137–8.) At the same time, the thesis is criticized for being too dominated by the norms of a particular youth cultural scene (the dance and club scene in North West England in the 1980s–1990s) leading to the universalization of the sharp distinction between ‘recreational’ and ‘problematic’ drug use (Shildrick, ‘Young People, Illicit Drug Use and the Question of Normalization’, p.45).

9. In this article it is drug use practices rather than attitudes to drug use that are discussed. It is evident from the methodological critique outlined above as well as the findings of existing research (see, for example, Shiner and Newburn, ‘Definitely, Maybe Not?’; Karen McElrath and Kieran McEvoy, ‘Heroin as Evil: Ecstasy Users’ Perceptions About Heroin', Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, Vol.8, No.2 (2001), pp.177–89 (pp.177–8); Shildrick, ‘Young People, Illicit Drug Use and the Question of Normalization’) that what young people think about drug use needs to be studied in parallel with measuring their actual drug use. This was built into the design of the empirical research upon which this article is based, and the findings on attitudes to and talk about drugs among Russian youth are discussed separately in Elena Omel'chenko's article in this collection.

10. Howard Parker, Catherine Bury and Roy Egginton, ‘New Heroin Outbreaks Amongst Young People in England and Wales’, Crime Detection and Prevention Series, Paper 92, (London: Home Office, 1998), p.v.

11. MacDonald and Marsh, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, p.27.

12. Ibid., p.34.

13. This research was conducted with the financial support of the ESRC (Ref. R000239439). For a full report on the findings of the project see Hilary Pilkington, ‘“Everyday” but not “normal”: Drug use and youth cultural practice in Russia’, Final Report, 2004, available electronically at <www.crees.bham.ac.uk/research/everyday/FReport.pdf>.

14. See Hilary Pilkington, Elena Omel'chenko, Moya Flynn, Ul'iana Bliudina and Elena Starkova, Looking West? Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).

15. See Elena Omel'chenko (ed.), Podrostki i narkotiki (Ul'yanovsk: Ul'yanovsk State University Press, 1999); Elena Omel'chenko (ed.), Geroi(n) nashego vremeni (Ul'yanovsk: Ul'yanovsk State University Press, 2000).

16. The main team included: Hilary Pilkington, Elena Omel'chenko, Erica Richardson, Natal'ia Goncharova, Evgeniia Luk'ianova, Ol'ga Dobroshtan, Irina Kosterina and El'vira Sharifullina. Evgeniia Luk'ianova took the lead role in the quantitative elements of the project but also participated in interviewing in the field. Natal'ia Goncharova managed and participated in the fieldwork (both survey and interviewing). Ol'ga Dobroshtan, Irina Kosterina and El'vira Sharifullina conducted the ethnographic elements of the project. Eric Richardson managed and conducted the applied (health promotion-related) aspects of the project. A number of other members of ‘Region’ participated in the project during particularly intensive periods of fieldwork and analysis or provided ‘backroom’ support. These team members included Liudmila Shkliar, Dmitrii Omel'chenko, Vladimir Pavlov, Denis Filatov and Natalia Shaporeva. The team was assisted in the regions of empirical research by Svetlana Iaroshenko, Oleg Oberemko, Dmitrii Nechaevskii, Aleksandr Shekhtman and Svetlana Teslia.

17. See, for example, Natal'ia Goncharova, Ol'ga Dobroshtan, Evgeniia Luk'ianova, Irina Kosterina, Elena Omel'chenko, Hilary Pilkington and El'vira Sharifullina, Normal'naya Molodezh': Pivo, Tusovka, Narkotiki (Ul'yanovsk: Ul'yanovsk State University Press, 2005).

18. ‘“Everyday” but not “normal”’ (note 13, above).

19. A total of five respondents were included in both the semi-structured and ethnographic elements of the project.

20. Letizia Paoli, ‘The Development of an Illegal Market: Drug Consumption and Trade in Post-Soviet Russia’, British Journal of Criminology, Vol.42 (2002) pp.21–39; Ruud Bless (with Uwe Kemmesies and Steven Diemel), ‘3rd Multi-city study. Drug use trends in 42 European cities in the 1990s’, Report of the Co-operation Group to Combat Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Drugs (Pompidou Group); at <http://www.coe.int/T/E/Social_Cohesion/pompidou_group/5.Publications/List_of_publications/mc3-2.pdf>, p.11 (accessed 8 Nov. 2002).

21. John Kramer, ‘Drug Abuse in Russia: Emerging Pandemic or Overhyped Diversion?’, Problems of Post-Communism, Vol.50, No.6 (2003), pp.12–27 (p.16). The total number of ‘drug addicts’ registered in Russia in 2004 was 500,000 while estimates of the actual number of ‘addicts’ are as high as four million: Interfax, ‘Number of Drug Addicts in Russia Skyrockets Over 10 Years’, at <http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue = 10724258> (accessed 25 Nov. 2004).

22. Paoli, ‘The Development of an Illegal Market’, p.22. It is important to note that the single site of research in Russia was Moscow, which is an atypical Russian city. This is confirmed by the ESPAD survey finding on LSD use, which showed a 4–5 per cent lifetime use rate; this figure is not repeated in any other surveys in Russia since LSD is expensive and difficult to access outside the largest and most affluent cities.

23. Aleksandr Aref'ev, ‘Pokolenie, kotoroe teryaet Rossiya’, Demoskop Weekly, Vol.91–92 (2002), pp.2–15 (p.5), at <http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2002/091/tema01.php> (accessed 15 April 2004). The survey was conducted by the Centre for Sociological Research under the Ministry of Education of Russia and included Moscow, St. Petersburg and a number of regional centres in its sample.

24. Nine per cent were recorded as having tried ‘opiates’ including poppy straw. It is not clear whether this is in addition to heroin, or whether respondents who recorded their use of heroin also included this in a positive response on ‘opiates’ in general. Our data would suggest that it is most likely that they did.

25. A.V. Stozharova, Narkomaniya i Region (Nadym: Charoid, 2003), pp.131, 140.

26. Omel'chenko, Podrostki i narkotiki, p.14. Of course research at the regional level is often conducted in response to the identification of, and imperative to resolve, a particular social problem and thus captures an ‘extreme’ moment. The Ul'yanovsk study exemplifies this; it was conducted at the peak of incidence of heroin use in Ul'yanovsk (1998–99) that is now referred to by local narcologists as the ‘heroin boom’ or ‘heroin epidemic’. Continuing research in Yamalo-Nenetsk also shows a clear ‘peak’ in heroin use, in this case in 1999–2000 (Stozharova, Narkomaniya i Region, p.92).

27. MacDonald and Marsh, ‘Crossing the Rubicon’, p.27.

28. However, in other respects, our data are more representative than other youth-targeted surveys on illicit substance use since the research was conducted in medium-sized cities (50–120,000 population) rather than major cities (especially regional centres), which show higher than average prevalence rates.

29. The same is true of reports of heroin use within immediate friendship groups. In Komi Republic, for example, 5.2 per cent of male respondents but 10.6 per cent of female respondents reported heroin use among their friends.

30. Rebbecca Aust, Clare Sharp and Chris Goulden, Prevalence of Drug Use: Key Findings From the 2001/2002 British Crime Survey, Findings No.182 (London: Home Office, Research, Development and Statistics Directorate, 2002), p.5, at <http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r182.pdf> (accessed 2 July 2003); Parker, Bury and Egginton, ‘New Heroin Outbreaks’, p.28. In the British Crime Survey it is determined as 17.4 years (Aust, Sharp and Goulden, Prevalence of Drug Use, p.5) while Parker et al. cite the modal age bracket for heroin use to be 16- to 18-year-olds (Parker, Bury and Egginton, ‘New Heroin Outbreaks’, p.28).

31. Parker, Bury and Egginton, ‘New Heroin Outbreaks’, p.44.

32. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.13; Philip Lalander, Hooked on Heroin: Drugs and Drifters in a Globalized World (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2003), p.44.

33. As noted above, Parker et al. spell out clearly that their thesis pertains specifically to the recreational use of less physically addictive drugs (Parker, Aldridge and Measham, Illegal Leisure, pp.153–7).

34. The present study took as its starting-point young people in mainstream educational settings and explored substance use as one part of their cultural practice. Heroin use was not the focus of the study and was expected to feature only at the margins of the sample group. Most dedicated studies of heroin users, by contrast, identify respondents by their substance use and access them, for example, through treatment programmes or outreach workers (see Norman Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting: The Basis for Controlled Intoxicant Use (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1984); Pearson, The New Heroin Users; Parker, Bakx and Newcombe, Living with Heroin; Parker, Bury and Egginton, ‘New Heroin Outbreaks’; Lalander, Hooked on Heroin).

35. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.29; Parker, Bakx and Newcombe, Living with Heroin, p.68.

36. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.30.

37. These three respondents are referred to by name (pseudonym) and are described in relation to the status of their heroin use while other respondents, commenting on friends' use, are referenced in terms of their age, gender, place of origin and unspecified drug-using status, as detailed in footnote 1.

38. Parker, Bury and Egginton, ‘New Heroin Outbreaks’, p.v.

39. Although heroin snorting is relatively rare in the UK – where heroin use tends to start with heroin smoking (Gossop, Living with Drugs, p.140) – it is more common in Russia. This is probably explained by the fact that white rather than smokeable brown heroin dominates the Russian market.

40. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.43.

41. Gossop, Living with Drugs, pp.35–6; Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, p.12. The explanation for this low rate of recidivism (12 per cent of return to use within three years) was posited to be a combination of two factors: it was the abhorrent social setting of Vietnam that led the soldiers to use heroin and once out of that situation they had no desire to use; and the extraordinary availability and cheapness of the drug in Vietnam – 85 per cent of veterans had been offered heroin and it was so inexpensive that smoking rather than injecting heroin was economical.

42. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, p.5.

43. Ibid., p.159.

44. Ibid., p.154. Notwithstanding this qualification, his practice appears nearer to Zinberg's description of long-term ‘controlled use’ than to Pearson's acknowledgement of ‘elementary precautions’ such as occasional abstention employed by ‘first stage’ users who will go on to develop daily use habits (Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.54).

45. However, Kolya, an injecting drug user, had to be prompted to include avoidance of needle-sharing in his description of his ‘safe practices’ of heroin use, even though at the time of interview there was a high-profile HIV-awareness campaign in the city.

46. J.S. Blackwell, ‘Drifting, Controlling and Overcoming; Opiate Users Who Avoid Becoming Chronically Dependent’, Journal of Drug Issues, Vol.13, No.2 (1983), p.228, cited in Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.44.

47. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.150.

48. Jock Young, The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1971), p.30.

49. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.40.

50. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, p.131.

51. Ibid., p.126.

52. Ibid., p.121; Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.25.

53. Among Zinberg's respondents there is also reference to the importance of the power of heroin to ‘relax’ among weekend heroin users (‘chippers’) (Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, pp.115–16).

54. This is confirmed by Lalander's description, in his study, of a controlled heroin user who smokes heroin about once a month, when he is with a particular set of friends in his town of former residence (Lalander, Hooked on Heroin, p.38).

55. Ibid., p.39.

56. Ibid., p.99.

57. Ibid., p.52.

58. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.11.

59. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, pp.127–8.

60. Lalander, Hooked on Heroin, p.47. Such bonding, however, is often accompanied by a fear of non-users finding out about the use (Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, p.129) and this is something articulated by Russian respondents too.

61. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.56.

62. Parker, Bakx and Newcombe, Living with Heroin, p.52.

63. Lalander, Hooked on Heroin, pp.65–7.

64. Ibid., p.31.

65. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, pp.155–60.

66. Lalander, Hooked on Heroin p.18.

67. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, p.153.

68. However, Kolya's insistence that he has retained diverse friendship groups is at least partially motivated by reflexivity; the loss of friends is an external marker of moving into dependency (‘addict’ status).

69. Shiner and Newburn, ‘Definitely, Maybe Not?’, pp.524–6.

70. It is difficult to comment on Olya's aspirations and values as she became involved in the research having joined in a conversation started with younger friends. This meant that she was not present at the start of the interview when respondents were asked specifically about their family, school, friends, leisure pursuits and overall ambitions in life.

71. Zinberg, Drug, Set, and Setting, p.5.

72. Elena Omel'chenko's contribution to this collection shows how non-drug-using youth draw very heavily on dominant abstentionist discourses, but it is also important to note that even drug-using or drug-aware young people may articulate strongly negative views about drugs while displaying tolerance or acceptance of drug use in their cultural practice.

73. Lalander, Hooked on Heroin, p.109.

74. Pearson, The New Heroin Users, p.190.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hilary Pilkington

Hilary Pilkington is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, where she moved in 2005 following 15 years at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on post-Soviet Russian society especially youth cultural practice, drug use, migration and displacement, ethnic and national identity including Muslim identity and the rise of xenophobic sentiments. Her publications include Russia's Youth and Its Culture: A Nation's Constructors and Constructed (1994); Migration, Displacement and Identity in Post-Soviet Russia (1998); and (with Elena Omel'chenko, Moya Flynn, Uliana Bliudina and Elena Starkova) Looking West? Cultural Globalization and Russian Youth Cultures (2002).