“I am not a drug abuser, I am a drug user”: A discourse analysis of 44 drug users’ construction of identity

Abstract

Based on individual conversational interviews with 44 socially integrated drug users in Stockholm, this article examines the informants’ self-presentations and their representations of drug abusers. The results show that the informants strive towards positive self-presentation. In this process, the drug abuser identity is important as it provides a negative identity that reinforces the informants’ desired self-presentation. The mechanisms of negative Other-presentations derive from a background in which the informants attempt to escape a socially ascribed deviant identity and exchange it for a not yet stabilised positive identity.

• Drugs
• identity
• discourse analysis
• qualitative research