Recovering a Fecal Habitus: Analyzing Heroin Users' Toilet Talk

Abstract

There is a particular silence around the social life of defecation. Little analyzed, rarely discussed in polite conversation, it largely appears only at moments of dysfunction. For active heroin users, digestion is often characterized by such dysfunction and experienced through constipation; recovery, a welcome return to defecating ‘normally.’ Drawing on interviews with active and recovering heroin users in southern England, we focus on this moment of transition in order to illuminate the experiences and transitions between a dysfunctional, constipated body and ‘normal’ defecation. We discuss the contrast between candor in talk in active use with the silences surrounding defecation talk in recovery, and analyze these twin shifts within the context of a historical progression within Europe toward ever-increasing levels of masking defecation from social life. Located thus, this analysis of the tipping point between constipation and ‘normality,’ disclosure and embarrassment, provides a powerful lens through which to view the invisibility of defecation in contemporary British social life.

Keywords:

• Britain
• constipation
• defecation
• heroin
• recovery

Notes

Note that Leder's use of the term “disappear” differs slightly from its vernacular usage. Here the term “trades on the frequent use of dis- as a straightforward negation. To ‘disappear’ in this sense is simply to not-appear” (Leder 1990:27).

Of course, toilet talk is not—and likely has never been—entirely absent from conversation. Indeed, its taboo status in terms of everyday, ‘polite’ conversation can be highlighted through its importance in both humor (Lea 2001) and abuse (Inglis 2002).

Talk about ‘normality’ was central to these recovering heroin users' experiences of recovery, and its status as both goal and elusive Other is explored in detail in Nettleton, Neale, and Pickering (2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucy Pickering

LUCY PICKERING is a medical anthropology lecturer at the University of Glasgow, UK. Her research interests focus on embodiment and identity, particularly in relation to dirt and pollution, and drug use and recovery in Hawai‘i and the UK.

Joanne Neale

JOANNE NEALE is Professor of Public Health at Oxford Brookes University, UK, and an Adjunct Professor at the National Centre in HIV Social Research at University of New South Wales, Australia. She is qualified as a social worker and has been researching substance use and misuse, with a particular focus on heroin use and heroin users' views and experiences, since 1996.

Sarah Nettleton

SARAH NETTLETON is Reader in the Department of Sociology, University of York, UK, where she teaches and researches issues relating to health, illness, medicine, and the body.