Withdrawal from injecting heroin use: Thematizing the body

Abstract

Much of the drug research literature has concerned itself with quantifying aspects of drug use and drug users' lives, paying little attention to the social processes that underlie drug use and withdrawal therefrom. This paper highlights the value of the sociology of the body for understanding the issue of withdrawal from injecting heroin use. Based on interviews with nine women and seven men, the approach involves focusing on these clients' accounts of their experiences of (non-methadone) withdrawal from heroin, tracing the social processes that invoke them to thematize the body as they position themselves as ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’, and resist construction of the self as ‘junkie’ or ‘slave’ .