Tramadol consumption as edgework: intersections of pleasures and risks in the accounts of Nigerian youths

ABSTRACT

This study explores the complex interplay of pleasures and risks in young people’s tramadol consumption. It draws from semi-structured interviews with 39 male youths in two cities in Nigeria, and thematic analysis using edgework as a theoretical approach. Data highlight how high-risk tramadol consumption (e.g. heavy and frequent consumption, cocktails), motivated by a desire for pleasure and fun, served as a response to boredom and drudgery in daily life. Tramadol consumption opened up new horizons of affective, experiential and social possibilities, enabling young people to experience self-reflexivity and agency in widespread precarity. Data also captured lived experiences of risks and harms associated with tramadol consumption as well as situated strategies for working the edge of high-risk consumption. These strategies had limited effectiveness due to drug dependence and the structural drivers of high-risk consumption. Findings evidence a need to rethink drug harm reduction for marginalized youth. Specifically, they indicate a need to merge structural-level interventions (e.g. better job opportunities and drug treatment services) with individual strategies (such as dose reduction and occasional consumption). Interventions that address the social and structural drivers of high-risk consumption could help to create an ‘enabling environment’ for young people to practice harm reduction.

KEYWORDS:

• Harm reduction
• pleasure
• risk
• tramadol
• young people

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).