Chapter 7. Narrative Stories and Discourses in an Interview With a Former Amphetamine User

Abstract

This study analyzes how an individual constructs his life as a former amphetamine user. The study has a methodological purpose, providing an example of how narrative analysis and discourse analysis can be conducted and combined. First, an interview with a former amphetamine user in his 50s was analyzed by the narrative method with a focus on identity construction. Second, it was then examined from a discourse analytical perspective. The article demonstrates how discourse analysis and narrative analysis could be combined when analyzing identity constructions.

Keywords :

• Narrative analysis
• discourse analysis
• amphetamines
• Sweden

THE AUTHORS

My Lilja, Ph.D., in Criminology and is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Work and Psychology at the University of Gävle, Sweden. Her main research interest is on analyzing drug discourses. Her doctoral dissertation (2007) was about “Drug Discourses in Contemporary Russia” (Stockholm University, Department of Criminology) and considering a social constructivist perspective and discourse analysis. Her research areas are focused on criminology and social work areas focusing on both personal and situational or contextual variables. E-mail: [email protected]

Notes

3 The reader is reminded that drug users, of whatever types of drugs, patterns, and manner of use, and meanings attributed to their use represent a heterogeneous and not a homogeneous group. Editor's note.

4 Because there are so few organizations of this type in Sweden, the name of the organization is not mentioned.

5 According to Kvale (1996:124), a semistructured interview can be characterized in that “it has a sequence of themes to be covered as well as suggested questions. Yet, at the same time, there is an openness to changes of sequence and forms of questions in order to follow up the answers given and the stories told by the subjects.” Kvale argues further that semistructured interviews contain an outline of “topics” to be covered.

6 According to the Swedish Act regarding the Ethical Review of Research Involving Humans (SFS 2003:460).

7 Past and present narratives have been analyzed in other studies, e.g., in Boydell, Goering, and Morrell-Bellai (2000).

8 The reader is referred to Hills's criteria for causality that were developed in order to help researchers and clinicians determine if risk factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes or merely associated (Hill, A. B. (1965). The environment and disease: Associations or causation? Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 58: 295–300.). Editor's note

9 Treatment can be briefly and usefully defined as a planned, goal-directed change process, over necessary periods of time, with suitable techniques, which is bounded (culture, place, time, etc.) and can be categorized into professional-based, tradition-based, mutual-help based (AA,NA, etc.), and self-help (“natural recovery”) models and which is stakeholder influenced. There are no unique models or techniques used with substance users—of whatever types—which aren't also used with nonsubstance users. In the West, with the relatively new ideologies of “harm reduction,” “quality-of-life,” wellbeing, and conflict resolution, there is now a new set of goals in addition to those derived from/associated with the older tradition of abstinence-driven models. Editor's note.

10 The categories “soft” and “hard drugs” are misleading, unscientific categories of active pharmacological substances that have been and continue to be used by individual and systemic stakeholders for achieving a range of goals and objectives that include the legal and/or social status of selected “drugs” in which their pharmacological actions and/or the simplified albeit complex “drug experiences” are not critical criteria. Editor's note.