Abstract
There are many ways of interpreting the behaviours related to substance misuse and addiction, which can be sort out as three basic models: biomedical, legal, and social. They are corresponding to approaches built in different epistemic and professional frameworks, such as medicine, law, and social work. Confronted with the experience of addiction, these models appear as pre-determined by a specific scientific or professional ideology; they presuppose a pre-understanding of the phenomena. I directed, therefore, my investigation on those phenomenological paths that might lead to, and circumscribe the experience of addiction and I propose an analytical framework based on three major phenomenological perspectives: descriptive, genetic, and inter-relational. This paper argues in favour of defining addiction without making reference to a form of failure, psycho-somatic or existential. On the contrary, it concludes that there is a need to adopt a definition of addiction which holds at its core the idea of empowering addicted persons, of re-constructing their capacity to take decisions about their own lives.
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Notes
As a recent survey shows, “[t]he major features of the European drug landscape has remained relatively stable in recent years. Drug use remains high by historical standards, but positive changes can be seen, with record levels of treatment provision accompanied by some signs of erosion in injecting, new heroin use, cocaine consumption and cannabis smoking. Any optimism, however, must be tempered by concerns that youth unemployment and service cuts could lead to the re-emergence of ‘old’ problems. Moreover, a closer examination suggests that the drug situation may now be in a state of flux, with ‘new’ problems emerging that challenge current policy and practice models: new synthetic drugs and patterns of use are appearing, both on the illicit drug market and in the context of non-controlled substances” (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction 2013: 11). In USA, “[i]n 2011, an estimated 22.5 million Americans aged 12 or older were current (past month) illicit drug users, representing 8.7 % of the population; in 2002, by contrast, there were 19.5 million current users, or 8.3 % of the population” (The 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health 2012).
For a critical outline of the ways in which addiction is constructed in the contemporary biomedical discourse of the practitioners involved in the treatment and recovery of addicted people, see Copoeru and Moldovan (2013).
Conrad and Barker (2010) are outlining the policy implications of the constructionist findings in medical sociology.
Sean Leneghan shows that the central task of Strassser was to describe “how a world arises in a dialogue between me and the other” (Strasser 1969: 22), who, of course, through “the dialogue as an active-receptive interplay” (Strasser 1969: 65) is approached as a “you”. It is important to point out that for Strasser the mutual “attunement” constitutive of the dialogal situation is not just the commonly privileged “harmonious” mode but includes also negative modalities for “without tensions, differences of opinion, divergences of practical and theoretical approaches, the dialogue would soon come to a standstill. A ‘you’ that cannot contradict the other cannot really speak with him (sic)” (1969: 65). In this perspective the dialogal phenomenology facilitates the practice of critical ethnographic reflection and suspension in the context of real rather than idealised interpersonal engagements.
The Schutzean concept of “ordinary people” (1970) refers both to those who accept and use some concepts and theories related to an issue, such as addiction, and to those who are virtually submitted to the practices derived from this (pre)theoretical foreground.
For example, doctors believe that 71 % of patients with breast cancer rate keeping their breasts as a top priority, but the actual figure reported by patients, is just 7 %.
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Copoeru, I. Understanding Addiction: A Threefold Phenomenological Approach. Hum Stud 37, 335–349 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-013-9307-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-013-9307-8