What a strange coincidence! Yesterday, I was working on the analysis of interview with Lucie (24), girl who stopped using meth three years ago, nowadays has two children with her husband (who also took part in my research) and cooperates with our organisation Podane Ruce in Brno. Few hours after I finished the analysis, my colleague phoned me and as one of the most important news she mentioned that Lucie started to use meth again. Suddenly, she took all the money she could and ran away from their home. Filip (it is a pseudonym of her husband) had then a phone call from his friend who told him that Lucie is in a bar, totally stoned.
My first feelings were simple sadness: I know the whole family, I know that they have been having quite hard time these days because their rent of their flat was at the end. And I know that this current situation is going to be really hard time for Filip and his two children.
Today, I started to look at the situation as a researcher. I don´t use the concept of addiction as an illness in my study so I do not perceive Lucie as having a chronical disease and her current behavior as the recidivism of the disease. So how could I interprete this from the framework of social construction which I use?
My basic assumption is that abandoning a long-term regular drug use usually involves a major shift within one´s identity that can be captured even as an identity transformation. For maintaining the change the person needs a continuous presence of significant others who are capable to confirm and preserve his/her new roles and provide support to the new identity. This identity is further developed through the everyday activities in which one is involved and places where one stays. In addition to this, the person needs to have access to a symbolic universe (term of sociologists Berger and Luckmann) that will provide the overall explanation and legitimation of the life and world as a whole including the life of the individual.
Everything seemed to be present in Lucie´s life. Her husband, children, her friends and people from our organisation including some ex-users, a Catholic priest and a nun formed her basic social network. She had a job and she volunteered in a drug-prevention program. Most of the time she spent with her children at home or in a park. These are her words:
„I have a job, so the life already makes sense to me. I used to perceive this as a stereotype before … in fact, what I was doing before was stereotype: still thinking just where to go to sleep, where to get a next fix, every day the same. And now I perceive this life as kind of joy, I can decide, I can think about what to do, I can choose. At once I have so many options!“
However, when she and the whole family started to be in danger of losing a place to live, she left home and returned to her old identity. In fact, when we consider the gender roles in our society, she took the risk of being stigmatized much more than if Filip would do it – common sense here is that she, as a mother, is supposed to stay with her kids. So the question could stay: why it was her and not Filip who started to use again, even when Filip used meth much longer than her?
One of the possible answer lies in the development of symbolic universe. Filip was raised in a Christian family and after he stopped using meth he adopted this symbolic universe (based in Christianity) again, just within another, maybe more suitable, social network. He was mentioning it several times during our interview. Lucie was raised in a family which did not function really good, the only important person she mentioned was her grandfather who died when she was 14. After she stopped using, she started to visit the Christian events with Filip, but she was not mentioning this symbolic universe in our interview as a significant for her.
In this perspective, Filip´s identity seems to be more fixed and resistant towards changes including unpleasant situations. So, even if there is an existential danger present in his life, he still has a God and the values and moral imperatives that evolves from his faith. On the contrary, Lucie´s identity is more flexible, open to many possibilities, one of which was the return to regular methamphetamine use. In fact, most of the postmodern thinkers talk about today´s situation as supporting these flexible and fluid types of identities which are more suitable for the fast changing life in today´s society. But since family is a pre-modern and modern product, it applies for identities that are more fixed.
This is just one of the possible interpretation. Maybe, if Filip would speak English and would read this blog, he could decide that he would do everything just opposite to this theory. Fortunately, unlike medical discourse, social constructionist perspective do not have ambitions to make any predictions. The social life is subject to continuous interpretation and re-interpretation. That´s why we can be witnesses of such stories as this one. Hopefully the continuation of it will be more positive for all actors.
