Disciplining Bodies The Social Construction of an Addict

Abstract

The issue of dmg addiction has always been approached by two dominant perspectives: either that of dmg addiction as ' chronic brain disease' or as that of a 'moral failing' . Both of these issues utilise the language of ' harm', 'risk' and ' danger' to describe this phenomenon. Using a Foucauldian perspective this study seeks to find out how the identity of a drug addict is constructed through scientific and medical discourses and how that constmcted identity is, then, used, to justify medical interventions on the body of the addict. This study also shows how the body of the addict is a site of great social anxiety and how rehabilitation is a process through which this anxiety is alleviated. Dmg rehabilitation centres are institutions to create docile and disciplined bodies and to fit deviants into a standardised nonn. A lot of this is based on assumptions and not empirical grounds and the science used to prop this concept up is vague and internally contradictory. Utilising the concept of biopower it shows how drug rehabilitation is a management of populations. Usi'ng in-depth interviews from the clinical staff and the recovering patients, as well as personal observations, this study shows how t .; key facet of the dmg addict identity is constructed around a 'loss of control' and how this construction is then used to justify the process of rehabilitation. A counter-nalTative to this is set-up through interviews conducted with recovering drug addicts and in which primacy is given to the role that 'pleasure' plays in the use of drugs and a partial rejection of the identity of the addict that the medical nalTative seeks to establish.