The Hand of Addiction: A Transcontextual and Autoethnographic Becoming
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Background
People who are homeless and using substances frequently encounter barriers to accessing support. This paper aims to inform policy and practice by analysing changes in the tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug use of people experiencing homelessness.
Methods
Data derive from a qualitative longitudinal study (undertaken 2020/2021) and involving telephone interviews (n=310) conducted with 34 people accommodated in two London hotels provided as part of a UK policy response to COVID-19. The hotels offered various supports, including opioid replacement therapy, prescribed alcohol, licensed nicotine replacement therapy, and e-cigarettes. Participants’ substance use data were organised by Iterative Categorization and subjected to a content analysis to identify patterns and themes.
Results
At entry to the hotel, 5/34 participants (14.7%) had never used alcohol nor illicit drugs; 10/34 (29.4%) had only ever used alcohol (mostly without a problem); 11/34 (32.4%) had ever used illicit drugs but without a problem; and 8/34 (23.5%) had ever had a problem with illicit drugs. Sub-groups had different socio-demographic characteristics, particularly regarding being/not being a UK national, sex, and homelessness duration. Tobacco smoking was common across all sub-groups (18/34; 52.9%). Participants were often anxious about living with others who were using substances, and some worried about their own substance use. Substance use was changeable, with more decreases than increases. Changes related to intrapersonal (psychological), interpersonal (social) and structural (resource-based) factors. For example, decreases were precipitated by people feeling motivated to change, separation from others who used drugs, and receiving treatment or support.
Conclusions
Findings indicate that various interventions and accommodation models may benefit people who are homeless and using substances. An initiative that combined shelter and basic amenities, pharmacological treatment, psychosocial support, and space where substances were not available and other people using substances could be avoided resulted in an overall reduction in substance use amongst those accommodated.
Compared the competing simplex (involvement) and common factor models for youthful drug use using causal modeling with latent variables methods with 1,634 students in Grades 7-9. Latent variables of alcohol, marihuana, and other illicit drug use were confirmed and causally interconnected in a set of states. The confirmatory factor and the simplex stage models were found to be acceptable representations of the observed data according to both statistical and psychometric criteria. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of emerging life-styles including drug use, methodology, and policy about psychoactive substances. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Psychoactive plants have been consumed by many cultures, cults and groups during religious rituals and ceremonies for centuries and they have been influential on the eruption of many images, secret and religious symbols, esoteric geometrical shapes, archetypes, religious figures, and philosophy of religions since the dawn of Homo sapiens. Some of the psychoactive plants used for religious purposes were: narcotic analgesics (opium), THC (cannabis), psilocybin (magic mushrooms), mescaline (peyote), ibogaine (Tabernanthe iboga), DMT (Ayahuasca and Phalaris species), Peganum harmala, bufotenin, muscimol (Amanita muscaria), Thujone (absinthe, Arthemisia absinthium), ephedra, mandragora, star lotus, Salvia divinorum etc. An important property of these natural chemicals is to induce the human psyche to perceive optical forms and shapes that are existent in the subconscious and presumed collective unconsciousness, and which emerge during certain trance states and ASCs (altered states of consciousness). Some of these simple geometric forms are called entoptic images and phosphenes. Entopic images and phosphenes have been found in various cultural works of art and in the drawings on cave walls, which were formed during shamanic religious rituals since Neolithic times. Also entoptic images exist in many folkloric, traditional and cultural geometrical shapes. Long before the creation of languages, visual perception and information were the only source for mankind, alone of the primates, to perceive the outer world. This article reviews the possibility of an ancient forgotten language of visual signs and symbols, which is genetically existent in the human brain and emerges during ASCs, trance states, and consciousness altered by psychoactive plants.
To deepen understanding of efforts to consider addiction a "brain disease," we review critical appraisals of the disease model in conjunction with responses from in-depth semistructured stakeholder interviews with (1) patients in treatment for addiction and (2) addiction scientists. Sixty-three patients (from five alcohol and/or nicotine treatment centers in the Midwest) and 20 addiction scientists (representing genetic, molecular, behavioral, and epidemiologic research) were asked to describe their understanding of addiction, including whether they considered addiction to be a disease. To examine the NIDA brain disease paradigm, our approach includes a review of current criticism from the literature, enhanced by the voices of key stakeholders. Many argue that framing addiction as a disease will enhance therapeutic outcomes and allay moral stigma. We conclude that it is not necessary, and may be harmful, to frame addiction as a disease.
The majority of adolescent risk taking occurs in the presence of peers, and recent research suggests that the presence of peers may alter how the potential rewards and costs of a decision are valuated or perceived. The current study further explores this notion by investigating how peer observation affects adolescent risk taking when the information necessary to make an informed decision is explicitly provided. We used a novel probabilistic gambling task in which participants decided whether to play or pass on a series of offers for which the reward and loss outcome probabilities were made explicit. Adolescent participants completed the task either alone or under the belief that they were being observed by an unknown peer in a neighboring room. Participants who believed a peer was observing them chose to gamble more often than participants who completed the task alone, and this effect was most evident for decisions with a greater probability of loss. These results suggest that the presence of peers can increase risk taking among adolescents even when specific information regarding the likelihood of positive and negative outcomes is provided. The findings expand our understanding of how peers influence adolescent decision making and have important implications regarding the value of educational programs aimed at reducing risky behaviors during adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
Conceptions of the transition to adulthood in the contemporary American majority culture are examined, and compared to conceptions cross-culturally and historically. Perspectives from other places and times are presented first, indicating that there is a widespread view that the transition to adulthood involves the gradual development of character qualities such as impulse control and diligence but culminates in marriage as the ultimate marker of the transition to adulthood. Findings from several recent American studies are then presented, indicating that for contemporary young Americans the preeminent criteria for the transition to adulthood are the individualistic character qualities of accepting responsibility for one’s self and making independent decisions, along with becoming financially independent; marriage, in contrast, ranks very low. New data are presented to illustrate young Americans’ conceptions of the transition to adulthood. Reasons are discussed for the prominence of individualistic criteria in American society and the prominence of marriage in other places and times. The concept of emerging adulthood is presented as a new way of conceptualizing the period between adolescence and young adulthood.
AIM – This article analyses addiction and rehabilitation as described in the autobiographies, memoirs and diaries of famous female rock artists. The article shows how female artists portray rock culture, addiction and causes to addiction. MATERIAL – The data includes 16 autobiographical books published between 1982 and 2010. These books were published first in English. Female rock artists are marked as the first authors, and all of the books use first-person narration. METHOD – The analysis relies on thematic qualitative analysis and narratology. Data were encoded for addiction, object of addiction, rehabilitation and type of recovery from addiction. Gender was analysed as a separate category. In addition, narrative strategies used in the books were analysed. RESULTS - Addictions and rehabilitation are prevalent themes in autobiographical rock books
written by female authors. Many authors write about their personal experiences of addiction and rehabilitation. Those authors who do not portray their personal problems with alcohol or drugs write about staying sober as a way of coping in the male-dominated rock world. CONCLUSIONS – Rock ’n’ roll mythology is changing. Rock artists no longer celebrate their excesses, but rather write about their negative experiences with alcohol and drugs. Rock narratives by female stars portray social and gendered settings which lead to addiction.
This is the original book presenting the theory of emerging adulthood, which offered a new conception of development from the late teens through the 20s. The book presents emerging adulthood as a new life stage that has arisen over the past half century in developed countries. It is not merely “late adolescence,” because emerging adults are not going through puberty, are not as dependent on their parents, and are not minors under the law. Nor is it the beginning of a settled “young adulthood” in which the structure of an adult life has been built that is likely to continue for decades to come. Instead, emerging adulthood is a life stage in which explorations and instability are the norm. As they focus on their self-development, emerging adults feel in-between, on the way to adulthood but not there yet. Nevertheless, they have a high level of optimism about the possibilities the future holds for them. For this 20th anniversary edition, all the chapters have been updated, and a new chapter has been added on cultural and international variations. The other chapters cover a wide range of topics in the lives of emerging adults, including relations with parents; love, sex, and marriage; college and the transition to work; religious beliefs and values; common problems; media use; social class variations; and how emerging adults perceive their transition to adulthood. Throughout the book, vivid interview material is combined with large-scale survey research, including a national survey of 18-to-29-year-olds directed by the author.
This resource shows that the social circumstances that spread addiction in a conquered tribe or a falling civilisation are also built into today's globalizing free-market society, and argues that the most effective response to a growing addiction problem is a social and political one, rather than an individual one.
In academic philosophy the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari are still treated as curiosities and their importance for philosophical discussions is not recognized. In order to remedy this, I demonstrate how the very concept of philosophy expounded by the two contributes to philosophical thinking at the end of the twentieth century while also providing a possible line of thought for the next millenium. To do this, I first emphasize the influence of Deleuze's thinking, while also indicating the impact Guattari had on him. This account will therefore show Deleuze's attempts before Guattari to concieve of a non-dialectic philosophy of becoming. I will turn to rethink this approach given the influence of Guattari and his anti-psychoanalytic analysis of territorial processes. The result is a conception of philosophical activity as an act of 'becoming minor'.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss the rhizome as being "absolutely different from roots and radicles" 6. The rhizome is explained via principles. 1 and 2: connection and heterogeneity.: "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be". Principle 3: "Principle of multiplicity" "There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines". Principle 4: "Principle of asignifying rupture" "There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome." Principles 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: Where traditional thought is 'tracing', a rhizome is a map. Tracing involves laying onto reality the pattern of structure, itself a construct. "The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious". They take the term plateau from Gregory Bateson, it refers to a sustained intensity. "We call a 'plateau' any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome".
"Write with slogans: Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant!"
Years ago, prompted by Grize, Apostel and Papert, we undertook the study of functions, but until now we did not properly understand the relations between functions and operations, and their increasing interactions at the level of 'constituted functions'. By contrast, certain recent studies on 'constitutive functions', or preoperatory functional schemes, have convinced us of the existence of a sort of logic of functions (springing from the schemes of actions) which is prior to the logic of operations (drawn from the general and reversible coordinations between actions). This preoperatory 'logic' accounts for the very general, and until now unexplained, primacy of order relations between 4 and 7 years of age, which is natural since functions are ordered dependences and result from oriented 'applications'. And while this 'logic' ends up in a positive manner in formalizable structures, it has gaps or limitations. Psychologically, we are interested in understanding the system atic errors due to this primacy of order, such .as the undifferentiation of 'longer' and 'farther', or the non-conservations caused by ordinal estimations (of levels, etc. ), as opposed to extensive or metric evaluations. In a sense which is psychologically very real, this preoperatory logic of constitutive functions represents only the first half of operatory logic, if this can be said, and it is reversibility which allows the construction of the other half by completing the initial one-way structures."
Radical youth work is gaining popularity as a means of teaching adults how, in collaboration with youth, they can challenge dominant ways of knowing. This study uses two particular subcultures, skinheads and punks, to explore how constructions of subcultures in time, language, space, body practice, and identity offer alternative ways of understanding youth-adult relationships. In doing so, it investigates youth work as a radical political process and suggests a new approach to current subculture theory. In Youth and Subculture as Creative Force, Hans Arthur Skott-Myhre interviews six youths who identify themselves as members of either punk or traditional skinhead subcultures. He discusses the results of these interviews and demonstrates how youth perspectives have come to inform his understanding of himself as a youth worker and scholar. Youth subcultures, he argues, have considerable potential for improving relations between youths and adults in the postmodern capitalist world. Drawing on Marxist, Foucauldian, and postmodernist theory, Skott-Myhre uses the subjective formations outlined in his study to offer recommendations for constructing legitimate radical youth work that takes into account for the perspectives of young people. © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008. All rights reserved.
French ethnographer, Arnold van Gennep (2011), first introduced the concept of liminality to the field of anthropology in the early twentieth century as the transitional or middle stage of a three-stage model in ritual rights of passage. Anthropologist Victor Turner (1995) later focused upon and expanded the concept of liminality as an important place or period situated between two phases in which an individual has separated from the society to which they previously belonged and has yet to be reintegrated into that society. It is in this space of ambiguity and uncertainty, of restlessness and anticipation that we find youth.
This book presents a new English translation of two seminal works by Jean-Paul Sartre, the most dominant European intellectual of the post-World War II decades. The volume includes Sartre's 1945 lecture "Existentialism Is a Humanism" and his analysis of Camus's The Stranger, along with a discussion of these works by acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. This edition is a translation of the 1996 French edition, which includes Arlette ElkaÏm-Sartre's introduction and a Q&A with Sartre about his lecture. In her foreword, intended for an American audience, acclaimed Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal offers an assessment of both works. It was to correct common misconceptions about his thought that Sartre accepted an invitation to speak on October 29, 1945, at the Club Maintenant in Paris. The unstated objective of his lecture ("Existentialism Is a Humanism") was to expound his philosophy as a form of "existentialism," a term much bandied about at the time. Sartre asserted that existentialism was essentially a doctrine for philosophers, though, ironically, he was about to make it accessible to a general audience. The published text of his lecture quickly became one of the bibles of existentialism and made Sartre an international celebrity. The idea of freedom occupies the center of Sartre's doctrine. Man, born into an empty, godless universe, is nothing to begin with. He creates his essence-his self, his being-through the choices he freely makes ("existence precedes essence"). Were it not for the contingency of his death, he would never end. Choosing to be this or that is to affirm the value of what we choose. In choosing, therefore, we commit not only ourselves but all of mankind.
Our distant forebears wrestled with concepts of alcohol addiction not unlike those of today: Is addiction a sin or a disease? Is addiction caused by the gods, the substance, the individual's vulnerability, or psychological or social factors? Luther, Calvin, and Catholic Church leaders viewed moderate alcohol use as God's gift; used intemperately, it was a moral transgression. The founders of modern scientific psychiatry rejected moral explanations for addiction in favor of an early biological model. The first two versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I and DSM-II) stigmatized addiction by listing it with other societally disapproved disorders stemming from personality disorder. DSM-III espoused atheoretical, descriptive diagnoses but required tolerance or withdrawal to diagnose dependence. Substance dependence in DSM-III-R included physiological and behavioral symptoms and reflected the substance dependence syndrome. DSM-IV's emphasis on biology in its concept of dependence was unchanged from its immediate predecessors. DSM-5 declared that all drugs taken in excess have in common the direct activation of the brain reward system. This article examines evolving concepts of alcohol addiction through 12,000 years of recorded human history, from the first mention of alcohol consumption in China more than 12,000 years ago to alcohol use and abuse in the DSM era, 1952 to the present. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology Volume 12 is March 28, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
This book seeks to analyze the issue of race in America after the election of Barack Obama. For the author, the U.S. criminal justice system functions can act as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it adheres to the principle of color blindness.
Today, many state-licensed group homes for mentally disabled adults have come to resemble their predecessor psychiatric institutions in that they se-gregate residents from the community at large. In 2010, a court found that private group homes in New York discriminated against the mentally disabled in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The court ordered the state to establish non-discriminatory housing alterna-tives where residents could live, and become part of, the community at large. This groundbreaking litigation has prompted similar efforts in oth-er states. In addition to the ADA, the Fair Housing Act (FHA) also pro-tects the mentally disabled from discrimination arising from segregated housing. This Note examines whether the FHA supports a discrimination claim on behalf of the mentally disabled residing in segregated group homes. The differences between the ADA and FHA approaches are ana-lyzed in terms of standing, defenses, and remedies, in order to determine whether a FHA claim increases the chances of successful litigation, in turn furthering the underlying policy goal of ending discrimination in housing.
In this chapter I shall report the first steps of an investigation the object of which was to study some conditions that induce individuals to remain independent or to yield to group pressures when these are contrary to fact. The issues related to this question are important both for theory and for their human implications. Whether a group will resist or submit to given pressures may be decisive for its future. It is an equally decisive fact about a person whether he has the freedom to act according to his beliefs or whether he has failed to develop (or has lost) the possibility of independence. Current thinking has stressed the power of social conditions to induce psychological changes arbitrarily. It has taken slavish submission to group forces as the general fact and has neglected or implicitly denied the capacities of men for independence, for rising under certain conditions above group passion and prejudice. Our present task is to observe directly the interaction between individuals and groups when the paramount issue is that of remaining independent or submitting to social pressure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(chapter)
The current paper aims to review findings from developmental research that are related to adolescent substance-use and are considered key for improving theory and developing effective prevention.
A selective literature review of relevant developmental studies on adolescent substance-use was conducted.
Studies in epidemiology and developmental science focusing on developmental onset, developmental transitions, comorbidity among disorders, and endophenotypes have identified important trends, risk-factors for and consequences of adolescent substance-use, which have informed theoretical models of addiction. Furthermore, they have informed clinical practice by identifying childhood disorders and personality characteristics that can be targeted preventatively before substance-use problems have their onset.
Developmental research has contributed significantly to the understanding of aetiology and treatment of substance-use disorders. By targeting early liability factors rather than substance-use problems later in adolescence, interventions could reduce the adverse impact substance-use has on the developing brain as well as other associated harms.
Many research-based models of information seeking behaviour are limited in their ability to describe everyday life information seeking. Such models tend to focus on active information seeking, to the neglect of less-directed practices. Models are often based on studies of scholars or professionals, and many have been developed using a cognitive approach to model building. This article reports on the development of a research-based model of everyday life information seeking and proposes that a focus on the social concept of information practices is more appropriate to everyday life information seeking than the psychological concept of information behaviour The model is derived from a constructionist discourse analysis of individuals’ accounts of everyday life information seeking.
Although far from unanimous, there seems to be a general consensus that neither mind nor brain can be reduced without remainder to the other. This essay argues that indeed both mind and brain need to be included in a nonreductionistic way in any genuinely integral theory of consciousness. In order to facilitate such integration, this essay presents the results of an extensive cross-cultural literature search on the mind side of the equation, suggesting that the mental phenomena that need to be considered in any integral theory include developmental levels or waves of consciousness, developmental lines or streams of consciousness, states of consciousness, and the self (or self-system). A master template of these various phenomena, culled from over one-hundred psychological systems East and West, is presented. It is suggested that this master template represents a general summary of the mind side of the brain-mind integration. The essay concludes with reflections on the hard problem', or how the mind-side can be integrated with the brain-side to result a more integral theory of consciousness.
Conceptions of the subject have been a critical site of intervention for cultural studies, especially where such studies concern those processes by which meanings, practices, and institutions and relations of power are articulated in the constitution and control of social life. This article considers the analytic potential of re-thinking the subject, as Deleuze suggests, not in terms of ‘a subject’ but as a force-field of intensities. Following the work of Deleuze and Guattari, this article develops a cartographic approach to the study of such force-fields and applies this approach to one uniquely potent mode of modern subjection: that associated with addiction. In addition to intervening in those discourses and practices which produce contemporary addictions, this article offers a potentially useful approach to the study of such cultural epidemics, as well as further exploration of Deleuze and Guattari's significance for cultural studies.
The view that science is the only reliable path to knowledge is a naive philosophical assumption which often goes unexamined. The makers of "normal science" are not the great discoverers who dared to take chances, but the majority of "normal scientists" who overstress caution and the art of not making mistakes. Science need not confine itself to a reductionist, atomistic view of the world in which man is dehumanized. Many nonscientists fear science for they see it as belittling the things they consider beautiful and valuable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book explores the history of America's personal and institutional responses to alcoholism and other addictions. It is the story of mutual aid societies: the Washingtonians, the Blue Ribbon Reform Clubs, the Ollapod Club, the United Order of Ex-Boozers, the Jacoby Club, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Women for Sobriety. It is a story of addiction treatment institutions from the inebriate asylums and the Keeley Institutes to Hazelden and Parkside. It is a story of evolving treatment interventions that range from water cures and mandatory sterilization to aversion therapies and methadone maintenance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Most experiments in social psychology are considered defective because the investigators, lacking social perspective, set up their problems within the culture of their own communities. The writer has no sympathy for the controversy between the individual and the social approaches. The individual is regarded as basic, and any valid psychological principle should apply to the individual, alone, in a group, or in relation to his whole culture. Throughout psychology, in perception, in judgment, in affectivity, etc., the frame of reference is shown to be an important determinant of experience. Variations in culture are shown to be variations in frames of reference common to various groups. Social frames of reference (social norms, i.e. values, customs, stereotypes, conventions, etc.) are regarded first as stimuli which meet the individual in his associations with others and then become interiorized. The process of establishing a social norm is illustrated experimentally in an unstable perceptual situation (autokinetic phenomenon). Observing alone, the individual establishes his own frame of reference, which is modified in the direction of conformity when he observes in a group. Observing first in a group, frames of reference are set up which determine subsequent reports when the individual observes alone (illustrating the factual basis for the contentions that supra-individual qualities arise in group situations). Social values in relation to personal needs are discussed in the light of this experiment. A final chapter describes "human nature" as dependent upon the norms peculiar to the individual's group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Having, in the chapters of the first volume (see record
2004-20102-000) considered physical growth and the mental and moral perversions incident to adolescence, and given an anthology of descriptions of various phases of this transitional stage of life as conceived or experienced by men and women of historic or literary eminence, the author has, in the chapters that follow, to consider its normal genetic psychology, beginning with sensation and proceeding to feei- ings, will, and intellect. The material for what follows is newer, more difficult, and more incomplete, but although many data are already at hand, there has never been any attempt, within my knowledge, to bring them together or to draw the scientific and practical inferences they suggest. After examining physical changes, like changes in the senses and voice, the author examines the evolution and feelings/instincts characteristic of normal adolescence. The education of the heart is described in chapters XI, XV, and XII. Chapter XII also is devoted to that of nature and the sciences most commonly taught. Chapter XIII examines pubic initiations by indigenous cultures, classical ideals and customs, and church confirmation. The adolescent psychology of conversion is examined in Chapter XIV. The last part of Chapter XV and Chapter XVI treats of the pedagogy of the English literature and language, history, drawing, normal and high schools, colleges and universities, and philosophy. Social and religious training have each a chapter (XV and XIV, respectively). The education of girls has Chapter XVII. The final chapter examines ethnic psychology and pedagogy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)