Understanding Addiction

This book presents an original study into theworkings of heroin addiction. The study analysed howusing and non-using informants constituted addictionthrough language. By comparing the accounts ofself-defined recovered recovering and currentlyaddicted users the study highlighted how theinformant's accounts of heroin use may haveimplications with respect to either perpetuating orenabling their recovery from addiction. Thetranscripts of four focus groups were qualitativelyanalysed using a thematic method that focused on theinformants' strategic use of language. This revealedimportant differences between using and non-usinginformants in terms of the self-employed discursivepractices that they used in constructing theirexperience of addiction. Many heroin users that haveread this study were excited to recognise theirbehaviour in it and agreed that it captured anelement of their experience that they have not seenin print before. This quality can deepen the readersunderstanding of what it really means to be addictedhow users justify continuing use and how some areable to recover.