Narrative

My dissertation is a study of addiction recovery across social divides, and an examination of the "two track" system of treatment provision. With the advent of drug courts and other alternatives to incarceration seeking to address addiction issues thought to underlie many offences, more (poor, non-white) drug users are encountering a form of drug rehab characterized by extended stays, heightened surveillance, behavioral change through strict bodily discipline and the reform of a "criminal personality." In contrast, the middle class most often encounters the mainstay 28-day program, and increasingly, outpatient options that integrate treatment with work and family life. These models tend to be heavily influenced by the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Step tradition, with a greater emphasis on the role of family trauma and emotional dysfunction in the development of addiction.

My work explores differences in how many Americans encounter drug treatment. I am interested in how the project of recovery problematizes compulsion and intoxication across social space, how these constructions become tied to particular bodies, and whether or not the frameworks drug users take up in treatment resonate with the realities of their lived experience. I draw on comparative ethnography and a series of in-depth interviews to examine the recovery experiences of two groups of men-- a poor and working class, racially diverse group court mandated to rehab in a residential therapeutic community; and a mostly white, middle-class group enrolled in a 28-day Twelve Step program. I explore the ways in which these popular recovery models construct addiction as a medical or moral issue, calling forth particular strategies for self management. I also examine how race, class, and gender have shaped participants' drug use, patterned the development of their addictions in particular ways, and structured the meaning of their therapeutic encounters.