Figuring Things Out: Contemplating Drug Addiction and Disclosure In and Out of the Field

Abstract

From 2017 to 2019, I conducted fieldwork on the opioid crisis in upstate New York. As part of my research, I interviewed people who use/d opioids. Interviewees discussed their beginning use, escalating use, and, for many, eventual sobriety. Throughout research, I reflected on my own drug consumption and attempts at moderation and abstinence—mostly regarding my heavy use of alcohol. I tracked my reflections in a field diary, writing over 200 entries. Yet, like many ethnographers, I extracted the notes out of my final research write-up. In part, my lack of disclosure was perhaps due to my being in what James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente refer to as the contemplation stage of change: I was unsure how to identify myself as a person who uses/struggles with drugs and alcohol, and I was not ready to commit to long-term sobriety. Whether I disclosed or not, such contemplation did affect my fieldwork: it shaped my motivation to pursue drug research and advocacy; my relationships and interactions with participants; and ways I navigated harm reduction and sober support spaces. After over 2 years of being out of the field (and now in a state of long-term sobriety), I revisit my field diary through autoethnographic exploration. In doing so, I place contemplation within the growing conversation on reflexivity and disclosure in critical drug studies.

Fault/Lines: New Directions in Critical Drug Scholarship Inspired by the Work of David Moore and Colleagues

“…The final paper for this special issue returns us to Moore’s roots, and combines his early ethnographic work, including his interest in the “dynamic and fluid nature” of drug use (Moore, 1992, p. 486) and the “intersubjective interaction[s]” between researchers and participants (Moore, 1994, p. 17), with his later work with Suzanne Fraser on the pathologization and problematization of drug use (Moore & Fraser, 2013). Authored by Revier (2022), this paper is based on two years of ethnographic research on the opioid crisis unfolding within upstate New York. Here, Revier interviewed people who use (or who had used) opioids.…”