Moderation and coexistence with psychoactive substances use: Approaching a Drug Consumption Room in France

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4000/aa.10691

Keywords:

drug consumption room, harm reduction, psychoactive user, moderation

Abstract

This article aims to understand how it is for psychoactive users to experience the use of substances in a Drug Consumption Room (DCR) for harm reduction and how it impacts their lives and subjectivities. The work starts from the premise that the DCRs’ polemical implementation is an attempt to answer to the social process that turned the use of psychoactive substances into a crime/health issue and created the pathological, excluded, and punishable category of drug user/addict. A qualitative methodology was used blending interviews and a direct observation of the Strasbourg’s DCR (ARGOS). The results show that psychoactive users attending that structure are persistently concerned about hygiene, responsibility, and guilt, which signalizes a searching for adhering to social order intercalated with substance use, however, still transversed by controversial feelings related to their consumption. Also expressing their autonomy, they reformulate the meanings they give to their substance consumption and to themselves. In addition, Strasbourg’s DCR’s sensibility to its audience’s precariousness gives clues for reflecting on this facility as an agent who acts by conviction in the face of the tragedy this population lives in.

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Author Biography

Natália Heringer Mendonça, Tribunal de Justiça do Distrito Federal e dos Territórios

Master’s degree in Human and Social Science from the University of Strasbourg, France. Bachelor’s degree in Social Science, mention in Anthropology, from the University of Brasilia, Brazil. Member of the Núcleo de Estudos do Corpo e Natureza (NECON/UnB). Judicial assistant at the Court of Justice of the Federal District and Territories (Tribunal de Justiça do Distrito Federal e dos Territórios), Brazil.

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Published

2023-04-28

How to Cite

Mendonça, Natália Heringer. 2023. “Moderation and Coexistence With Psychoactive Substances Use: Approaching a Drug Consumption Room in France”. Anuário Antropológico 48 (1):238-48. https://doi.org/10.4000/aa.10691.