"Jag har inte bott på en parkbänk liksom..." : Om stigman kring narkotikamissbruk

"It’s not like I’ve lived on a park bench…" : About stigmas surrounding narcotics abuse There are stigmas surrounding the abuse of narcotics that the members of society share and uphold. The stigma is produced by the idea of who a narcotics abuser is on a political level, an idea that will be reproduced by the instances of society, such as the health care or social services, that deal with narcotics-related problems. The purpose of this essay was to investigate the stigma surrounding narcotics abuse that former heavy users of narcotics may have experienced from their surroundings, and the potential relationship conveyed between the users’ descriptions of stigma, their self-image, and definition of the abuse problem. In this qualitative study, semistructured interviews were conducted with four individuals with a previous history of heavy drug abuse. Their accounts of stigma strongly corresponded with the structural idea of a narcotics abuser that is shared by the Swedish narcotics policy. Two of the interviewees reported being met with these stigmas by social or health care services, during and in one case after their time of abuse. The other two interviewees reported that although they had been received well by these instances, it was more likely due to their appearances and behaviour being socially correct, and that this would have differed had they lived up to the idea, or stigma, of a narcotics abuser. It was also prominent that all interviewees described a self-image during their time of abuse that was close to the stigma surrounding a narcotics abuser’s character. Their selfdescriptions had radically changed when asked about their character after the drug abuse had terminated. Additionally, their definition of the abuse problem was of an emotional nature, as opposed to previously reported definitions from social workers focusing on the narcotics. These results somewhat relate to Erving Goffman’s (1963) theories surrounding stigma, and indicate implications in the interaction between society’s expectations of a narcotics abuser and how the abuser is either shaped by, or contributes to shaping, the stigma surrounding narcotics use