In Her Words: Women’s Accounts of Managing Drug-related Risk, Pleasure, and Stigma in Sweden

When it comes to the field of drug studies, researchers have tended to privilege men’s perspectives and experiences, assuming women to be mostly marginal, as primarily victims and accomplices. Further, when women’s experiences are taken into account, a view of them as only women has tended to be pushed to the forefront. As such, we are sorely lacking research departing from women’s own recollections of their involvement with drugs that also considers how social location from the intersection of multiple categories of being (e.g. gender, class, type of drug involvement, etc.) characterises these experiences.

This dissertation contributes to the literature on drugs and drug involvement by drawing on the accounts of a group of twenty-six women who have, at some point in their lives, used, bought, shared, and/or sold drugs in Sweden. The overarching objective has been to understand why participants started, continued, and sometimes stopped being active with drugs and how they managed drug-related risk, pleasure, and stigma in the contexts in which they were located. Participants’ accounts were analysed through a theoretical lens developed from a synthesis of social constructionism, intersectionality, and symbolic interactionism, thus making it possible to see how their experiences were embedded in specific contexts and how respondents described navigating and managing the challenges these posed.

It emerged that respondents discussed their involvement with drugs as being considerably pleasurable and meaningful, but also heavily tinged by the risk of violence and stigma experienced in the illicit drugs market and in conventional society. Participants described developing numerous tactics to attempt to counter some of these risks and stigmatisation processes and, consequently, meanings because of and despite the circumstances they faced. Drugs and drug involvement gave respondents an opportunity to feel alternatively (dis)empowered, (in)capable, and (un)worthy of respect. These practices and meanings were necessarily mediated through participants’ social location, but resourcefulness and creativity also played an important role. Ultimately, respondents’ accounts show that they were simply doing what they could to create meaningful lives for themselves with the resources available to them.