Abstract
COVID-19 has resulted in deepened states of crisis and vulnerability for people who use drugs throughout Europe and across the world, with social distancing measures having far-reaching implications for everyday life. Prolonged periods of isolation and solitude are acknowledged within much addiction literature as negatively impacting the experiences of those in recovery, while also causing harm to active users – many of whom depend on social contact for the purchasing and taking of substances, as well as myriad forms of support. Solitude, however, is proposed by the authors as inherent within some aspects of substance use, far from particular to the current pandemic. Certain forms of substance use engender solitary experience, even where use is predicated upon the presence of others. Adopting a cross-disciplinary perspective, this paper takes as its focus the urgent changes wrought by the pandemic upon everyday life for people who use drugs, drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork with substance users in Scotland. Beyond the current crises, the paper proposes solitude, and by extension isolation, as an analytical framework for better apprehending lived experiences of substance use.
Highlights
Considerations of isolation and solitude in relation to Substance Use Disorders (SUD) are often accompanied by portrayals of life as lacking in social connection, where the possibilities for meaningful relationships are subsumed by the compulsive drive toward substances
Overall, comprise important – yet often overlooked or misconstrued – aspects of substance use, ones which take on particular significance in the context of the pandemic
Relationships need not be defined through substances, though substance use itself can produce forms of social, physical, and emotional intimacy that facilitate everyday survival [56]
Summary
Considerations of isolation and solitude in relation to Substance Use Disorders (SUD) are often accompanied by portrayals of life as lacking in social connection, where the possibilities for meaningful relationships are subsumed by the compulsive drive toward substances. In a series of phone conversations in May, June, and July of this year, several of Roe’s research participants discussed the everyday difficulties occasioned by lockdown restrictions and social distancing measures During one such phone call, Tamsin detailed her own experiences of lockdown, describing overlapping senses of isolation, boredom, and anxiety as harming her efforts to remain abstinent.. Four other individuals spoken to by Roe during this time emphasized the worsened precarity of their living situations; the fluctuating difficulty of obtaining regular substances; the need to resort to alternative substances to avoid withdrawal; and the use of substances to counter the adverse effects of prolonged isolation, boredom, and anxiety on their mental health and well-being These issues are far from isolated to substance users in Scotland, but have been evidenced in several recent international studies on the impacts of the pandemic upon substance using populations. To what extent will social isolation further increase community fragility, and through this increase the vulnerability of a group already beleaguered by the highest drug related death rate in the EU?
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