Stigma and Self-Stigma in Addiction

Steve Matthews,Anke Snoek,Robyn Dwyer

doi:10.1007/s11673-017-9784-y

Abstract

Addictions are commonly accompanied by a sense of shame or self-stigmatization. Self-stigmatization results from public stigmatization in a process leading to the internalization of the social opprobrium attaching to the negative stereotypes associated with addiction. We offer an account of how this process works in terms of a range of looping effects, and this leads to our main claim that for a significant range of cases public stigma figures in the social construction of addiction. This rests on a social constructivist account in which those affected by public stigmatization internalize its norms. Stigma figures as part-constituent of the dynamic process in which addiction is formed. Our thesis is partly theoretical, partly empirical, as we source our claims about the process of internalization from interviews with people in treatment for substance use problems.

Highlights

Owen Flanagan (2013) has recently proposed an account of addiction that includes a shame condition
We claim that a narrow source of shame—a loss of face for failures to live up to one’s own standards—misses much of what explains it, namely the fact that affected persons mark themselves out to themselves—they self-stigmatize—after absorbing negative social attitudes about addiction, addictive behaviour and Baddicts.^ Even the concept of shame in one’s own eyes, where one tries to meet some personal normative standard, is unlikely not to suffer from the leakage of social norms into personal care of oneself
Our claim is that for a significant subset of those who experience public stigma, the process of self-stigmatization does take place and this process is an element in the social construction of the addiction condition itself

Summary

Introduction

Owen Flanagan (2013) has recently proposed an account of addiction that includes a shame condition. Our claim is that for a significant subset of those who experience public stigma, the process of self-stigmatization does take place and this process is an element in the social construction of the addiction condition itself. We think the sources of the shame condition typically go beyond the affected person’s inability to be an effective reasons-responsive agent, someone who passes her own survey, which makes the source of addiction’s shame look too narrow We think it crucial to locate a central source of addictive shame in connection to the truism of stereotyping mentioned earlier: the fact that social persons judge one another, interpret and evaluate each other’s behaviour, and find ways inevitably to group each other into ready-made normative categories, in this case the negative stereotypical category of Baddict,^ Bjunkie,^ B freak,^ Bfiend,^ Buser,^ Bdruggie,^ Bdopehead,^ and so on. These, in turn, further consolidate the negativity attaching to the addict stereotype and concomitant disruption to normative agency

A Compounding Effect of Stigma in Addiction

Conclusion