Understanding drug misuse and changing identities: A life story approach

Abstract

This paper is based upon a narrative inquiry into how early childhood experiences can be understood as a precursor to drug misuse and the forces that enable people to transform their habits and lives. It uses a life story approach in which an individual's subjective experiences can show how social environments and the wider social/cultural resources help people make sense and meaning of their lives. The paper focuses on one woman's story as a way of using a ‘local story’ to gain ‘narrative knowledge’ (Bruner, J. S. (). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.). It draws attention to the ways that cultural stories impact on a person's sense of self and identity and the need to educate workers in the field about the value of approaching work with drug misusers in ways that challenge ideas of identity as fixed and individual models of self. By listening to life stories, noticing and questioning dominant cultural and potentially pathologizing stories, we can help people pay attention to, and build upon, their stories of resistance and resilience that may otherwise go unnoticed and unheard (White, M., & Epston, D. (). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.).