Suffering, moral judgement and “addictogenic society”: The registers of sense in the treatment of addiction
This paper explores the content of moral evaluation operating in different treatment models of addiction in France by focusing on the trajectories of persons dependent on psycho-active products and actively searching for a solution to get free of its hold (partially or totally). We’ll specially be questioning the treatment models the addicts pass through : specialized treatment centers (called CSAPA in France) and self-help groups such as Narcotics Anonymous and “Vie Libre” (for people with alcohol problems). By adopting an ethnographic position, both comprehensive and critical, we’ll explore the construction of the “exit” of addiction with regard to the moral, social and institutional constraints. This article is based on data collected between 2010 and 2013. It combines observation of the environments of the treatment models, as well as biographical and semi-directive interviews with the professional caregivers (=15) and with the “addicts” (=41). The qualitative analysis of the data shows that the biographical work by the “addicts” allows a distancing of the experience of addiction. It’s a question of establishing a moral judgment of one’s past behavior while consuming the products. The category of “trajectoire de déprise” then allows to summarize the subjective ways of composing (oneself) with or without the use of drugs, without immediately referring to the ideal of abstinence. It’s when narrativizing oneself in front of the caregivers or members of self-help groups, that we can observe a biographical disruption. The treatment models mediate this narration, because they contribute in deciding what can be told and what’s unsayable. The narration becomes a condition to enter the society : by narrativizing oneself, the capable subject morally testifies him/herself as a responsible subject. This article questions the constraining aspect of this process, in this sense that the obligation of narrativizing oneself also participates in the construction of a moral subject capable of controlling him/herself.