Research paper
Functional fun: Legitimising adult recreational drug use

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.04.018Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Recent statistics from the Crime Survey for England and Wales report a slight increase in past year drug use for the over thirty-age range (Home Office, 2014). This paper explores how adult ‘recreational’ drug takers account for their illicit consumption alongside otherwise conforming lives.

Methods

Twenty-six in-depth interviews were conducted with individuals between the ages of 30 and 59. Each participant had taken drugs in the past year, their main source of income was not a result of criminal activity and they were not currently receiving drug treatment. Discursive Psychology was used to analyse how the participants describe, reason and justify their use.

Results

The analysis resulted in the development of three discursive frameworks that demonstrate the different ways in which illicit drug use can be legitimised. The ‘drug cultures’ framework achieves this through highlighting the accommodation of drugs within social networks. The ‘planned celebration’ framework outlines the occasional frequency of drug use to legitimise consumption. The ‘situational opportunity’ framework positions the wide access and availability of drugs as the influence of their behaviour.

Conclusion

If drug takers can articulate their ability to control their use and maintain functionality within their lives, then both drug taker and drug use may be legitimated. In order to better understand the conceptualisation of drug use and the acceptable boundaries of behaviour, this research has demonstrated that it is more appropriate to conceptualise drug use on a spectrum that runs from control through to dysfunction, rather than either recreational or problematic.

Section snippets

Adult recreational drug use: patterns and trends in the new millennium

In England and Wales, recent drug use has been in slow and steady decline since the turn of the 21st century, most notably within the 16–24 age group which has seen a 7% decrease since 1996 (Home Office, 2014). Aldridge (2008) theorises decreases in the rates of drug use in two ways. The first is through the ‘period effect’, where incidence of drug use has declined over the past few decades. The second is the ‘cohort effect’, where new generations of young people are less drug involved than

Explaining adult recreational drug use: normalisation, diversity and the clubbing generation

The 1990s initiated debate about whether recreational drug use remained a deviant activity. In response to the growing numbers of young people using drugs, academics from the University of Manchester embarked on the North-West England Longitudinal Study (NWELS). The authors argued drug use had undergone a process of normalisation, via the accommodation of attitudes and behaviour within British Youth culture (Parker et al., 1998, Parker et al., 2002). In Aldridge and colleagues latest revision

Illicit drug use within otherwise conforming lives: negotiating criminality and moral condemnation

Although there are plausible explanations for recreational drug use, several factors restrict its acceptance within adulthood that debatably, because of adults’ potential greater stake in society and conformity, become more significant. The UK 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act prohibits various psychoactive substances; users risk criminal sanctions, including custodial sentences, for their possession, supply and/or cultivation. Drug takers must therefore negotiate criminal and health risks, as well as

Discursive psychology (DP): the approach

DP assesses the purpose and performance of language, how it is described and what meaning this gives to a narrative. This method is particularly useful when participants are accounting for behaviour that challenges cultural norms and values. Riley, Morey, and Griffin (2008) used DP to examine the ways in which the substance ketamine is conceptualised, both positively and negatively by those attending rave events. On one hand, ketamine was described as a powerful dissociative that threatens the

Theoretical sampling

In-depth, loosely structured interviews were conducted with twenty-six drug takers; these took place either in the participants’ own homes, or a quiet bar or café and lasted between one and three hours. The criteria for participation was as follows, aged thirty or over; have taken drugs within the past year; do not partake in criminal activities as their main source of income; and are not seeking drug treatment. The sample were generated through initial contacts within personal networks, and

The ‘drug cultures’ framework: legitimisation through social accommodation

Drug use is associated with a particular social scene or group(s) of people in the ‘drug cultures’ framework and these drug takers situate themselves at the heart of these contexts. This was the dominant framework utilised, with 15 people drawing from it to account for their frequent drug use. Participants described drug taking as motivated by their social lives – either through the enjoyment of music, dancing and feeling of unity through a shared social pursuit, or as enhancing social

The nuances of legitimisation: understanding acceptability via control and function

These findings support similar research using discursive psychology, which highlight multifaceted representations of drug use (Riley et al., 2008, Riley et al., 2010). All twenty-six adult drug takers interviewed engage in neutralisations. Any behaviour that carries risks (whether that be to health and well-being or criminality) is likely to be neutralised in some way (Aldridge et al., 2011, Pennay and Moore, 2010), but this cannot automatically be assumed to mean that behaviour is internalised

Conclusion

There is a dearth of research focusing on ‘functional and controlled’ drug use, perhaps because this does not affect society in an adverse way and some funders maybe reluctant to attribute their tight resources to projects that demonstrate the pleasures, functions and benefits of drug use, rather than research that identifies risk and prioritises reducing harm. However, emphasising the negatives distorts public perceptions of drug use, perpetuating a culture in which drug takers are

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council through PhD quota award funding. This was allocated by the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, in the School of Law, at the University of Manchester.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of the participants for making this research possible. Special thanks to Lisa Williams and Judith Aldridge for their support in the production of this article and to the reviewers for their invaluable comments.

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