Thesis Proposal:‘Pathways to recovery from heroin addiction: An oral history account of addicted heroin users in recovery.’

Part 2: Research Problems and Aims The use of drugs is as old as humankind. For the most part drugs have been used for healing, spiritual purposes and recreation with very little negative consequences (Hoffmann 1990). However there has always a small minority of people who have become problematic drug users.  Drug use becomes problematic when it becomes the sole focus of one’s life and when their use harms the user, their family and the community they live in. This small percentage of problematic drug users from within the drug use community could best be described as “addicts” ((Alexander and Schweighofer 1988). This thesis will attempt to understand how and why certain people, at certain points in their lives, turn to drugs for relief, become addicted, and how and why they recover [1].  It will do this by exploring the oral histories of previously addicted heroin users, now in recovery.  Both ‘addiction’ and ‘recovery’ are contested terms. The meaning we give to these terms has  profound implications for our approach to policy and treatment. Different models have different measures and diverse underlying concepts and normative outcomes. It could be said, however, that all treatment models aim towards what can be broadly called ‘recovery’. [2] An essential part of this study is to explore what these terms mean to the recovering addicted user, to begin to understand these from lived experiences. The aim of the study is to allow the subject free rein to tell their life stories in their own words, to construct it in ways that are meaningful to them. Through analyzing these stories the aim of this dissertation is to gain a greater understanding into the pathways of addiction and recovery.  This information can then be used to inform debates around the nature and the lived realities of addiction, but also the effectiveness of different treatment and policy models. The objectives are as follows: 1                  to record the oral histories of a group of addicted heroin users in recovery. 2                 to analyse the narratives to extract common themes relating to pathways in and out of addiction. 3                 to assess the emergent themes in relation to the various theoretical and evidential debates about addiction and recovery in the existing literature, particularly relating to current treatment models. 4                 to use the insight gained to begin to address the limitations in the current treatment models by engaging with current policy and the various agents involved in treatment of drug addiction.  The primary question that will be asked is: What insight can we gain from the oral histories of recovering addicted heroin users that might assist in identifying the strengths and addressing the limitations of present treatment models in South Africa?

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[1]          I have elected to use the term “addicted user” since it does not hold the stigma of the term addict, yet still manages to convey the level of obsession inherent in what we refer to as addiction.

[2]              The meaning of these terms is explored in the literature section below.

Read pt 3: Literature review here:  http://davidonymous.blogspot.co.za/2017/02/thesis-proposal-pathways-to-recovery.html