Roe Laura, Proudfoot Jesse, Tay Wee Teck Joseph, Irvine Richard D G, Frankland Stan, Baldacchino Alexander Mario
Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom.
Department of Sociology, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom.
Front Psychiatry. 2021 Jan 13;11:623032. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.623032. eCollection 2020.
COVID-19 has resulted in deepened states of crisis and vulnerability for people who use drugs throughout Europe and across the world, with social distancing measures having far-reaching implications for everyday life. Prolonged periods of isolation and solitude are acknowledged within much addiction literature as negatively impacting the experiences of those in recovery, while also causing harm to active users - many of whom depend on social contact for the purchasing and taking of substances, as well as myriad forms of support. Solitude, however, is proposed by the authors as inherent within some aspects of substance use, far from particular to the current pandemic. Certain forms of substance use engender solitary experience, even where use is predicated upon the presence of others. Adopting a cross-disciplinary perspective, this paper takes as its focus the urgent changes wrought by the pandemic upon everyday life for people who use drugs, drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork with substance users in Scotland. Beyond the current crises, the paper proposes solitude, and by extension isolation, as an analytical framework for better apprehending lived experiences of substance use.
新冠疫情使欧洲乃至全球范围内吸毒者的危机和脆弱状态加剧，社交距离措施对日常生活产生了深远影响。在许多成瘾文献中，长时间的隔离和独处被认为会对康复者的体验产生负面影响，同时也会对吸毒者造成伤害——他们中的许多人依赖社交来购买和使用毒品，以及获得各种形式的支持。然而，作者认为，独处是物质使用某些方面所固有的，并非当前疫情所特有的现象。某些形式的物质使用会产生独处体验，即使使用是在他人在场的情况下进行的。本文采用跨学科视角，以新冠疫情给吸毒者日常生活带来的紧迫变化为重点，借鉴近期在苏格兰对吸毒者进行的人种志实地调查。除了当前的危机，本文提出将独处以及由此延伸出的隔离作为一个分析框架，以更好地理解物质使用的生活体验。
