University of Toronto, Canada.
McGill University, Canada.
Health (London). 2022 Sep;26(5):643-662. doi: 10.1177/1363459321996753. Epub 2021 Feb 25.
Drawing on 24 interviews conducted with gay, bisexual, queer and other men who have sex with men (GBM) living in Toronto, Canada, we examined how they are making sense of the relationship between their mental health and substance use. We draw from the literature on the biopolitics of substance use to document how GBM self-regulate and use alcohol and other drugs (AODC) as . Despite cultural understandings of substance use as integral to GBM communities and subjectivity, GBM can be ambivalent about their AODC. Participants discussed taking substances positively as a therapeutic mental health aid and negatively as being corrosive to their mental wellbeing. A fine line was communicated between substance use being self-productive or self-destructive. Some discussed having made 'problematic' or 'unhealthy' drug-taking decisions, while others presented themselves as self-controlled, responsible neoliberal actors doing 'what a normal gay man would do'. This ambivalence is related to the polarizing binary community and scientific discourses on substances (i.e. addiction/healthy use, irrational/rational, uncontrolled/controlled). Our findings add to the critical drug literature by demonstrating how reifying and/or dismantling the coherency of such substance use binaries can serve as a biopolitical site for some GBM to construct their identities and demonstrate healthy, 'responsible' subjectivity.
我们对生活在加拿大多伦多的 24 名男同性恋、双性恋、酷儿和其他与男性发生性关系的男性（GBM）进行了访谈，研究了他们如何理解心理健康和物质使用之间的关系。我们借鉴了关于物质使用的生物政治学文献，记录了 GBM 如何自我调节以及如何使用酒精和其他药物（AODC）。尽管人们普遍认为物质使用是 GBM 社区和主体性的一个组成部分，但 GBM 对他们的 AODC 可能持矛盾态度。参与者积极讨论将物质作为一种治疗心理健康的辅助手段，同时也将其视为对心理健康的侵蚀。物质使用是自我生产还是自我毁灭之间存在着细微的界限。一些人讨论了做出了“有问题”或“不健康”的吸毒决定，而另一些人则将自己描述为自我控制、负责任的新自由主义行为者，在做“一个正常的同性恋者会做的事”。这种矛盾心理与关于物质的两极社区和科学话语（即成瘾/健康使用、理性/非理性、失控/控制）有关。我们的研究结果通过展示如何使这些物质使用二分法的一致性具体化和/或瓦解，可以作为一些 GBM 构建自己身份和展示健康、“负责任”的主体性的生物政治场所，从而丰富了批判性毒品文献。
