Love and Hate in Narratives about Psychoactive Drugs Consumption and Users in Uruguay.

• In Event: Domains of Critical Drug Studies: Absent Pleasures and Risky Presents in Emerging Spaces of Harm Reduction - III

Abstract

Nowadays, it is possible to observe converging and diverging interests and goals (health treatments, legal and illegal commerce, scientific research, emotional control, pleasure search) about psychoactive drugs uses in many countries. Some of these interests reflect in certain classifications that label the drugs(like licit or illicit, medicine or toxic, prescribed or self consumption) and their consumers (like addict, anxious, depressive). We can think that these labels are not neutral and have consequences in the meaning attributed to these drugs in mental health treatments and in consumptions in general.
Drawing on a combination of document studies, focus groups and in-depth interviews with 73 users and 36 health professionals and an in progress multilocal ethnography in Montevideo (the capital of Uruguay), we explore the narratives about the use of these psychoactive drugs in our country.
We observed that health professionals and consumers often use terms that denote positive or negative emotional states when they speak about the drug, the consumption or the user. Specifically, we identified the use of metaphors of hate and love in relation to the drug and its consumption that somehow put into question the distinction between medical and non medical drugs.
These emotional states have consequences in treatments and withdrawal processes and, as we shall show, can also give light about the different meanings that these psychoactive drugs have in our country.

Authors

• Nancy Beatriz Calisto, Academic, University of the Republic (Uruguay)

• María Pilar Bacci, Universidad de la República

• Andrea Clara Bielli, Universidad de la República

• Gabriela Lilián Bruno, Facultad de Psicología de la Udelar Uruguay

• Lauren Predebon, Universidad de la República (Uruguay)

• Santiago Navarro, Universidad de la República, Uruguay