Coming Off Drugs

A Critical History of the Withdrawing Body

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11057012
AutoresIan Walmsley (0000-0003-1755-5320, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, autor correspondente)
Ano2016
Volume43
Fascículo4
Páginas381-396
Data de publicação2016-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoContemporary Drug Problems (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0091-4509 • E-ISSN: 2163-1808
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0091450916666641
OpenAlexW2520846605
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas52

Heroin withdrawal is perhaps one of the most taken-for-granted components of the addiction framework. Heroin users as well as researchers, policy makers, and practitioners have become dependent on it for thinking about and acting upon the process of heroin leaving the body. It is thought to be among the most challenging aspects of the recovery journey and has been linked to a range of public health, legal, and social problems. The taken-for-granted nature of heroin withdrawal has arguably limited its scrutiny in sociological and historical analyses. This article offers an alternative and critical perspective that draws attention to the heterogeneity of historical events and strategies that have left their mark on the withdrawing body of the heroin user. It maps changes in the discourse from the 18th century to the present and closes with developments in the neuroscience of addiction, which have relocated withdrawal from the body to the neurocircuitry of the brain and reframed it as a negative emotional state. This new language suggests the future of the discourse of withdrawal might be relatively short. The analysis moves beyond existing understandings of withdrawal as the simple absence of drugs from the body

Addiction · Criminology · Heroin · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Psychiatry · Scrutiny · Sociology · Forensic Toxicology and Drug Analysis · Law · Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior · Psychology · Schizophrenia research and treatment