A Dizzying Array of Substances.pdf - department of anthropology

Unfortunately, cocaine had taken a heavy toll on Sandra by the time sheentered this study. She had contracted HIV through injecting with herpartner (who had then overdosed and died) and her arm and leg veinswere effectively destroyed, so she was injecting into her groin. Her weightloss was also clearly visible.Twenty of our samplehad taken cocainepowder in the pastthree months, five ofwhom reported usingit intravenously.We asked what prompted her regular cocaine use:Researcher: Is it a social thing to feel good, or do you getwithdrawals?Sandra: No, well the past few days now when I haven’t had it inme system, I’ve been feeling a little bit angry. Do you know what Imean, and when I got it and get it into me, I’m alright, but then youget a bit annoyed after it, it puts you in a bit of a bad humour….But then, when you come down off it you’re alright, but it wouldn’tgive me withdrawals or anything like that, no, it’s just kind of inthe head, you want more, you want more. Coke is like, it makesyou feel you want more. Some people need either heroin to comedown off it, or tablets.Researcher: Do you, do you use anything to come down?Sandra: Sometimes I do have me tablets to come down, today Ihad nothing to come down, I just went down the clinic and gotme phoy, ... but it’s horrible to come down off it … just sit thereparanoid, don’t talk to nobody.We asked our surveyrespondents tolist those in theirimmediate networkwith a cocaineaddiction. 185 peoplewere listed. Ofthese, only six werereported as receivingtreatment for thisaddiction.Of the forty-sixpeople in our samplewho were prescribedminor tranquillizers,twenty were alsobuying them on thestreet.In nearly all of her reminiscences on her drug use, Sandra mentions her most enduringpharmacological fascination – her tablets: ‘D5,D10 Zimmervane, Dalmane, anything I can getme hands on’, in addition to those she is beinglegally prescribed. Her addiction to tablets goesundetected, indeed, for the most part, it appearsas part of her ‘treatment’. She is prescribedbenzodiazepines and antidepressants, which meansher urine is expected to legitimately test positivefor these drugs. In order to detect her benzoproblem, absolute levels of the drug would need tobe tested for, and Sandra does not believe that thisis likely because of the expense the clinic wouldincur.Of the twenty-five who had injected in thepast three months, fifteen reported past use ofneedles or syringes, which may have been usedby somebody else. No one had done this in thepast month. Twelve reported they have passedon a used needle or syringe to someone else.One had done this in the past month. Twentyfourreported they had reused their ownneedles or syringes in the past with fourteendoing so in the past month. Fourteen had alsoshared a filter, spoon or flush water.Sandra also echoes a common complaint up until about the mid-point of our fieldwork among usersthroughout the Canal Communities area that the coke available in Dublin was of poor quality and‘mixed with stuff’, so there were risks of ‘fitting’ (going into convulsions) when injecting. At the sametime, this poor quality was one of the commonly mentioned reasons behind injecting or ‘banging’for more experienced users, as the effects of what cocaine there is in the sample will be maximized40A DIZZYING ARRAY OF SUBSTANCES