Vol. 3 No. 2 (2019): Treating Addictions: On Failures, Harms, and Hopes of Success

Special issue edited by Aleksandra Bartoszko and Paul Christensen.

In this issue, readers will find a range of articles questioning many prevailing assumptions surrounding the labels of addiction as well as the pervasive methodologies of ‘treatment’ and ‘recovery’. The authors are astutely critical of the oft corrosive logics that dictate and organize these conceptual frameworks, offering innovative and informative insights, while questioning the ways in which care and treatment(s) can reproduce the very realities they purport to address or even cause harm. Highlighting the paradoxical conditions of institutional approaches to drug use, they document often life-threatening consequences for individuals struggling to realize institutionally and culturally dictated criteria of success. Doing so, they challenge the established understandings of ‘addiction treatment’ as inherently good and ask if there are other ways of social inclusion or of bettering life quality for persons who use drugs.