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The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical analysis of the pathways of female addicts within the Maltese context by highlighting the complex interrelatedness between substance abuse and victimisation. This paper proposes that female addiction and victimisation trajectories unfold in a non-linear fashion, heavily influenced by particular socio-psychological processes.

Guided by a career approach conceptual framework, this study was carried out through an in-depth exploration of the victimisation and addictive career trajectories of 12 women, who are either incarcerated or in a residential drug treatment facility. Data were gathered qualitatively through in-depth interviews and analysed using a grounded theory methodology.

The paper highlights how the victimisation and substance abuse trajectories of women initially unfold and develop over time. This includes an exploration of the strategies employed in order to negotiate gender-based victimisation experiences throughout their lifetime, such as through the development of a victim identity and the self-medication of trauma symptoms, a process that is facilitated by the influence of older, male peers. As the women’s addiction trajectories progress rapidly towards commitment, sex work and IPV feature and the victim identity is reinforced, motivating continued and increased drug use.

The paper includes implications for the development of a gender-responsive framework of intervention when working with women who were present for the treatment.

With a focus on women’s experiences, this study fills a lacuna within the literature by complementing and expanding upon quantitative analyses that examine these phenomena as distinct entities.

Little is known about the context of the post-release risk environment among formerly incarcerated people who inject drugs (PWID) in Russia. The purpose of this paper is to explore these challenges as they relate to reentry, relapse to injection opioid use, and overdose.

The authors conducted 25 in-depth semi-structured interviews among PWID living in St Petersburg, Russia who had been incarcerated within the past two years. Participants were recruited from street outreach (n=20) and a drug treatment center (n=5).

Emergent themes related to the post-release environment included financial instability, negative interactions with police, return to a drug using community, and reuniting with drug using peers. Many respondents relapsed to opioid use immediately after release. Those whose relapse occurred weeks or months after their release expressed more motivation to resist. Alcohol or stimulant use often preceded the opioid relapse episode. Among those who overdosed, alcohol use was often reported prior to overdosing on opioids.

Future post-release interventions in Russia should effectively link PWID to social, medical, and harm reduction services. Particular attention should be focussed on helping former inmates find employment and overdose prevention training prior to leaving prison that should also cover the heightened risk of concomitant alcohol use.

In addition to describing a syndemic involving the intersection of incarceration, injection drug use, poverty, and alcohol abuse, the findings can inform future interventions to address these interrelated public health challenges within the Russian setting.

The over‐the‐counter (OTC) drug market is highly competitive, and consumer advertising is a prominent influence in OTC drug purchase and consumption. Given current marketplace conditions, it is important to summarize OTC drug advertising research. This paper aims to review the state of the public research literature on OTC drug advertising and provide a research agenda derived from the findings.

A literature review was conducted to identify the key themes in OTC drug advertising research and secondary data were collected about the regulation, nature, functions, and scope of OTC drug advertising.

Most pharmaceutical advertising studies have focused on prescription drugs, including the majority of direct‐to‐consumer advertising investigations. OTC drug advertising has received considerably less empirical attention. Since the mid‐1970s, only 24 OTC drug advertising studies have appeared sporadically in the literature. The cumulative findings are interesting and suggestive but dated, fragmented, and incomplete. Though research interest has waned, OTC drug markets and advertising spending have not. Advertising remains a prominent OTC drug purchase and consumption driver, likely spurred on by self‐medication and Rx‐to‐OTC drug switching. The state of the public research, the social and policy implications of self‐medication, and the growing OTC drug market signal that it is time to revisit OTC drug advertising content, processes, and effects.

The paper puts the subject of OTC drug advertising back on the radar of communication, advertising, and pharmaceutical marketing researchers and offers an agenda of research questions derived from the reviewed literature to guide and stimulate future studies.

Illicit drug use amongst women in Zimbabwe is increasing. The most common drugs of choice are marijuana and new psychoactive substances like ecstasy, cough syrups with a high content of codeine, and other small intoxicating pills like mangemba (diazepam). The most affected population group are women between the ages of 20 to 40.

In a community engagement undertaken by Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drug Network in five of Zimbabwe’s provinces, socio, cultural and economic factors were identified as the drivers of increased engagement with the drug trade. The urge to be independent and the inter-related aspect of sex work were also identified as push factors accounting for the increase in illicit drug usage in the country. The community engagement showed most women use illicit drugs as a way of liberating themselves within a heavily patriarchal society and due to the traumas associated with sex work. Sex work in turn exposes women to opportunistic infections, rape, violence and sexual violence. Women perform different roles in the illicit drug economy. In their role as sellers of controlled drugs, women aimed to support their families, maximising the opportunities presented by life in illicit economies. Whilst advocacy groups are pressing for drug policy reform in Zimbabwe, interventions can be designed to help women extricate themselves from this quagmire through empowering them and having a drug policy that among other facets, strengthens communities.

Purpose – Reality TV shows that feature embodied “transformations” are popular, including Intervention, a program that depicts therapeutic recovery from addiction to “health.” The purpose of this chapter is to address the ways whiteness constitutes narratives of addiction on Intervention.

Methodology – This analysis uses a mixed methodology. I conducted a systematic analysis of nine (9) seasons of one hundred and forty-seven (147) episodes featuring one hundred and fifty-seven individual “addicts” (157) and logged details, including race and gender. For the qualitative analysis, I watched each episode more than once (some, I watched several times) and took extensive notes on each episode.

Findings – The majority of characters (87%) are white, and the audience is invited to gaze through a white lens that tells a particular kind of story about addiction. The therapeutic model valorized by Intervention rests on neoliberal regimes of self-sufficient citizenship that compel us all toward “health” and becoming “productive” citizens. Such regimes presume whiteness. Failure to comply with an intervention becomes a “tragedy” of wasted whiteness. When talk of racism erupts, producers work to re-frame it in ways that erase systemic racism.

Social implications – The whiteness embedded in Intervention serves to justify and reinforce the punitive regimes of controlling African American and Latina/o drug users through the criminal justice system while controlling white drug users through self-disciplining therapeutic regimes of rehab.

Originality – Systematic studies of media content consistently find a connection between media representations of addiction and narratives about race, yet whiteness has rarely been the critical focus of addiction.

Therapeutic communities (TCs) are one of the existent social responses in helping drug users overcome addiction and pursue social reintegration. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the general characteristics of about 200 drug users and their addiction and those of addicts abroad treated in a TC and clinically discharged. The analysis now presented is the first empirical approach to capture social regularities and singularities that are present in these individuals’ reintegration strategies.

The data have a ten-year range – from 1999 to 2009 – and were statically analysed.

They show a group of individuals with low qualifications reflected in their professional occupation, from which family is an essential support. These data also show a significant prevalence of heroin, alcohol, cocaine and polydrug uses, highlighting the need to consider new use patterns and new synthetic substances.

TC have been little studied, mainly in Portugal.

Deciding the best course of treatment for a drug or alcohol user can be a complex one. Continuing our look at harm reduction and abstinence, we ask what the best plans are for Nigella, a young woman with mental health problems who uses heroin to prevent recurring self‐harm. In a refreshing and challenging critique Lesley Don explores the decision‐making process towards that treatment. Should Nigella stop her heroin use? If she does, will she self‐harm? Which harm is more desirable? And why, as professionals, do we seek one solution over another?

This chapter presents a broad introduction to women’s varied interactions with drugs and drug markets. It provides a brief overview of the international framework of drug control and the ways in which drug policy enforcement differently impacts women and men. It highlights the negative and disproportionate impacts on women of criminalisation-based approaches and how drug policy serves to reinforce existing problems of structural discrimination. This provides context for the contributions to this edited collection, which are summarised in the introduction. The book situates drug policy reform as a crucial and underlooked feminist issue.

According to conventional research and political conceptions, illicit drug scenes are often characterised by cultures of crime, violence and deceit and customarily met by repressive law enforcement. However, a growing body of research demonstrates the very diverse nature of drug subcultures. This paper aims to explore this diversity and thereby investigates the psychosocial and socio-spatial features people selling and/or using drugs in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver (DTES) attribute to the local drug scene.

Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 persons with drug selling and/or using experiences in the DTES. Interviews were analysed and interpreted according to grounded theory.

Participants represent the social fabric of the DTES drug scene as comprising complexly interwoven facets and structures including frequent, brutal violence on the one hand and sincere, heart-rending compassion, care and even love on the other.

Police and social and health services can cooperate constructively with the overriding aim of individual and social harm reduction. Thereby, the existing social network and prosocial orientations of a drug scene can be used in effective approaches such as participatory policy strategies and peer-driven interventions.