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This paper aims to investigate the cultural meanings of excessive drinking in three different countries with different levels of alcohol use chosen as case studies of wider geographies representing Northern (Denmark), Southern (Italy) and Eastern (Estonia) Europe.

Data were collected according to the Reception Analytical Group Interview method, using video clips as stimuli to enhance comparability. Eight online focus groups were organized in each country for a total number of 128 participants. Symbolic boundaries defining what drinking patterns are socially acceptable were then analysed to look at cross-national variations.

Results show how different conceptualizations of excessive drinking persist, although a convergence process among drinking patterns is also observed, which suggests that differences mainly depend on meanings and values attributed to intoxication. These are both rooted in the traditional drinking cultures and affected by ongoing social and economic change processes.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability, even at country level, as there are differences also within the same drinking culture; however, addressing these differences was beyond the scope of the present study, which aimed to contribute to understanding persisting differences in European drinking culture despite different drivers seem to act for globalization of drinking habits.

The paper includes implications for the development of tailored and effective prevention messages, considering rooted attitudes and cultural values attached to drinking and drunkenness in different European geographies, which are also related to conceptualizations of risks and pleasure.

This paper fulfils an identified need to understand persisting differences in alcohol-related behaviours and outcome in different European countries emerging from quantitative data.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between drug use and offending by using the concept of critical moments as an analytical tool.

In total, 41 semi-structured individual interviews with young people (15–25 years) using drugs and in touch with the criminal justice system (CJS) were conducted.

Analysing critical moments in young people’s drug use contributes to explaining some of the multiple, possible links between drug use and offending. Institutional factors emerged as important, as well as social and economic inequality. This was in particular clear when comparing students’ and immigrants’ trajectories.

Limitations are due to the difficulties in getting access to prisoners and young people in touch with the CJS and the possibility to meet them only once with time limits due to the setting.

Prevention intervention addressed to this target group could take young people’s social contexts and everyday life situation into consideration.

To decrease both offending and drug use, structural measures aimed at decreasing social inequalities would be more effective than punishment.

The study proposes a practical way to analyse narratives of young people who have experienced both drug use and offending and to show the importance of socially structured patterns without reducing the complexity of the topic.

Spanning almost 30 years, Italy’s experience with take-home-naloxone (THN) provides an interesting case study on the international scene because of its specific history, regulation and trends in overdose (OD) rates. Accordingly, this study aims to contribute to the evidence base for THN and its delivery in a different setting.

The study focuses on service providers’ perceptions of the benefits, risks and barriers associated with THN provision. Data was collected using a mixed-methods approach as follows: an online structured questionnaire (no. of respondents = 63) and two focus groups (no. of total participants = 18).

Findings show that service providers believe the benefits of THN far outweigh the risks and accrue to services, as well as users. The study also suggests that the barriers in Italy are mostly ideological and political, and illustrates how resistance to administering THN can re-emerge when ODs are no longer a social emergency. Furthermore, the study found that health and social workers have different attitudes which are also reflected at the level of public and private services, thereby shaping slightly different models of THN supply.

The study suggests that barriers associated to THN are more ideological and political rather than concrete, which explains why, even where it seems long established, can easily re-emerge once ODs are no longer a social emergency.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse dynamics amongst members to better understand in what terms and to what extent marketplace forums can be seen as new forms of harm reduction.

This is a qualitative analysis focused on conversations about psychoactive substances on the forum community of AlphaBay Market. A sample consists of 100 online threads. The data, collected in July 2016, were analysed by applying the grounded theory approach with the support of Atlas.ti.

Conversations in the marketplace forum focus mostly on the purchase. Concerns and disputes are voiced in a significant proportion of them, and interactions are affected by a climate of distrust where stigmatisation processes can emerge between users of different drug categories. This casts a certain amount of doubt on the thesis that marketplace forums – like online forums – are new forms of harm reduction and peer-led communities.

The study focuses on only one marketplace forum. Other such forums should be analysed to corroborate its findings.

Harm reduction interventions in the online environment should take different form according to the forum type, and take the differences and boundaries that separate users of different substances into account.

Thanks to its infrequently used qualitative approach, the study provides a more thorough understanding of the relationships on marketplace forums.

Drug-related web forums have been argued to be an effective way to investigate the latest generation of drug users. The purpose of this paper is to explore discussions about drugs and new psychoactive substances (NPS) on an Italian psychonauts’ online community in order to gain a better understanding of the psychonauts’ profiles by scrutinising their main motives for consumption, which is mainly addressed to psychedelic drugs.

To collect data, a keywords list was used in the forum search engine. The first five most recent conversations (threads) for each of ten most frequently mentioned substances were selected. In addition, ten posts written by new forum members to introduce themselves were added to the data set, bringing the total number of threads to 60. The data were coded using Atlas.ti 7 applying a template model analysis (King, 1998).

The forum members present themselves as well-educated, informed drug users, and connoisseurs of the pharmacological properties of chemical compounds: accordingly, they claim to be aware of drug effects and possible risks. The analysis of the motives for using psychedelic drugs substantially confirms previous studies, indicating that the main reasons include spiritual needs, self-exploration and self-treatment. The shift from a recreational use towards more “committed” aims such as self-development is seen as a step forward in a drug user’s career. A generalised interest in harm reduction suggests that the psychonauts’ attitude may be a protective factor against adverse consequences of drug use. The most problematic users represented in the data are those who use drugs for self-treatment, since their discourse focusses on suffering rather than on pleasure.

Most efforts to analyse and monitor drug-related forums have focussed on “leading edge” English-language international websites. No studies have dealt with Italian forums. Furthermore the study address a misleading use of the term e-psychonauts recently introduced by some scholars whose’s studies were focussed on NPS.

The study aims to investigate a possible application of the concepts of individualist and collectivist (I‐C) value traits in inquiries on alcohol drinking norms in different alcohol cultures.

Data from focus group discussions (n=16) with Italian and Finnish adolescents (aged 13‐16) is trialled against some typical dissimilarities featured in the literature on I‐C cultures.

The study shows that the features identified in the I‐C dichotomy regarding personality traits and parental goal for children correlate with some culturally anchored meaning‐making of agency and autonomy emphasized in judgements of correct ways of drinking.

The authors conclude that with certain caveats I‐C dichotomy could indeed be applied more in the cross‐cultural alcohol research.

In this chapter the authors describe an ethnographic project that the authors were never able to undertake. It was concerned with the use of opera (such as those of Mozart) in the construction of cultural heritage in a number of European cities, including Prague and Vienna. The authors would also have undertaken fieldwork to study the local use of music and opera as tourist attractions. The authors would have studied operatic tourism as an example of secular, cultural pilgrimage. It would, therefore, have been a contribution to the sociology of culture, heritage and tourism.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories: