Stages of Grief, Stages of Research: Reflections on the Semester

It has been almost 2 years since my older brother, Sage, passed away after many years struggling with substance use. My brother lived with substance use disorder and this shaped so much of how he positioned himself in the world. He was often angry, nearly always in the depths of depression, and one of the most emotionally and socially isolated people I’ve ever known. He was also brilliant, generous, funny, sensitive, and so proud of   my sister and I-- his love tangible and glowing, an ever present force in my life. So much of his isolation and discomfort in his life were due to the fact that his world had largely dismissed and rejected him. Society blames substance use disorder on a failure of   character, a lack of agency, on poverty and broken family ties, a narrative that robbed him of every last shred of hope and trust in himself and his loved ones.  My work this semester has centered Sage, and so many others like him. I know that substance use disorder is many faceted, and I was aware that I could only hope to scratch the surface, but I knew that I had to try. I wanted to explore the systemic causes of substance use disorder and to do my best to deconstruct the harmful and oppressive narratives about the millions of humans that live (and die) internalizing layers and layers of oppression and shame around a disorder that is rooted deeply in capitalism and neoliberalism.

                        

     My research was often painful, particularly at the beginning of the process. Several of the people that I spoke with suggested that this kind of research can act as sort of catharsis, a therapizing dive into suppressed parts of ourselves. For awhile though, it was   mostly just painful-- I hated it, I avoided it, I was angry that I had chosen it for myself. As I dug deeper though, that anger and pain began to turn outward. I learned about the specific ways that people living in rural areas are denied access to recovery services. I learned about the pharmaceutical companies that profit off of humans like my brother, providing both the prescription opioid painkillers that act as a gateway to heroin use and the prescription opioids that act a recovery tool for heroin use. I learned about the ways that even as opiate use becomes a predominantly white problem, The country still profits off of blaming and incarcerating people of color for opiate use at astronomical rates. I realized that substance use fits into oppressive frameworks in an important and distinct way,  but that there is huge gap in the scholarship about this subject. The true roots of substance use are complicated, nuanced, differ widely from person to person, and any attempt to pin down explanations tends to result in more frustration and confusion. Never the less, much of the information that I gathered was concrete, widely applicable, and downright enraging. 

Ultimately, I want people with substance use disorder to be treated as humans. I want substance use disorder to be integrated into the wider understanding of intersectional identities and oppressive frameworks. I want harmful words like “addict”, “abuse”, and “lapse” to be abolished from the collective glossary of terms describing substance use. I want people with substance use disorder to have access to effective, compassionate, and affordable recovery and medical services, and to feel the support of community rather than the darkness of isolation under the label of “tough love”. 

My research has only just begun to scratch the surface of these goals, I know, but maybe it will serve to start this conversation among a few people, to turn our collective pain and anger into something a little more productive. If I have succeeded in starting that dialogue, I think that I've also succeeded in bringing a little more light into the world, and that's really enough for now.