Drug users’ perceptions of ‘controlled’ and ‘uncontrolled’ use

Abstract How do certain users lose control over the drug or drugs they are using and others manage to achieve and maintain control? The control of drugs is largely established by (sub)culturally based social controls (rituals and rules) which pattern the way a drug is used. Controlled users have a multiplicity of meaningful roles, which give them a positive identity and a stake in conventional daily life, and both these factors anchor them against drifting toward a drug-centered life. Based on an ethnographic study among 111 experienced cocaine users from Antwerp, Belgium, this paper presents qualitative data to illustrate drug users' perceptions of ‘controlled' and ‘uncontrolled' drug use. These perceptions are interpreted as boundary protection mechanisms which help to prevent disruption of everyday life in which users have invested. The data indicate that patterns of drug use and perceptions of control of drugs are dynamic in nature and a product of particular situations, contexts, events, time periods, and drug use career transitions. Findings illustrate that self-regulation is a cycle of processes, and that the drug user continuously learns from his/her own experience and that of others. Becoming a ‘controlled cocaine user' is a process as knowledge about the product extends. Finally, it is argued that one of the weightiest external stimuli that affects self-regulation, is the social definition of drugs and their users, embodied both in formal drug policy, the traditional ‘addiction' paradigm, and social definitions of drug use within drug use subcultures.