Abstract

Background: The article demonstrates how substance use can enhance capacities for action in various everyday practices and function as a productive force rather than simply a risky and harmful activity.

Methods: The data set comprises 33 life story interviews in which the participants self-identified as having experienced an addiction to substances. The data was analyzed as ‘counter-narratives’ by drawing on actor-network theory.

Results: The analysis identified four typical variants of how substance use can increase capacities for action. First, substance use can initially enhance the capacities to achieve life goals and then transform into a mediator thatstrengthens attachments to normal daily activities. Secondly, substance use can become linked to serving mutually reinforcing trajectories in everyday life: assisting breaks from worries, reinforcing daily continuity, andadvancing life goals. Third, substance use can enable a sudden change in life direction by facilitating a radical transition to a new reality and subsequently stabilizing it. Fourth, substance use can evolve into a mediator that divides life into two assemblages: one that enables fulfillment of daily responsibilities and another that mediates freedom to pursue pleasure.

Conclusion: Generating knowledge about the relations, assemblages, and trajectories in which substance use actsas a productive force and identifying when and how it can become a mediator that limits, threatens, or impedesthe capacities of actors to live functional lives provides important information for health professionals andpractitioners. Such knowledge will deepen their understanding of the elements on which their prevention andtreatment efforts should focus.