In this article, we examine young people’s attachments to neoliberalism and how these are at play in their perceptions of their possibilities to enact positive futures and a ‘good life’. Drawing on the concept of ‘master narratives’, we have analyzed 21 interviews with young people aged between 19 and 23 (7 young men, 14 young women). Our participants believed in the possibility of achieving a happy life in the future if they just studied hard enough and developed the necessary skills and traits. This left little or no room for competing activities as it was seen as either an obstacle to their studies or simply did not contribute to their life project in a meaningful way. However, their narratives also contained a darker side in which our participants displayed a high level of stress and mental anguish, sometimes even manifesting itself in physical form. Despite evidence of the adverse effects on their well-being, our participants displayed a strong attachment to neo-liberalism’s promises of a good future.

The article examines how alcohol use and well-being are entangled in young people's lives by analyzing qualitative longitudinal interviews with four participants, following their substance use practices over seven years. It examines what kinds of bodily and incorporeal transformations their substance use facilitated when it became connected in a particular way to human and non-human actors that formed assemblages. The substance-using assemblages were analyzed by focusing on how they increase or decrease the participants' capacities for well-being. The analysis shows that substance use assemblages enabled several positive bodily and incorporeal transformations among our participants. They facilitated their transition from limited, regulated bodies into more powerful ones, increasing their capacities to express themselves more effectively, be more social, humorous, bold, cooperative, free, happy, extroverted, flirtatious, relaxed, functional, and balanced. At the same time, substance use assemblages also produced various negative transformations that decreased participants' capacities for well-being, generating heavier, sadder, shame-feeling, weak, chemically unbalanced, worried, passionless, and anxious bodies. Heavy-drinking assemblages in particular produced transformations that drew bodies into conflicting lines of becoming. The tensions between them connected participants' bodies to stratifying, controlling discourses that produced incorporeal transformations that began to limit their desire to drink. Overall, the analysis shows how heavy or continuous substance use made bodies vulnerable, requiring attentive care not only in terms of how substances were used, but also in terms of ensuring that other assemblages that were important for life were well taken care of. Where this did not occur, substance use produced bad encounters and negative effects.

The paper analyses how the Covid-19 pandemic affected young people’s alcohol-related assemblages, trajectories of becoming and identity claims in Sweden. The data is based on longitudinal qualitative interviews among heavy and moderate drinking young people (n = 23; age range 15–24 years). The participants were interviewed two to three times before the Covid-19 pandemic and once at the end of it, between 2017 and 2021. The analysis draws on actor-network theory and narrative positioning approach. The analysis demonstrates how the lockdown produced trajectories of becoming boring, normal, stress-free, self-caring, self-confident and shielded. In these trajectories, drinking was positioned into relations that either increased young people’s capacities for well-being or decreased them. Due to the lockdown, some participants learnt to be moved by relations that contributed to replace drinking with competing activities, while others experienced that the lockdown made drinking a more attractive activity, turning it into a collective force that helped them to overcome isolation. The results show how drinking is a heterogeneous activity which may increase or decrease young people’s capacities for well-being, depending on what kinds of assemblages and trajectories of becoming it is embedded in.

In this article, we analyze the care work employed by people who inject drugs to counter risks in their life situations and make their drug use safer. Injecting drugs is associated with numerous health and social risks, such as overdose, the use of used and shared equipment, and getting caught by the police. We approach descriptions of injection events as narratives of care. Participants (N=32) were recruited for semi-structured interviews primarily from the Stockholm Needle and Syringe Exchange Program between August 2022 and March 2023. The sample is heterogeneous in terms of age, gender, drug use, and social situation. The interviews were analyzed using actor-network theory, asking what kind of care work and ‘action programs’ strengthen or weaken participants' capacities for safer injection events and what kinds allow risks – or antiprograms – to enter the event. We identified four different action programs based on home or public settings. They all aimed to increase capacities for safe drug use, but two of them were more vulnerable to risks. Their success depended on the type of actors they could recruit for care work, the risks they were targeting, and how well they coordinated actors to work together to minimize risks. The analysis highlights the scope, strengths, and limitations of care work in relation to material, social, political, and institutional actors, as well as the importance of access to proper resources such as a home, stable income, and a healthy body.

Intrigued by the overwhelmingly positive response to the needle and syringe exchange program (NSP) by people who inject drugs in Stockholm, this article sought to untangle harm reduction in a prohibitionist drug policy context. The article drew on assemblage thinking and used semistructured individual interviews with 32 people who inject drugs, and three focus groups with staff at the Stockholm NSP. The aim was to dissect harm reduction in the form of NSP and how it worked to move people who inject drugs towards or away from drug-related harm. The analysis identified how bodies such as the NSP regulations, the setting, and stigma gathered in ways that reduced the capacity to move forward and enroll, as the inclusion of the NSP in the assemblage would decrease the capacity to uphold other connections considered to be more important. Regular NSP visitors however described how free injecting equipment, staff care, continuity, and trust were important objects that gathered in ways opening up for movement towards less harm. Fiercely, these profoundly caring experiences at the NSP could also block new becomings and moves forward as people who inject drugs, discouraged from previous negative experiences of other service providers and structural stigma, refrained from other connections that could improve their wellbeing. They risked becoming locked in at the NSP and similar services. A significant consequence of the agential cuts of us researchers, the staff, and policymakers alike, targeting primarily those that do access and benefit from harm-reducing interventions, is that alternative solutions embracing also those locked out and locked in become unimaginable.

It has been suggested that a pivotal explanation for the drastic decrease in young people’s alcohol consumption is the younger generations concern with taking responsibility for a variety of areas in their lives. Emanating from this, the overall aim of this article is to consider how alcohol and drinking situations are enacted among a group of emerging adults in Sweden from this ‘generation sensible’, and how they describe the relation between alcohol, pleasure and control. The study is based on 23 qualitative interviews with people aged 19–23. Inspired by assemblage theory we analyzed how important human and non-human elements congregate in described drinking situations. The analysis showed that alcohol is enacted as a strong psychoactive substance and described like other (illegal) drugs, rather than being seen as more harmless and acceptable. Pleasure in drinking is made possible through control and planning, and in downplaying the importance of drinking and the transgressive power of intoxication. We suggest that the risk-taking element in drinking is stigmatized among groups of emerging adults. It is concluded that while alcohol is described as unimportant to several participants, alcohol assemblages are not, therefore participants work hard to shape drinking situations to counteract loss of control.

Background: Reducing risks and harms among people who inject drugs by, for example, Needle and Syringe exchange Programs (NSP) may be impeded in practice by, for example, policy restrictions, particularly in settings like Sweden where a zero-tolerance drug strategy prevails. In practice, risks and harms are produced through an interplay of multiple mutually reinforcing factors. Moreover, risk management strategies may constitute risks per se and generate new risks, potentially intensifying overall harm. This study aimed to increase our understanding of how such risks are generated in the lives of people who inject drugs. Methods: In 2022–2023, we interviewed 32 purposively selected research participants, primarily recruited through the Stockholm NSP. Drawing on actor-network theory, we analyzed the interviews to identify factors—constituent human and non-human actors—that constitute and generate risk and harm. These dynamics were conceptualized as risk-amplifying loops, in which harms are contingently enacted, may multiply, and the effects of policy and practice may become unintentional and unpredictable. Results: Four risk-amplifying loops were inductively elucidated: the Service deficit, Perpetrator-victim, Deprivation, and Solitude loops. In each, two actors—the drug and the person who injects drugs—were constituted differently. Furthermore, the loops were interlinked and more fully understood in relation to one another, forming a network that reflected the broader environment of injection drug use (IDU) in Sweden. Each loop was shaped and co-constituted by the prohibitionist framing of Swedish drug policy influencing access to services, the drug market, and the position of people who use drugs. Conclusions: Understanding drug-related harms as risk-amplifying loops highlights the emergent effects of the multiple and unfolding risks in the lives of people who inject drugs. This perspective facilitates discussion of impediments to effective harm reduction practices and points to potential sites for countermeasures and policy reform.

Aims: Craving is commonly described as an ‘intense desire’ to use drugs. Due to its relevance for addiction theories and treatment, much effort has been put into understanding how and when craving occurs. An undisputed definition of craving is however still lacking. The aim of this article is to explore how craving is experienced and resisted after cessation of substance use.

Methods: This article analyses interviews with former addiction treatment clients. By analyzing the described event of craving, the study shows the complexities in such narratives.

Findings: We found that the interaction between temporal, relational and material forces move people toward or away from craving. Craving thus seemed to be both relational and located in-between forces.

Conclusions: We conclude that craving appeared in the studied narratives to emanate from different atmospheres, with a concurrent focus on settings rather than on substances. A relational understanding of craving can add to the typical, but limited, account of craving as an individual issue. It also avoids stigmatizing ideas that people who do not resist cravings simply fail to say no. We end by asking if craving is a relevant concept within the addiction field at all.

Background

Lately, there has been massive media coverage of gang-related criminality in ‘exposed areas’ in Sweden. Politicians have blamed the illegal drugs trade without questioning the country’s prohibitionist drug policy. This study analyzes how cannabis is constructed in Swedish newspaper articles that mention both organized crime and cannabis. We ask how the drug and its buyers and sellers are described, what discourses are drawn upon, and discuss the relationship between media coverage and drug policy.

Methods

We analyzed recent (2021) articles from four newspapers (n = 71) through Critical Discourse Analysis.

Results

Cannabis was constructed as a commodity linked to violence and deviance. Agency was attributed to people with power and status (e.g. gang leaders), and recreational cannabis users were described as guilty of feeding organized crime. A combination of economic and moral discourses was used to make the reported events meaningful, and to motivate both prohibition and decriminalization/legalization.

Conclusion

The study shows that assumedly neutral journalistic voices emphasized the link between cannabis and violence and problematized cannabis buyers and sellers. This homogenous media coverage will probably contribute to keep the question of cannabis law reform discursively lifeless in Sweden.

This study analyzes how emerging adults negotiate their relation to alcohol in the context of declining youth drinking and how this relationship changes over time. The sample consists of longitudinal qualitative interview data (N = 28) with 9 boys and 19 girls aged 15 to 21. The participants were recruited through schools, social media and non-governmental organizations from mainly the Stockholm region and smaller towns in central Sweden to reach a heterogeneous sample in terms of sociodemographic factors and drinking practices. We interviewed the participants in-depth three times between 2017 and 2019. Thematic coding of the whole data with NVivo helped us select four cases for more detailed analysis, as they represented the typical trajectories and showed the variation in the material. We used the master narrative framework and Bamberg’s narrative positioning analysis to examine the data. The analysis demonstrates what kinds of narrative alignments in identity development encourage heavy drinking, moderate alcohol consumption, and fuel abstinence. The results suggest that the decline in youth drinking is produced by a co-effect of multiple master narratives that intersect and guide the identity development away from heavy drinking.