Sarah MacLean

“It Might Be a Scummy-Arsed Drug but it's a Sick Buzz”: Chroming and Pleasure

Arguing that the role of pleasure in young peoples decisions to use inhalants has been underexplored, this paper provides a typology for the kinds of pleasurable experience young people report from chroming (an Australian term for inhalant use involving aerosol paints). The paper draws on in-depth interviews with young people with experience of chroming and with expert workers in Melbourne, Australia. Seven categories of pleasurable experience related to chroming are identified through thematic analysis of these interviews: feeling, escaping and relocating, imagining, doing, socializing, communicating, and consuming. In the context of use by marginalized young people, chroming has powerful and often deeply pleasurable effects. Understanding more about the kinds of enjoyment that young people seek and experience through chroming—and by implication what workers are asking them to give up when they try to make them stop using these drugs—is important in designing policy interventions.

Global Issues in Volatile Substance Misuse

This special issue of Substance Use & Misuse addresses the public health issue of volatile substance misuse (VSM), the inhalation of gases or vapors for psychoactive effects, assessing the similarities and differences in the products misused, patterns, prevalence, etiologies, and impacts of VSM by examining it through sociocultural epidemiology, neuroscience, and interventions research. The Canadian, US, and Australian guest editors contend that, when compared with other drugs used at a similar prevalence, VSM has attracted relatively little research effort. The authors and editors call for further research to develop evidence-based policies and comprehensive interventions that respect culture and context-specific knowledge.

“Fourteen Dollars for One Beer!” Pre‐drinking is associated with high‐risk drinking among Victorian young adults

Objective: Pre‐drinking entails consuming alcohol before attending licensed venues. We examined the relationship between pre‐drinking, intention to get drunk and high‐risk drinking among Victorians aged 18–24 years, to consider whether reducing pre‐drinking might ameliorate alcohol‐related harm.

Global Selves: Marginalised Young People and Aesthetic Reflexivity in Inhalant Drug Use

Sociologists have observed that young people increasingly draw on global as well as local images in their constructions of individual selfhood. This article provides a narrative analysis of stories of inhalant use-induced hallucination, drawn from interviews conducted with young people in Melbourne, Australia. Young peoples stories of the hallucinations they experience while using inhalants frequently reference the narratives, images and ontological preoccupations of contemporary popular culture; in particular, interactive electronic games. I argue that drug use provides a means by which some marginalised young people are able to integrate their constructions of selfhood within wider networks of power expressed through global popular culture, through mobilising what Scott Lash has referred to as an ‘aesthetic’ form of reflexivity. This occurs when they construct and narrate their hallucinations through four practices identified as central skills for engaging with contemporary texts: immersion, viewing the world as a hybrid technological self, re-imagining place and play on the borders of story worlds. The research highlights the need to develop drug-treatment interventions that will enable marginalised young people to fulfil—in less harmful ways—the imperative to be part of the globalising world.

Alcohol and the Constitution of Friendship for Young Adults

Friendship, sociologists suggest, is defined by institutionalized rules to a lesser degree than other important relationships. Hence it must be sustained through specific friendship-making practices. Social science literature tends to conceptualize friendship as enhancing the pleasures of alcohol use rather than as central to friendship production. This article examines alcohol as a technology in contemporary young adults’ friendship-making. Interviews with 60 drinkers aged 18–24 years in Melbourne, Australia demonstrate that drinking builds intimacy, particularly when similar levels of intoxication are achieved. Fear in night-time entertainment precincts underlines trust in friends. To manage uncertainty about responsibilities involved in friendship, young adults negotiate how they will care for each other when they are drunk. Providing this care occasionally jeopardizes friendship, in different ways for women and men. Understanding the import of friendship-making in alcohol use helps explain the persistence of heavy drinking and suggest opportunities for harm reduction.

“I Just Drink for That Tipsy Stage” Young Adults and Embodied Management of Alcohol Use

Many young adults aim for a state of tipsiness, where control is not abandoned when they drink alcohol; however, this level of intoxication is very difficult to get right. Interviews conducted with 60 drinkers aged 18–24 years in Melbourne, Australia, indicate that few counted standard drinks and most spoke of attending to bodily signs that they had had enough and should not drink more. This strategy was ineffective for a small proportion of interviewees who never felt too drunk. To understand young adults’ efforts to manage intoxication, we use Mol and Law’s notion of excorporation. The partial nature of intoxicated self-control led young adults to arrange to be in settings where external restraints to drinking would operate. Alcohol policy should acknowledge the mosaic and embodied nature of self-control for young adults in the nighttime economy and focus on the development of settings where drinking and associated harms are minimized.

Psychosocial therapeutic interventions for volatile substance use: a systematic review

AIMS Volatile substance use (VSU) is associated with a range of adverse outcomes, including cognitive impairment and death. It occurs disproportionately within young and marginalized populations. A previous international systematic review of VSU treatment identified no relevant studies. This paper reports on a systematic review of a range of study types concerning psychosocial interventions for VSU. METHODS Search parameters were developed using the Population, Intervention, Professionals, Outcomes, Health care setting and Contexts (PIPOH) tool with input from an expert committee. Included were randomized controlled trials (RCTs), comparative studies with or without concurrent controls, case series studies and grey literature, published in English during 1980-2010. RESULTS The initial search identified 2344 references. After two screening phases, 23 studies of VSU therapeutic interventions remained. Of these, 19 concerned psychosocial interventions, which we discuss as: case management; counselling; recreation and engagement programmes; and residential treatment. Studies were conducted in Australia, Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and Brazil. No RCTs were identified and studies were generally of low evidentiary levels. CONCLUSIONS Even when a range of study types are included, clear conclusions for volatile substance use psychological treatment are not supported, but three intervention types merit further examination: family therapy, activity-based programmes and Indigenous-led residential approaches. Future volatile substance use research could be enhanced by developing and validating outcome measurement tools. Robust multi-site studies are also required.

Will modifying inhalants reduce volatile substance misuse? A review

Recent growing concern in Australia and elsewhere about harm associated with volatile substance misuse (VSM) in both urban and remote settings has prompted an openness to new policies, laws and programs for prevention and treatment. One measure under consideration is product modification of volatile substances (VSPM). This article reviews international literature documenting instances of three kinds of product modification: (1) replacement of particularly harmful or psychoactive components; (2) addition of deterrent chemicals; and (3) package modification. Although VSPM has received considerable attention, few initiatives have been implemented and, of these, even fewer evaluated. Where VSPM has occurred, success in reducing misuse of specific products appears to have occurred in relation to type (1) modifications, many of which have been driven by environmental rather than health concerns. The ready availability of a wide range of VSM products in most urban settings means that even where interventions reduce misuse of targeted substances, other substances are likely to be substituted. We conclude that any VSPM should target substances most strongly associated with harm and be supported by an appropriate range of other strategies.

Hello Sunday Morning: Alcohol, (non)consumption and selfhood

BACKGROUND Hello Sunday Morning (HSM) is an online program that encourages people to commit to a period of non-drinking and blog about their experiences. The purpose of this paper is to explore how HSM members negotiated their periods of abstention, with a focus on how not drinking influenced their narratives of selfhood. METHODS Thematic analysis was undertaken of 2844 blog posts from 154 Victorians who signed up to HSM in 2013 or 2014. RESULTS Analysis revealed three key narratives of selfhood offered by participants: (1) abstinence resulting in a disrupted sense of self, (2) non-consumption facilitating the development of a new healthy self, and (3) anti-consumption facilitating the development of a resistant self. CONCLUSION Individuals construct and maintain their sense of self through consumption (or non-consumption) activities, and this occurs within the broader context of the relationship between selfhood, consumption and culture. HSM members developed narratives of self by drawing on a range of wider discursive structures concerning pleasure, healthism and resistance. The typologies of non-drinking selves identified in this paper could be disseminated through platforms such as HSM to support people who are new to non-drinking in choosing how they might construct and enact alternative selfhoods in contexts where alcohol consumption is deeply embedded.

Was it good for you too? Impediments to conducting university-based collaborative research with communities experiencing disadvantage.

Objective: Collaborative and participatory research (CPR) models are increasingly recognised as methodologically, ethically and practically appropriate to conducting health and welfare research involving disadvantaged communities. This paper identifies impediments to CPR and proposes measures to support and encourage future CPR in Australian universities.