To Be Free And Normal: Addiction, Governance, And The Therapeutics Of Buprenorphine

Keywords

Buprenorphine; Drug treatment; Freedom; Governance; Normalcy

Abstract

Methadone maintenance has dominated opiate addiction treatment in the United States for decades. Since 2002, opiate addiction has also been treated in general medical settings with a substance called buprenorphine. Based on interviews and participant observation conducted in northern California, this article analyzes how discourses of freedom and normalcy in patient and provider narratives reflect and affect experiences with this treatment modality. I discuss how buprenorphine treatment, in contrast to methadone maintenance, offers patients and providers a greater sense of autonomy and flexibility in how they receive and deliver treatment. It presents them with new obligations, responsibilities, and choices around care and conduct. It simultaneously perpetuates and shapes a desire to be "free" and "normal." I argue that the therapeutics of buprenorphine govern patients and providers through this desire for freedom and normalcy. Buprenorphine is thus a technology of governmentality that extends neoliberal discourses and values and produces self-governing subjects.

Publication Date

12-1-2015

Publication Title

Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Volume

29

Issue

4

Number of Pages

512-530

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12232

Socpus ID

84955204897 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84955204897

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