Are drug treatment services only for 'thieving junkie scumbags'? Drug users and the management of stigmatised identities.

This article uses qualitative interviews with 53 problematic drug users who had dropped out of treatment in England, UK to explore how they describe the stigmatisation of drug users and drug services. It discusses the construction of the category of the junkie through its association with un-controlled heroin use and criminality. It shows how some drug users carefully manage information about their discreditable identities by excluding themselves from this category, while acknowledging its validity for other drug users. The junkie identity was generally seen as shameful and therefore to be avoided, although it holds attractions for some drug users. For many of the interviewees, entry to treatment risked exposing their own activities as shaming, as they saw treatment as being a place that was populated by junkies and where it becomes more difficult to manage discreditable information. The treatment regime, e.g. the routine of supervised consumption of methadone,was itself seen by some as stigmatising and was also seen as hindering progress to the desired ‘normal’ life of conventional employment. Participation in the community of users of both drugs and drug services was perceived as potentially damaging to the prospects of recovery. This emphasises the importance of social capital, including links to people and opportunities outside the drug market. It also highlights the danger that using the criminal justice system to concentrate prolific offenders in treatment may have the perverse effects of excluding other people who have drug problems and of prolonging the performance of the junkie identity within treatment services. It is concluded that treatment agencies should address these issues, including through the provision of more drug services in mainstream settings, in order to ensure that drug services are not seen to be suitable only for one particularly stigmatised category of drug user

Hunter S. Thompson\u27s gonzo journalistic coverage of Richard Nixon

This thesis explores Hunter S. Thompson\u27s writings about Richard M. Nixon from 1960 to 1994. Thompson expressed strong animosity toward Nixon, but most of the more outlandish articles he wrote about Nixon were fabrications. Thompson\u27s writings were often ambiguous and contradictory. Sources used for research included books written by Thompson, books of letters Thompson sent to family and friends, books about Thompson and Richard Nixon, and books about the Watergate scandal. This thesis addresses the questions of why Thompson was so fascinated by Nixon, and why he wrote on Nixon for almost 40 years. It also addresses the question of whether Thompson actually despised Nixon as he claimed to, or whether he felt a kindred spirit with Nixon. The purpose of this thesis is to identify themes and rhetoric in Thompson\u27s writings before, during and after the Watergate scandal, to compare what Thompson wrote about Nixon to what other writers were writing, and to determine if Thompson\u27s style and viewpoint changed during the period of study. The important factor that distinguished Thompson from other writers during the Watergate scandal was that Thompson wrote in the gonzo style—a reportorial term he adopted and glorified that emphasized subjectivity, satire, humor, entertainment and fabrication. Another important difference is that gonzo is about process— the story is usually as much about the author getting the story, as it is the story itself. It is also important to note that while Thompson did advocate Nixon resigning the presidency, many reporters at the time had the same desire to see Nixon resign. Thompson distinguished himself from the more mainstream press by voicing his attitudes and opinions in the gonzo reporting style, which openly satirized the presidency and other reporters. During the research-gathering portion of the thesis, it was ascertained that Thompson wrote approximately 40 articles that focused mainly on Nixon, and 150 more articles that mentioned Nixon. Many of Thompson\u27s articles that were used for the thesis were written for Rolling Stone, the main magazine he wrote for during the Watergate scandal, and were compiled in books that were used for the thesis research

Tuning Out in Terminal City and the Nova Poster

Article in zingmagazine online. Collected material for The Nova Library by Hans Winkler

Confessions of a Hard-Hat Junkie: Reflections on the Construction of Anheuser-Busch Hall

In this Article I will describe the process by which the Washington University School of Law has come now to occupy Anheuser-Busch Hall. By doing so, I hope to provide some insight and assistance to those at other schools who face similar projects

The Loyola Reporter

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"As Un-American as Rabies": Addiction and Identity in American Postwar Junkie Literature

The years following World War II symbolized a new beginning for the United States. While at the height of global power, Americans founds that they were able to experience a leisurely existence where items, desired instead of necessary, could be purchased by almost anyone. This increased prosperity, however, also caused a rise in the number of addicts that included not only the hard-core drug users, but "junkies" who were addicted to filling the emptiness within through the use of illegal drugs to television to sex in order to do so. This dissertation examines the phenomenon of the rise of addicts following World War II, using the literature of addiction in order to elucidate the reasoning behind this surge. Contemporary American authors formed a new genre of writing, "junkie literature," which chronicles the rise of addiction and juxtaposes questions of identity and the use of "junk." Burroughs's Junky and Trocchi's Cain's Book are among the first to represent the shift in the postwar years between earlier narratives of addiction and the rise of junkie literature through an erasure of previously held beliefs that addiction was the result of a moral vice rather than a disease. Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries, Ann Marlowe's How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z, and Linda Yablonsky's The Story of Junk continue this trend of semi-autobiographical writing in an effort to show the junkie's identity in society, as well as the way addiction mirrors capitalism and consumerism as a whole. Finally, Hubert Selby's Requiem for a Dream, Bret Easton Ellis's Less than Zero, and John Updike's Rabbit at Rest explore a different kind of junk addiction, focusing on the use of television, diet pills, sex, cocaine, and food to fill an ineffable void inside that the characters of the novels find themselves unable to articulate. Using Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, as well as various socio-historical critics, this dissertation investigates the rise of addiction narratives in the postwar years, linking the questions of identity to consumerism in contemporary American culture

Nixon and Health Care Reform

Heather McCreaWhile his legacy was undoubtedly tarnished by the scandal that cost him the Presidency – Watergate – Richard Nixon‘s efforts to reform health care, dating back to his first campaign for the Presidency against John F. Kennedy, had profound effects on almost every subsequent proposal to reform American health care policy. Those who were in positions to enact national policy changes, from members of Congress to Presidents, often used many of the same ideas in each of their proposals, some of them having tenures in the Senate lasting through several decades. When one looks at the roots of these ideas, they can almost always be traced by to Nixonian policy. In this paper, I analyze these links in an attempt to prove that health care reform should be seen as essential part of President Nixon‘s legacy, arguably as much as his actions in Vietnam or other foreign policy. Because a large part of the historical works on Nixon focus primarily on his foreign policy, health care reform is largely associated only with Democratic politicians who came onto the national stage at the same time or even after President Nixon, despite the fact that he was a central figure in shaping American health care policy. The paper I have written focuses primarily around Nixon‘s health care proposals during the 1960s and the early 1970s in their relation to the actual policy enacted later, much of it having been finally put into law just recently with the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. I analyze why it took so long for these initiatives to be enacted into law while also exploring what gave Nixon‘s ideas the resiliency that was needed to last long enough to finally be passed through Congress. I also explore why the ideas of a Republican President shaped the liberal agenda in this country for the past forty years

The Loyola Reporter

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Introduction: Dissident Lives, Queer texts, Political Is.

Introduction to Issue 1