Questions on the Interpretation of Drug Users' Autobiographies in a Country in the “Early” Phase of Drug Use

Abstract

Illegal drug use in Hungary became a mass phenomenon after the political changes of 1990. It is only recently that autobiographies of recovered drug users and their family members have been written and published. The present author suggests that since the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) approach has no traditional roots in Hungary, recovery stories are obliged to follow another master narrative. All of these stories were published in book form. The author analyzes the various narratives partly through the lens of Frank-style illness narratives and partly using self-pluralistic theories. The latter (primarily using Hermans notion of the dialogic self) provide a good theoretical basis for analyzing the processes active in the personality of a drug user and for showing the “retrospective” construction work that accompanies recovery (which in fact takes place at the same time as recovery). In this case, the spatial interpretation of individual self-positions and the dialogical relationship that developed between them proved particularly useful.