The Temporality of the Withdrawing Body: A Qualitative Analysis of the Role of Time in the Experience of Withdrawing From Heroin in Prison

Abstract

Heroin withdrawal is one of the most challenging stages of an abstinence-based recovery journey, yet its subjective experience has received little attention from alcohol and other drug researchers. Drawing on the literature on temporality and qualitative interviews with ten individuals who self-detoxified from heroin in prison, the article introduces the concept of “withdrawal time” to capture the subjective experience of heroin withdrawal. “Withdrawal time” refers to a distinct temporal experience shaped by the disruption of bodily rhythms caused by heroin leaving the body and the institutional and social environments of the prison. The analysis shows that withdrawal was marked by forms of temporal suffering, including the anticipation of withdrawal symptoms, the painfully slow passage of time and the sense of serving “double prison time.” The participants employed strategies to manage temporal suffering, such as breaking time into smaller intervals and engaging in bodily practices to accelerate the withdrawal process. Finally, the desire to protect the time that they had invested in this process influenced how they navigated drug offer situations in prison. By conceptualizing withdrawal as a temporal, as well as biological and psychological process, this article advances understandings of addiction and recovery. The findings also have implications for community and institutional settings that support individuals during the detoxification process.

Introduction

Heroin withdrawal is one of the most challenging stages of an abstinence-based recovery journey. However, with some exceptions (Connors, 1994; Koutroulis, 1998; Lindesmith, 1938; Walmsley, 2022), the subjective experience of withdrawing from heroin has been largely unexamined by alcohol and other drug researchers. Existing research has primarily focused on the physiological and psychological dimensions of heroin withdrawal, such as pain, nausea, chills, anxiety, and cravings, and the increased risks of catching a blood-borne virus and overdose while withdrawing from heroin (Heilig et al., 2021; Koob, 2020; Mateu-Gelabert et al., 2010). While these dimensions are important, they do not capture the subjective experience of heroin withdrawal, particularly disturbances to subjective temporality. This article addresses this gap by drawing on the literature on temporality and embodiment (Fuchs, 2013; Leder, 1990) and prison time (Cope, 2003; Medlicott, 1999; Wahidin, 2006), alongside an existing qualitative dataset of interviews with ten individuals who self-detoxified from heroin in prison. It argues that heroin withdrawal involves a distinct temporal experience, conceptualized here as “withdrawal time,” characterized by forms of temporal suffering shaped by the bodily disruption caused by heroin leaving the body and the institutional and social environment of the prison. The following section examines existing research on heroin withdrawal, emphasizing neurobiological, psychological, and public health frameworks before exploring sociological perspectives. It then moves on to discuss the literature on temporality and prison time to provide the theoretical framework for the analysis.

Background

Heroin withdrawal has been widely examined from neurobiological, psychological, and public health perspectives. In the neurobiology of addiction, withdrawal is understood as the outcome of neuroadaptations within the reward and stress systems caused by the long-term use of heroin. The withdrawal process typically lasts around two weeks as homeostasis is restored to the brain following these neuroadaptations (Heilig et al., 2021; Koob, 2020). In contrast, psychologists emphasize the emotional and behavioral dimensions of withdrawal such as anxiety, irritation, restlessness, and craving (Gossop et al., 1987). Heroin withdrawal has also been approached from a public health perspective due to the heightened risk of overdose and catching a blood-borne virus while individuals are withdrawing from heroin (Mateu-Gelabert et al., 2010). Although these perspectives have made significant contributions to scientific knowledge, clinical interventions, and harm-reduction responses, they reduce heroin withdrawal to the objective body.

Lindesmith (1938) was one of the first sociologists to acknowledge that heroin withdrawal was not just a physiological or psychological process. In his sociological theory of addiction, he argued that the process of withdrawing from heroin was embedded within and shaped through social meanings, interpretations and social interactions within drug-using subcultures. Lindesmith's insights on the social embeddedness of withdrawal have been developed in more recent anthropological and sociological accounts. For example, Connors (1994) argued that withdrawal belongs to the mythology of the heroin subculture, where it provides a culturally recognized means for expressing emotional pain. The mythology of withdrawal transformed the meaning of emotional pain into a form that could be expressed through stories about physical suffering. Koutroulis (1998) explored the role of social symbolism in how people dependent on heroin thought about and conceptualized their withdrawal bodies. Her participants drew on the symbolism of slavery and purity to reframe the process of withdrawing as part of the journey toward cleanliness, freedom, and recovery. Walmsley (2022) developed these insights in his analysis of self-detoxification practices in prison, which identified that the experience of heroin withdrawal was entangled with social meanings, prison masculinity, experiences of vulnerability, and prisoner social relations. Temporal experiences were acknowledged in the analysis, but the phenomenon of temporal suffering was not addressed.

Temporal suffering is acknowledged in the academic literature on temporality. For example, Flaherty (1987) examined the phenomenon of “duration dragging” in which the transition from one social reality to another was accompanied by time slowing down. The situations in which the slowing of time is marked by suffering include threatening and violent encounters, physical and emotional pain, and periods of waiting and boredom. Prison researchers have observed examples of temporal suffering in prison settings. Brown (1998) identified the phenomenon of the “extended present” in the temporal experiences of those serving long-term prison sentences. In the extended present, time feels suspended, overwhelming, monotonous, and oppressive. She linked this sense of time to a distorted perception of the past and future that is characteristic of long-term imprisonment.

Additionally, Calkins (1970) and Medlicott (1999) both discuss the temporal challenges associated with transitioning from community settings to prison and other total institutions, where individuals are separated from society and all aspects of their daily lives are subject to surveillance and control. The loss of everyday time markers and personal time management strategies led participants to perceive time as a burden to endure. To cope, individuals utilized temporal management strategies such as dividing time into manageable intervals and filling time with meaningful activities. Finally, Fuchs (2013) explores how conditions such as depression can disconnect individuals from social life by disrupting the normal flow of time, decelerating time, and making it feel slow and painful. Without meaningful engagement in social life that is pulling them forward, individuals perceive the future as empty and the present as heavy and stagnant.

Temporal suffering can be understood as a pathology of temporality. According to Fuchs (2013), such pathologies manifest as either a deceleration or acceleration of internal time that is shaped by external or social elements. He distinguishes between implicit or lived time and explicit or experienced time to explain the occurrence of temporal pathologies. Implicit time is the synthesis of past, present, and future into a unified experience. The past, present, and future are not separate realms of memory and perception, but exist together in a continuous, interconnected flow that lies beyond conscious awareness. Agency is integral to this pre-reflective time. As a motivational energy or drive, it is directed towards a specific goal or objective. Explicit time refers to the conscious awareness of the passing of time. Temporal suffering occurs, from this perspective, when the flow of time is disrupted and time is no longer implicit in conscious awareness. For example, the physical symptoms of heroin withdrawal impose themselves on the individual, which can disrupt the flow of lived time, leaving time more tangible, heavy, and problematic for individuals.

Subjective temporality shares a similar structure with embodiment, particularly the distinction between the subjectively lived body and the objectively corporeal body (Fuchs, 2013). The link between temporality, embodiment, and temporal suffering can be illustrated using Leder's (1990) concept of the absent-present body. According to Leder, the body primarily operates in the “corporeal background,” and like implicit time, it typically goes unnoticed by the individual. However, when the body dysfunctions or time suddenly becomes explicit to the individual, they impose on consciousness as an obstacle, making the body and time a central focus of attention (Fuchs, 2013; Leder, 1990). During these bodily disturbances, or what Leder (1990) refers to as “bodily dys-appearance,” the individual's attention or consciousness is drawn to the present moment, and the concern is with returning the body and time to their corporeal and temporal backgrounds.

According to Fuchs (2013), temporal suffering can also arise when separated or detached from the temporal structures of the environment. From an early age, individuals are integrated into temporal structures through a process of intersubjective synchronization. This occurs through socialization into the rhythms of hours, days, months, and years, as well as alignment with daily routines and everyday life trajectories, such as school, university, family, and career. While individuals are generally unaware of this intersubjective temporality, it creates an implicit sense of being temporally linked to others, sharing the same intersubjective time with them. It makes ‘a fulfilled present where one exists without explicit awareness of time, entirely devoted to one's own activity or to resonate with others’ (Fuchs, 2013, p. 82). However, under certain circumstances, this shared temporal experience can break down, resulting in anomalies and disturbances in temporal experience, a process referred to as temporal desynchronization (Fuchs, 2013).

Temporal desynchronization occurs as individuals transition from the community to the prison environment (Medlicott, 1999). Unlike the community, temporal structures in prison are oriented towards punishment and discipline through strict daily routines, temporal ordering, and the erosion of personal autonomy over time (Foucault, 1979; Middlemass & Smiley, 2016). This transition can disrupt the implicit flow of time, reducing the experience of time in prison to a disconnected and empty state of waiting. Various factors can influence the experience of time in prison, including the length of the prison sentence, gender, and age (Cope, 2003; Moran, 2012; Wahidin, 2006). As noted above, prison researchers have identified a range of temporal strategies utilized by individuals to cope with the burden of time, such as creating structured routines, engaging in activities like reading or watching television, drug use, or using cognitive strategies to divide the day into smaller, manageable intervals (Cope, 2003; Medlicott, 1999; Middlemass & Smiley, 2016). Although existing research acknowledges drug use as a mechanism for coping with the burden of time, there has been less focus on exploring the experience of prison time when coming off drugs. This article extends current understandings of drug withdrawal by examining the temporal experiences of individuals who self-detoxified from heroin while in prison. It develops new insights into the interactions between drug withdrawal, suffering, time, and institutional settings.

Methods

The analysis draws on an existing dataset of qualitative interviews with individuals who had recently been released from prison and who self-detoxified from heroin during their imprisonment. The interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2016, facilitated by a community-based drug treatment organization in the South West of England. The organization had strong links with three local prisons and was willing to support the research. The sample included ten males who were White British and in their late 30s and 40s, and one participant was aged 50. Each participant had served multiple prison sentences, ranging from two to ten years, and within the three months before the interview, had completed sentences ranging from 3 months to two years. Their heroin dependencies lasted between 18 and 26 years, with most reporting multiple short and long periods of abstinence in both prison and community settings. The interviews lasted approximately one hour and focused on the events leading to their imprisonment, the arrest, the time spent in the police station and court, and their subsequent imprisonment. Each participant was assigned a pseudonym to preserve their anonymity. While the sample size of ten participants presents a limitation, this research offers valuable empirical and theoretical insights into an underexplored phenomenon.

All of the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed in full. The strategy for analyzing the interview transcripts involved applying both deductive and inductive approaches (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The original analysis explored the institutional and social factors shaping the lived experience of heroin withdrawal and self-detoxification in prison. Among the descriptions of their experiences of self-detoxification were rich and insightful experiences of withdrawing from heroin in prison and notable distortions to their temporal experiences, such as the slow passage of time and the sense of doing twice as much prison time as other individuals. While some of these insights were incorporated into the theoretical framework used to understand self-detoxification, the temporal dimensions of withdrawing from heroin in prison were largely left unexamined.

Guided by these initial insights, the interview transcripts were reread and coded with a particular focus on the embodied and temporal experiences of drug withdrawal in prison. A line-by-line coding technique with sensitivity towards temporal experiences and heroin withdrawal was used to help organize the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The literature on embodiment and temporality (Fuchs, 2013; Leder, 1990) and prison temporalities (Cope, 2003; Medlicott, 1999; Wahidin, 2006) guided the analysis and development of themes. Key themes such as multiple temporality, temporal suffering, temporal strategies, and the withdrawal timer were identified and incorporated under the broader theme of the temporality of the withdrawing body. The ethics review committee at the University of the West of England granted ethical approval for this research.

Findings: The Temporality of the Withdrawing Body in Prison

This section explores the theme of temporality in the participants’ experiences of withdrawing from heroin in prison. Heroin withdrawal creates its own bodily rhythms and exists within a temporal framework, which structured the experiences of the participants during the first few weeks of their prison sentences. While institutional routines and disciplinary schedules dictate prison time for all, “withdrawal time” was described by the participants as embodied, personal, disorienting, and marked by suffering. The following findings reveal how the participants navigated these conflicting and challenging temporalities, the strategies they adopted to cope with them, the influence of withdrawal time on drug-offer situations and what these temporal experiences reveal about the lived experience of prison life for those detoxing from heroin in prison. The next section examines how the participants, in the early stages of their prison sentences, simultaneously experienced prison time and withdrawal time, with the latter assuming priority.

Doing Multiple Temporalities: Doing “Withdrawal Time” and “Prison Time”

People in prison encounter multiple, sometimes conflicting, temporalities. These temporal experiences are shaped by the structured daily routines of prison (Foucault, 1979) as well as personal factors such as age, gender, and the length of prison sentence (Brown, 1998; Cope, 2003; Moran, 2012; Wahidin, 2002, 2006). Prison researchers observe that from the start of the prison sentence to its completion, people in prison experience time as a burden to be endured and managed (Medlicott, 1999). While the participants recognized the burden of prison time, their early experiences of prison were dominated, albeit temporarily, by the demands of “withdrawal time,” which is a distinct temporal experience that is shaped by the rhythms of heroin leaving the body and the setting within which withdrawal is experienced. It has its own specific intensity, burden, and duration, which disrupted the participants’ ability to synchronize with the prison's institutional and social environments (Middlemass & Smiley, 2016). As Matt explained:

When you’re detoxing, days feel a lot longer than they are. When you’re not going through that, time is a different thing. You could sign yourself up for all these different activities, engage in doing work and all that kind of stuff. In the stages of like real strong withdrawal symptoms, and you’re coming off heavy methadone script or whatever it might be, work is not something that I think you are going to be looking at. Maybe at a later date, when you’re over the worst symptoms.

Heroin withdrawal followed a structured, albeit subjective, trajectory that progressed in predictable and variable stages. The participants described a cognitive temporal map through which they thought about, anticipated and reflected on the withdrawal process. This mental representation allowed them to navigate and manage it as a temporally structured process. This temporal structure loosely aligns with the biomedical model, which typically spans a two-week timeframe (Koob, 2020). As Jason, a 39-year-old, explained:

I would say two weeks, not even really that, a week and a half maximum. I don’t care how bad you are, but you are going to start feeling better.

The participants did not experience heroin withdrawal as a linear decline in symptoms but rather as a sequence of stages organized within a temporal framework. The first was the anticipation stage. This stage is absent from the biomedical model in which withdrawal begins with the onset of symptoms (Koob, 2020). In contrast, bodily symptoms, such as subtle aches in several parts of the body or a runny nose, indicated that withdrawal was looming. Matt, a 37-year-old who had recently served an 18-month prison sentence for burglary, explained how a runny nose signified that “a cluck [withdrawal] was in the post.” The withdrawal symptoms reached their peak within the first few days, with the primary symptoms being nausea, restlessness, and anxiety. Jason noted this acute stage of withdrawal:

Yeah, the symptoms were bad for about three days constant, and then they got a little bit better and a little better. It's pretty rough, you know what I mean, but it does get better.

These acute withdrawal symptoms subsided between days four and seven. However, exhaustion, sleep disturbances, and anxiety persisted for longer. For most, the lingering effects of restlessness, sleeplessness, and, for some, bowel issues continued to impact them and influence their perception of time after the first week, and in some cases, beyond the two weeks.

The relationship between prison time and withdrawal time was characterized by disruption, overlap, and tension. For the duration of heroin withdrawal, the time discipline of the prison (Foucault, 1979) largely remained in the temporal background, where the participants placed less emphasis on it. Instead, withdrawal time demanded their immediate attention. It pulled their focus away from the disciplinary and scheduled routines of the prison and towards the withdrawing body. This fragmented their experience, creating a layered sense of time that was shaped by the tension between the withdrawing body and the prison environment.

Temporal Suffering: Anticipatory Suffering, Duration Dragging, and Double Prison Time

The tension between the withdrawing body and the prison environment not only fragmented the participants’ experiences of time. It also created distinct forms of suffering. These sufferings went beyond the physical and psychological symptoms of withdrawal (Gossop et al., 1987; Heilig et al., 2021; Koob, 2020) to include time itself, which became distorted, slowed, and extended. The analysis identified three types of temporal suffering in the participants’ accounts of withdrawing from heroin in prison: anticipatory suffering, where the expectation of suffering in the near future colonizes the present; duration dragging, where time is experienced as unbearably slow; and double prison time, where the experience of imprisonment itself feels extended.

The anticipatory stage of withdrawal, as outlined in the above section, was especially marked by temporal suffering. The looming prospect of sleepless nights, restlessness and physical pain made the minutes and hours leading up to the onset of withdrawal dominated by the anticipation of physical suffering. This form of suffering can be distinguished from the lived suffering experienced once withdrawal begins by the way in which anticipation creates a projection of suffering into the future that, in turn, enters and colonizes the present. The existence of the colloquial phrase “a cluck was in the post,” used by Matt and other participants, illustrates the significance of this form of suffering to the heroin subculture. Similar concerns with anticipated suffering were raised by other participants, as described here by Jason:

The door shut, I’m left sort of get on with it, you know. The way I look at it is that it's a week that's going to take a month, even though it's only 7 days.

In the prison context, where waiting is a defining feature of daily life (Medlicott, 1999), and, in the absence of control over time and space (Foucault, 1979), this anticipatory suffering was intensified. As Fuchs (2013, p. 79) notes, the suffering of waiting occurs when the weight of what is to come, or the “not yet,” fills the present moment. In other words, the stress and worry about the inevitable withdrawal symptoms made every minute feel prolonged and more intense.

The onset of the physical symptoms of withdrawal was especially marked by the phenomenon of duration dragging (Flaherty, 1987), intensified by the transition from community to prison. Unlike anticipatory suffering, this form of temporal suffering emerged from the physical symptoms of heroin withdrawal in prison. The participants reported experiencing time during withdrawal slowing down to the extent that even brief intervals, such as minutes, were extended far beyond their objective duration. As illustrated here by Carl:

Detoxing days feel a lot longer than they are. Ten minutes feels like two hours, you know.

The temporality of withdrawal was characterized by time painfully slowing down and fragmenting into a series of waitings: waiting for withdrawal to start, peak, subside, and end. These pathologies of temporality (Fuchs, 2013) can be understood as the result of the brain’s biological process adapting to the absence of heroin (Koob, 2020), forcing the body and time to become an intrusive and agonizing force in the present. Leder (1990, p. 75) refers to this type of suffering as a spatiotemporal constriction where we “are no longer dispersed out there in the world but suddenly congeal right here.” Withdrawal, in this sense, becomes an all-consuming experience where time loses its familiar structure and becomes something to be endured.

Additionally, several of the participants described a phenomenon called “double prison time” that occurred while withdrawing from heroin. This is the sense of doing twice as much prison time as others. Dan described this reification of prison time in the following way:

Yeah for a start you are up constant … so you are doing twice a day anyway because you are round the clock you don’t sleep, forget sleep. Anyone who tells you they’re sleeping when they are clucking, they aint clucking.

For the participants, prison time was organized less by institutional schedules and routines and more by the sleep-wake cycle. Typically, night-time, when most people in prison are sleeping, is regarded as “easy time” (Wahidin, 2006) because it requires little effort to serve, compared to the waking day. The waking day is when prison time is served. The inability to sleep detached the participants from these rhythms and prisoner social relations (Crewe, 2005) and compelled them to endure an unbroken and relentless prison day. In other words, withdrawing from heroin turned the night into an extension of their prison sentence, blurring the boundaries between prison days. This fostered the feeling of serving twice as much prison time as other people in prison.

Double prison time was not exclusive to individuals withdrawing from heroin in prison. It was also produced by other disruptions to the sleep-wake cycle, including prison overcrowding, hot weather, and, for some, the search for peace and quiet. Mark raised this point when he discussed double prison time:

Maybe because you like a bit of peace and quiet. Maybe you can’t sleep when it's in a tiny little room, and it's 100 degrees outside. That's another thing with prison if you have a good summer and now it's that crowded, you’ve got three men cells that are built for two men.

Beyond these physical and environmental factors, institutional features of the prison reinforced the reification of double prison time. Dan described how the sound of the prison clock tower functioned as a temporal marker of double prison time:

They got a bell in there that goes off every hour, do you know what I mean … bong!.

Historically, clocks functioned as part of the disciplinary apparatus of prisons, where they reinforced time discipline and institutional power (Foucault, 1979). Dan explained that the prison clock was not just a measure of objective time or a mundane feature of the prison architecture. It was a reminder of his subjugation to the control exercised over him by the prison. The hourly chimes of the prison clock marked the passing of his prison sentence and, importantly, were an unwanted reminder of how much time he had left to serve before the start of the new prison day. Importantly, the temporal suffering described by the participants reveals how heroin withdrawal in prison reshapes the experience of time and highlights further the pains of imprisonment that are experienced by people dependent on heroin in prison (Walmsley, 2022). However, the participants were not passive in response to temporal suffering; instead, they employed various temporal strategies to cope with it, which are examined in the following section.

Temporal Strategies for Coping With Heroin Withdrawal in Prison

People in prison utilize various strategies to alleviate the burden of prison time, including the establishment of daily routines, participation in activities to organize their days, and dividing the day into smaller time intervals such as morning, afternoon and evening (Medlicott, 1999; Middlemass & Smiley, 2016; Wahidin, 2006). The participants employed similar strategies to cope with the temporal suffering of the withdrawing body, including breaking time into smaller intervals, passing time through physical activities, and avoiding focusing on clock time. For example, to cope with the temporal symptoms of heroin withdrawal, Tom organized his time into smaller intervals to avoid being overwhelmed:

I used to try and break it down just little bits of time. I try not to think of it as hours, do you know what I mean? Not think I’ve got 10 hours of this; I try not to think that way cos obviously, I’m not stupid; I know that's gonna make the matter fifty times worse.

In some cases, the participants resorted to creating new sensations in their bodies to distract them from the withdrawal symptoms. Mike found a distraction in hitting his wrists against the wall, though he eventually resorted to breaking withdrawal time in smaller intervals like some of the other participants. As he explains:

Banging my wrists off the walls and all that kind of stuff. If I’m honest it was just one of those where really, I mean there's not much you can do about it. What I would try and do is like to do it by every five minutes.

Similar to what has been reported elsewhere (Medlicott, 1999; Middlemass & Smiley, 2016), some participants engaged in physical activities to fill these time intervals. Mark, for instance, showered to pass the time, and Carl found physical activities like walking around their prison cell to be helpful:

I do a lot of walking in a little box as big as there to there and from there to there. A lot of walking up and down.

Others were less concerned with distracting themselves or organizing the prison day into short intervals. They avoided fixating on time altogether. Mike, for example, distanced himself from clock time to live in the present:

I didn’t really want to know the time. I use to try and not sit down and tell myself oh I got hours of this, or you know that kind of stuff. I use to just try and keep it in the here and now.

Additionally, several participants actively engaged in bodily processes, such as sweating and urination, to accelerate the duration of withdrawal time. As noted by Walmsley (2022), physical activities such as press-ups, walking, and running on the spot were employed not only as distraction techniques but also as efforts to expel heroin from the body. These strategies were underpinned by a conception of the withdrawing body as a poisoned object and the belief that the duration of withdrawal can be manipulated. These practices reflect a temporal logic of withdrawal, where the duration can be shortened by accelerating the body's detoxification process.

This engagement with the body and temporal strategies can be further understood through Leder's (1990) absent body framework as creative responses to the “dys-appearance” of the body and time in a closely regulated environment. Breaking time into smaller intervals, engaging in distraction activities, or distancing themselves from clock time enabled the participants to move the withdrawing body into the corporeal and temporal background, if only momentarily. Moreover, these techniques allowed them to regain some control and certainty over their subjective experience.

The “Withdrawal Timer”: Navigating Drug Offer Situations in Prison

A counterintuitive finding identified in the analysis was that despite having access to both heroin and opiate-based medications, the participants decided to avoid them while they were withdrawing from heroin in prison. This finding runs contrary to observations that suggest for people in prison, drug use can be a way to cope with the pressures of prison life, and heroin or opiate based medications in particular to cope with heroin withdrawal (Cope, 2003; Crewe, 2005). This avoidance behavior has been linked to concerns with the victimization associated with being labelled a “prison heroin addict” (Walmsley, 2022). Nonetheless, it can also be understood in relation to a dimension of “withdrawal time” referred to here as the “withdrawal timer.” The withdrawal timer is an internal countdown mechanism that resets withdrawal time to zero upon the consumption of an opiate. The logic of the withdrawal timer, which allows its duration to be accelerated (as noted above) or prolonged, encouraged the participants to “bank” or protect the time they had already invested in the withdrawal process.

The withdrawal timer played a vital role in guiding the participants’ decisions to come off heroin in prison and also structured how they navigated drug-offer situations. For example, the influence of the withdrawal timer is evident in Dan's explanation for deciding not to use heroin when he arrived at the prison, despite being in withdrawal:

The best way if you’re clucking when you go into jail is have nothing, do you know what I mean. What I’m saying is you’ve already done two days, so you’re two days into it by the time you get into that jail.

Dan was arrested for burglary on the Saturday prior to his imprisonment, which meant that he had spent the weekend in the police station without access to heroin. On Monday, he was transported from the police station to court, where he waited to be remanded to prison later that afternoon. By the time he arrived at the prison, he had already done two days in withdrawal and decided, before arriving at the prison, to finish the process during the first weeks of his prison sentence. Using heroin, he explained, would have reset the withdrawal timer to zero, resulting in losing the time that he had already accumulated in the withdrawal process. This point was put succinctly by Matt, who described a similar experience and rationale for not using heroin: “As soon as you have a bag of heroin, you’re back to square one in a way.”

The logic of the withdrawal timer also shaped how the participants navigated drug-offer situations in prison. These situations included being approached by prison drug dealers, people they knew from previous prison sentences, and associates from outside of prison. Matt recalled being offered heroin by a prison associate. Although he was tempted to use it, he explained, that it would simply prolong an already challenging experience:

I used to say to my mate along the road, I used to say, god I had a rough night last night proper rough night. There's no point like him giving you a bag of gear saying oh you won’t rough it tonight. I’ll give you a bag so you can sleep because you’re just prolonging it.

Carl also mentioned protecting the time that he had already invested in withdrawing from heroin in relation to a situation where he declined the offer of subutext from a prison associate. These opiate-based medications are diverted from drug treatment into the prison drug market, where they are sold or exchanged for canteen items (Tompkins, 2016; Walmsley, 2022). While recognizing the potential relief, he believed that it would simply delay the start of the withdrawal process until the next day:

Sleeping tablets used to help so I could get sleep and stuff … I suppose in a way at the time it [subutext] helped, but then you know in a way it's just delaying it so I suppose it served a purpose as if you might not have been ill for that day but there is always tomorrow.

The withdrawal timer was a central feature of the temporality of the withdrawing body. It translated the embodied experiences of heroin withdrawal into a temporal logic that the participants used to inform their decisions and navigate drug-offer situations despite experiencing withdrawal symptoms. In contrast to prison time, which moved at a fixed institutional pace, the withdrawal timer introduced a subjective temporal order that was embodied and strategic. It allowed them to exert a degree of control over their bodies in an environment where autonomy is largely absent. In an environment where institutional routines rigidly structure time, the ability to bank withdrawal time and avoid resetting the timer can be viewed as a form of agency.

Conclusion

This article aimed to explore the subjective experiences of heroin withdrawal among individuals who had self-detoxified in prison, with a particular focus on the overlooked dimension of time in these experiences. Drawing on the literature on embodiment and temporality (Fuchs, 2013; Leder, 1990) and prison temporalities (Cope, 2003; Medlicott, 1999; Wahidin, 2006), the analysis developed the concept of “withdrawal time.” This concept describes a distinct temporal experience that is shaped by the disruption of bodily rhythms caused by heroin leaving the body and the structured routines of the prison. It unfolded in both predictable and variable stages, marked by forms of temporal suffering including the anticipation of suffering, the painfully slow passage of time and the sense of doing twice as much prison time as others. Temporal strategies similar to those employed by others in prison were used to cope with these temporal pathologies, such as breaking time into smaller intervals, engaging in repetitive activities, and avoiding clock time, to regain a sense of control (Medlicott, 1999; Middlemass & Smiley, 2016; Wahidin, 2006). Some also acted on the body's natural elimination processes to accelerate withdrawal time, aiming to shorten its intensity, burden and duration (Walmsley, 2022). In contrast to research that understands withdrawal symptoms as motivation to use heroin and opiate-based medications and engage in risky behaviors (Cope, 2003; Koob, 2020; Mateu-Gelabert et al., 2010), this research found instead that these were avoided to preserve the time that the participants had already invested in the withdrawal process.

The analysis challenges dominant psychological and neurobiological models of addiction in which withdrawal symptoms are understood and addressed as primarily physical and psychological (Gossop et al., 1987; Koob, 2020). It shows that temporal experiences are equally crucial to understanding and responding to the challenging process of coming off heroin within prison settings. By conceptualizing these experiences as “withdrawal time,” the article contributes new insights to existing sociological perspectives of withdrawal that recognize the influence of personal and social factors of the subjective experience of withdrawing from heroin (Connors, 1994; Koutroulis, 1998; Lindesmith, 1938). In addition, the analysis contributes to the literature on prison temporalities and the pains of imprisonment by examining the way in which heroin withdrawal shapes and intensifies experiences of time and suffering in prison (Cope, 2003; Crewe, 2005; Medlicott, 1999; Moran, 2012; Wahidin, 2006). In the prison context, withdrawal was experienced as dragging, distorted, and at times unbearable, with some expressing the view that they were doing twice the prison time as others. In this way, withdrawal did not occur solely within the disciplinary regime of the prison but instead amplified it. The analysis of the temporality of the withdrawing body opens new avenues for research into how institutional and social temporalities shape embodied experiences of coming off drugs.

These findings have implications for policy and practice. Institutional settings where individuals undertake detoxification might integrate an understanding of temporal suffering as a component of the withdrawal experience. This slow passing of time during withdrawal can heighten physical and psychological distress. In practice, this might involve designing detoxification programs that recognize the effects of temporal suffering through structured daily routines, meaningful activities, and time-focused strategies to help cope with the temporal suffering of withdrawal.