Narrating Suffering Through the Lens of Trauma: A Narcofeminist Analysis of Addiction Narratives

Abstract

In recent decades, the concept of “trauma” has been embraced in mental healthcare with “trauma-informed” approaches increasingly used to guide treatment. The turn to “trauma” is also evident in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment sector, where it imbues understandings of AOD-related problems, including addiction and overdose. In this article, we combine feminist analyses of mental health with narcofeminist scholarship to analyze trauma as a paradigm for understanding AOD-related concerns. Drawing on interview data from a study of addiction-recovery trajectories conducted across France, Belgium, and Canada, we consider the role of “trauma” discourse in how people with AOD-related issues interpret diverse experiences of suffering. Our participants’ accounts demonstrate that trauma provides a valuable lens for rendering experiences of distress legible within a socio-medical frame. However, we suggest that while trauma-informed therapeutic practices are a welcome move in acknowledging the sociocultural context of suffering, they do not sidestep the pathologizing effects of locating dysfunction in the individual. Moreover, the notion of trauma is often mobilized in medical discourse to characterize women, gender, and sexual minorities as uniquely vulnerable to AOD-related issues due to their risk of experiencing gendered violence. While such explanations highlight how gender and sexuality are imbricated in trauma, they implicitly reinforce a pathologizing view of drug use among women and sexual minorities, overlooking its potential affordances. In making this argument, we consider the broader sociopolitical implications of the turn to trauma in AOD care, including its possibilities and limits for challenging drug-related stigma and discrimination.