Global Flows in Drug Treatment: Heroin Addiction and Therapeutic Community Approaches in China

Abstract

This article focuses on one residential therapeutic community for the treatment of heroin and opiate addiction in contemporary China. It discusses 2 case vignettes and shows that although addictions are extremely difficult to treat, there are small successes being reached in China’s southwest. Residential treatment communities follow mobile global practices that link Western models of 12-step Narcotics Anonymous, self-healing, to other Chinese practices like Maoist “speak bitterness.” In China it is in the drug aid theaters where Sunlight-International traveled to do three things: (a) stave off the American drug market, (b ) reduce drug trafficking across national borders, and (c) address the psychosocial problems associated with global drug trafficking and consumption. Through the process of unraveling the on-the-ground practices of public health international humanitarian nongovernmental organizations and some of their therapeutic models, we begin to see new alliances formed across the globe around drug treatment and care that point toward important results.