Abstract
The article describes, quoting a popular Danish song from the 1980s,' bad company, those the others don't want to play with'. Bad company in this case refers to alcohol abusers, persons with long-lasting drinking problems and complicated social problems (unemployment, social marginalisation, homelessness).
The article builds on an empirical study in which the clients and personnel of 34 treatment institutions and shelters for homeless people in the Copenhagen area were interviewed.
The main finding is that heavy alcohol abusers gradually have been excluded from the treatment system and that this exclusion is connected to a neo-moralistic perspective on substance abuse. The Danish treatment system today operates with a marked division of abusers into two separate groups: those who are ‘suited for treatment’ and those who are not. This division has no empirical or theoretical scientific base; it is a ‘subjective’ classification that gradually has been ‘objectified’, and thus ‘institutionalised’ in the sense de-scribed by Berger and Luckmann. Institutionalised resignation in the alcohol and drug treatment field is part of a complex development consisting of socio-political changes and ideological shifts during the last two decades. These trends are discussed within a theoretical frame inspired by Jock Young and Zygmunt Bauman.