Introduction: discovering a ‘non-field’

Abstract

As a woman researcher who has worked in the ‘addiction’ field for the past 15 years, I have seen consistently a need to offer a clear account of women and substance use written ‘by a woman for women’. The desire to write this account grew as I found many of my colleagues, whether researchers or clinicians, women or men, to be resistant to a women-oriented perspective in the area.

Dis-covering: uncovering the Elemental Reality hidden by the hucksters, frauds, and framers of phallocracy; finding the treasures of women’s Memory, Knowledge, History that have been buried by the grave diggers of patriarchal re-search … (Mary Daly in cahoots with Jane Caputi, The Wickedary)