Keywords

In the previous chapter, Dora described the presence of parents and children in the park as a disruptive factor, one that resulted in unease. Such a charged relationship between drugs and children is a recurring pattern in the interviews—most of the women describe children as the symbolic opposite of drugs. This is in line with Nancy Campbell’s analysis of how drug use by women has come to be seen as something that is destructive of women’s maternal instinct and as posing a threat to children (2000; cf. Du Rose 2015). How do the participants navigate children and drugs? This chapter analyses the strategies the women use to combine drug use with being women, who are traditionally positioned as responsible for children.

Boel illustrates the clash between children and drugs during a go-along interview that retraces the steps she took while using LSD one summer night. As we make our way through Malmö towards the modernistic Västra Hamnen neighbourhood by the sea, Boel eagerly recounts how she felt that night and reflects upon the way in which the hallucinogenic high affected her perception of both the city and her own body. Here is an excerpt from my field diary:

She says that she wants to bombard herself with impressions when she uses drugs, and that this particular place was perfect: the views it offered “turned it into Disneyland”. She bends down towards a manhole and takes a deep breath of the sulphurous air wafting from it. […] She relives the emotions she felt that evening and straightens back up, spreading her arms and speaking with enthusiasm. “I wanted to feel my body! Hear myself breathe. Really feel that I’m a living organism.”Footnote 1

We pause on a street corner overlooking the ocean, just as she did that night, when she first received a text message and then a phone call from a friend who was awake, breastfeeding her child. She describes herself as “shocked” and what happened as a “full-on clash”, reenacting the events by raising her eyebrows and staring at an imaginary telephone. The reasons they each had for being awake at the crack of dawn—one because of LSD, the other due to a newborn baby—led to their two different worlds intersecting. The child and the drug use met each other unexpectedly (although at a safe physical distance), yet still to shocking effect.

Angela’s long and rambling account of a trip to Colombia in her youth is another example of someone unexpectedly encountering a child while they are under the influence of drugs. She tells me that she travelled to Colombia to study, but ended up bingeing on the endless cheap drugs the country had to offer. After a while, she realised that she could make a living selling marijuana to other students and tourists, so she put her studies on hold. The story becomes more fragmented as she describes how she began to use crack and moved in with someone with a shared interest in drugs. All of a sudden, however, she found herself staring at a child who stood out clearly against a blurred background:

Angela::

And then I discovered, this was maybe a month into things, we were sitting in a circle… and watching boxing on the telly, and all the people around me were these fucking mafia blokes. […] And the reason I discovered it was because there was this young boy serving us… And I reacted to the fact that he was a child. Who was there, serving these men, and I thought: whose child is this? Are there children living here? And then I realised it was their little, you know, sex slave. And I snapped out of it then, like, shiiit – how did this happen?! […] It wasn’t about trying to, you know, save him, it was just about trying to get out of there myself.

Emma::

You realised you wanted to get out of there?

Angela::

I realised something had changed in my environment. Something had gotten really [bad], so slowly, that I hadn’t even reflected on it. You know, crack cocaine, it makes you stop caring, stop reflecting on things, I think.

In Angela’s story, too, the child is a symbol of a different world. His proximity affects her, more strongly than the crack cocaine itself does. In the above quote, she describes how she reacted when she first saw the child. Her reaction, she says, made her “snap out of” things, as though she was seeing her environment for the first time. The fact that there was a child in the middle of a drugs environment at first surprised her, then horrified her when she realised the child in question was also being sexually abused. This discovery in turn led to certain thoughts and reflections, and her own hurried departure. The problem that Angela outlines here is not so much about drugs’ proximity to the child, but rather about the abuse the child is suffering in a context where she only then starts to feel like an outsider. In this way, the child represents a different world, a different collection of objects than the one she had slowly become accustomed to. She describes drugs as having enabled her to feel at home and let her feet sink into an environment to which she is a stranger once she wakes up and opens her eyes. In a sense, the crack in her body served as a material prerequisite to turn the space she was in into an extension of her body.

Jonas Frykman, drawing upon Mary Douglas’ theory of dirt and purity (2002/1966), writes that taboos relating to the demarcation between one’s own body and what is not the body are the strongest (Frykman and Löfgren 2019, p. 161). Viewing a space—an intimate space in which people use drugs—as an extension of the body can help us to understand why Angela’s experience made her leave instead of trying to save the boy. To this day, more than 20 years later, there is anger and indignation in her voice when she remembers the event. She seems sickened by the fact that she herself was part of this space, which suddenly felt foreign to her. Her encounter with the child became an alarm bell that remains burnt into her memory, its ring warning her that she had to leave.

In certain situations, Angela and Boel are described as orientating themselves so that the worlds of drugs and children, or environments in Angela’s words, are kept separate. When juxtaposed, these worlds can appear crystal clear, there can be a “total clash”, as Boel puts it, which demands distance.

The above is a clash between symbols, which differs from situations in which relationships with children (in the sense of young human beings) are the focus. I asked the interviewees how they would reason about drug use in relation to their own or related children, even if no children were planned. I posed this question to gauge whether my interviewees’ moral take on drug use would change if a (hypothetical) child were in the picture. On several occasions, the interviews took interesting and thoughtful turns at this point. I interpret this to mean that the moral weight of the issue requires more and/or different perspectives to be taken into account than those that were considered relevant in the case of the interviewees own drug use.

Katy has a stepchild who is in their teens, which means they might soon come across drugs in their social circle. She says that she feels it is up to her as the child’s stepmother and someone who uses drugs herself to inform the child in a way that prepares them for such an event. Previously, Katy has described her knowledge of drugs and the knowledgeable company she keeps as being the factors that make her own drug use safe:

Katy::

[Me and] my friends, we know what we’re doing, they’re psychologists and doctors and they do their jobs, you know. […]

Emma::

Do you think you’ll stop using drugs at some point? If so, when?

Katy::

No. I don’t think so. I’ve, we’ve talked about it in our social circle, because we’re all in our forties now. Many of us have children, who’re getting older… But I guess we’ve also talked about how damn nice it is. When we do do it. It’s just too nice to quit.

However, when I ask her what advice she plans on giving her stepchild, she responds, to my surprise, by quoting her own parents:

I’ll probably say what my own parents once said to me: “No one will force you to take anything; if you do [use drugs], you have to take responsibility for it.” And “if a drug makes you feel bad, come home. No matter what you’ve taken. Because we’re here for you.”

How can it be that Katy, who has emphasised her experiential knowledge as a safeguard, says that she wants to follow the same lines in her own child-rearing as her parents, two people with no experience of drug use? Katy does not offer her experienced company when it comes to testing drugs. This means that, if the child chooses to use drugs, they will have to repeat the uncontrolled (disorientated) period that Katy herself went through before gaining her current knowledge.

We used to be like “God, we should be careful now” and… and now it’s more like, you know, we know how we… we know how much to take, we know what it does to us, we know what the worst-case scenario is, things like that…

There is a discrepancy between the emphasis on safe drug use as a matter of knowledge: “[Me and] my friends, we know what we’re doing”, and concerns about what could happen, that is brought up once more in the case of children. There again, the one-way entrance to the knarkträsk threatens. Katy does not want to be responsible for leading a child to that entrance; she plans on telling her stepchild that it is all up to them. In the case of the child, it does not seem important whether the drugs are purchased and taken under the controlled conditions that Katy advocates for herself. It is not possible to know what drugs “does” to this particular child, and therefore, we do not know what “worst case scenario” could arise; in other words, what kind of entrance the child may become familiar with. On the other hand, Katy wants to make it possible for the child to come back home if things go badly, before they suffer an irreversible fall (down into the knarkträsk).

It would not be compatible with the appropriate behaviour of gender, age or social status for Katy to take an overly liberal approach to drugs in relation to children. She states that she has no plans to go into descriptions of the various drugs and their effects together with the child. This could have provided prior knowledge of the risks, but it might also have created curiosity. Instead, if the child decides to try drugs, they need to have these experiences on their own.

When I ask Thea the same question, she carefully considers how she would navigate the issue if she had a child. She starts by saying that she would never use drugs around her hypothetical child, referring to the hard time some of her friends had because their parents used drugs in problematic ways. She does not consider herself traumatised by her father’s cannabis smoking, however, and guesses that she would probably “smoke weed” (cannabis) even if she had a child. Next, she reflects upon the consequences of not referring to real-life experiences when discussing the issue:

I would still want to discuss it with the child, though. Precisely because I don’t think it’s helpful when it becomes this ghost, the way it is in Sweden today. It doesn’t do anyone any good when there’s no discussion, no rational discussion. Usually, it’s all just “No! Danger. Danger. Danger.” You know, “once you start, you’re hooked, you’ll end up on the streets.” But then when they grow older, when they have to make certain decisions, when someone sooner or later offers them drugs… […] If it’s this massive taboo, the way people deal with the issue in this country, it can become a scary thing. But anything frightening and forbidden is always alluring… [pauses]

Thea’s argument centres on how Sweden’s abolitionist approach has turned drugs into something frightening, into a “ghost”, that might make people feel inclined to try drugs, drawn to their fear. But the ghost metaphor simultaneously implies that we are talking about a figment of the imagination: something that might frighten us but will never pose any real danger. Thea puts her finger on a tricky question that I was forced to grapple with myself during my study: Does talking about them make drugs more or less appealing?

The minute we start discussing drugs, we draw them closer and raise awareness of their possible risks and benefits, but also to the fact that drug use is an option: the line between clean and dirty becomes blurred. Choosing to only discuss their drawbacks, as the Swedish authorities (and authorities elsewhere in the world) have historically done, is an attempt to ensure that illegal drugs remain distant and dirty (and illegal). But the abundance of films, books and songs that also portray the positive effects of drugs is a constant threat to their categorisation as dirt. Regardless of the strategy a parent adopts to guide their child through this landscape, there will thus be risks, whether born of their familiarity or lack of familiarity with drugs.

Angela’s tone is serious when she says that she tends to tell her children that “drugs are a struggle”—something she really wants the children to understand. By saying this, she is making it clear that drugs are not just about getting high and having pleasurable emotions: using them can also lead to discomfort and problems. She does not want her children to be fooled into thinking they can consume drugs without being prepared for what doing so might entail. As a mother who uses drugs, this is her way of taking responsibility. Her approach is based on an assumed proximity between children and drugs, rather than an attempt to keep the two apart. While Dora considered herself “out of place” when she was under the influence of drugs around young families, Angela gives us a drug-influenced insider perspective on young families, from her point of view as a mother. For her, drugs are not necessarily the polar opposite of work and obligations. On the contrary: to her, certain drugs and types of drug use (but not others) are prerequisites for being able to accomplish what she needs to in life.

When her children were very young, she says, there was a time when she was not doing well. This was followed by a period during which she used amphetamines and alcohol as “normalisers”—a word she uses to indicate that she felt better when she was under their influence and was able to function (cf. Sandell 2016) with their aid. She structured her use of these substances around the times when she had to drop off/pick up her children from day care and take care of them herself. Drugs were thus a constant part of the rhythm between pleasure and sacrifice, between partying and obligation. She would spend the weekends that her children were not with her partying (and consuming large amounts of amphetamines and alcohol). Sleeping pills marked her transition to the following week. On weekdays, she would continue to use amphetamines, but in lower doses—“to be able to be a good mother”. This rhythm of consumption was thus not about using or abstaining (cf. Wilk 2014), but about switching between different types of use. To Angela, these years were a good time in her life, a period that worked well—the only drawback being that her substance use was visible to others.

You know, the kids saw that mummy was starting to feel happy again. Mummy had a life. Mummy was [facing the world?], it wasn’t just all harsh reality, like. So, for me, it was perfect. […] But then people told me you can’t go out into the streets, it shows. […] So that summer, I was forced to stay inside with the kids. Mio had just learnt to crawl […] while I looked like a complete pundare.Footnote 2 So I had to stay at home, which wasn’t great, but…

Here, the perception that “it shows” is reinforced because Angela’s young children are with her, which makes the situation even less acceptable. When I meet her, Angela seems to have openly embraced what I would call a punk lifestyle, one that disregards propriety. There is a cigarette perpetually glued between her lips, she laughs unabashedly and is dressed in the typical black garb of a punk, her clothing frayed and carefully assembled. I interpret her words in the above quote as meaning that she would not have minded looking “like a complete pundare” at that time in her life, even during the day. But because the children were with her, she took her friends’ advice to heart. She guessed that other people in her surroundings would be outraged if they saw her out and about with her children while she was on drugs. Her solution was to stay inside.

I interpret Angela’s approach as based on her experience that drug use can be both pleasurable and problematic. It seems to me that she neither wants to withhold from her children the aspects of drug use she enjoys herself, nor keep her own use a secret from them. But that does not mean that she never worries about their relationship to drugs. She tells me that she has seen many others who used a lot of drugs struggle for long periods of time. This is why she warns her children not to heedlessly become involved in something they might end up struggling with. She also worries about how the authorities would react if they found out that she—a mother—uses drugs. On one occasion, I ask her as diplomatically as I can whether she ever worries that she will lose custody of her children. She stiffens and does not immediately reply. Then, in a strained voice, she eventually responds in the affirmative, without elaborating. It is clear that this is not the first time she has considered the issue and that it is something she is concerned about.

Katy has a completely different attitude to children’s place in relation to her own drug use. She makes it very clear to me that she never uses drugs around children, and illustrates how the conversation tends to go when she and her friends discuss whether or not to use drugs: “Are there any children around? No? All right. Who’s buying?” In other words, there should never be any children in spaces in which drugs will be used. One reason why it can be inappropriate to have children around while under the influence of drugs is that being high can make it difficult (even impossible) to take care of others. Women in particular are not simply expected to steer clear of children while using drugs; they are expected to remain fully sober, so they can take care of the children (Wiklund and Damberg 2015). In general, women are expected to abstain from psychoactive substances that have visible effects; however, this does not apply to the kinds of substances they are prescribed just to get through the day (Dollar and Hendrix 2018; see also Ettorre 1992). Angela, for example, does not only buy amphetamines illegally but has prescriptions to use amphetamine-based medicines, as well as other controlled medications. Criminologist Natasha Du Rose describes the difference between these two types of drug use as a matter of lacking versus regaining morals:

Legal drugs are prescribed to women by “experts” with medical authority to serve a normalising function as “coping mechanisms”, but are constructed as deviant and immoral when self-administered. Women who use illegal drugs are considered irresponsible, irrational and selfish. However, once they comply with their drug use being administered through the medical profession within the treatment or criminal justice systems, regardless of the relative addictiveness or harmfulness of the drugs prescribed, their normality, rationality and responsibility is considered to be restorable. (2015, p. 62)

In terms of intoxication that is intended to relieve feelings of responsibility and duty, Measham describes the concept of “controlled loss of control” (2002, p. 359) as a planned loss of control within a certain framework. Time, place, drug, dosage, company and other conditions can be planned as a context in which a certain loss of control is permitted to occur. Taking responsibility for children, in such cases as Katy describes, is about planning a break from responsibility. In such situations, it would be irresponsible to be near any children, because their planned-for lack of responsibility presupposes freedom from the responsibility for children that women are expected to take when they are around. However, the loss of control could also mean that actions and experiences may be frightening or even dangerous for the child. Thus, not being close to children during drug intoxication may be related to caring for the child, while, conversely, using drugs in a way that is perceived to enhance motherhood may also be related to caring for the child.

If bodies are shaped by the objects around them (Ahmed 2007, p. 152), then Angela’s children will be shaped by drugs. They might not necessarily actively focus on drugs, but they are expected to notice and be familiar with them. Drugs are part of the children’s point of departure, their home, from which their lives unfold. Drugs thus become familiar objects, reference points for onwards orientation. Katy expects the children in her life to come across drugs, just as they will come across many other objects, but hopes that her stepchild will simply pass them by, ignoring them rather than approaching them the way she did. Either way, the child will never encounter both drugs and Katy at the same time, she says. As a result, drugs come to represent the foreign, the unfamiliar.

As I have shown, the interview material reveals that the women’s sense of responsibility is at the centre of the charged relationship between drugs and children. Throughout, the women’s different answers concern different ways of paying attention to and taking responsibility for children. Responsibility can be taken through a willingness to talk about drugs, like Thea, who thinks that children need to be able to take a stand, and by encouraging personal responsibility, as Katy does. In some situations, taking responsibility is expressed as a charged spatial issue, which may involve distancing one’s own drug-affected body from children, as in the example of Katy. But responsibility can also be expressed as making sure that one is under the influence of appropriate drugs, as in the example of Angela. Due to the widely varying nature of drug use, and the motives for it—for example, for pleasure, social reasons or pain relief (Hilte 2019, p. 112), to feel like “a living organism” (Boel) or to “be a good mother” (Angela)—drug use can be either rejected or valued, but always in dialogue with strong notions of dirt and purity; that is, orders that have consequences for the shaping of constellations of children, women and drugs.