Assembling Alcohol Problems: Young People and Drinking

Abstract

In the previous chapter we examined in detail the debates that have constituted and re-constituted alcohol addiction or ‘dependence’ since 1976, arguing that a concept many take to be stable and self-evident is, in expert circles, highly volatile: subjected over and over to criticism and revision. This instability and controversy mark alcohol addiction out from the methamphetamine addiction found in Chapters 2 and 3 to be so vigorously subject to stabilisation. In tracking methamphetamine addiction concepts across research, policy and consumer or public settings, we found that individual methamphetamine consumers frequently (although not always) articulated ideas about the drug, about those who consume it and why, and about the addiction with which it is associated, in terms highly consonant with research and policy discourse. As these ideas — that is, the collateral realities enacted in the production of methamphetamine addiction — emerge as relatively stable, so too does methamphetamine addiction itself.