Surviving Heroin: Interviews with Women in Methadone Clinics

Surviving Heroin will be indispensable for addiction & women's studies scholars & for drug treatment practitioners, social workers, & other advocates for women's health. This rich ethnographic account of the experiences of 37 women who use methadone--heroin survivors whose lives continue to be controlled by methadone & by the clinics that dispense it--concentrates on women in Florida who grew up during the 1950s & 1960s. The authors explore the intersection of drug use & race, class, & gender oppression. Their analysis suggests new ways to understand how women on heroin & methadone struggle to regain a sense of legitimacy & control in their lives. While methadone clinics offer a legal alternative to drugs, the authors show that the clinics also expect the medicated women to conform to traditional images of femininity. Nonetheless, they argue, the women still find ways to be creative & to challenge the systems that oppress them. The book includes the stories of white, privileged women as well as the more stereotypical poor women of color such as Millie, a Puerto Rican woman who writes about her life in the first person. The authors frame the women's voices within the social context of the 1960s, the "era of domestic containment" as well as the civil rights, women's, hippie, & antiwar movements.Jennifer Friedman is the author of 'Surviving Heroin: Interviews with Women in Methadone Clinics', published 2001 under ISBN 9780813022864 and ISBN 081302286X.