Righteous Dopefiend

Getting treatment is an ordeal, both for people who are unhoused and for the overworked and underfunded social service providers. Tina is accepted into a detox program, but she is released back onto the street within a month because there is no availability in any long-term programs in the area. She returns to being a “dopefiend,” blaming herself for her own weakness without considering the shortcomings of a system that helps her stop using only temporarily, and then simply deposits her right back into the same situation in which she was using.

The chapter then shifts to consider the controversial use of methadone. The authors argue that this substance is biopower in action: Though political leaders inveigh against any drug use as a social evil, the state capitulates to the use of methadone because heroin- and crack-addicted bodies cannot contribute to the goals of the state as well as non-addicted bodies can. Methadone also offers the reader an example of the dissonance between scientists’ and healthcare workers’ perspectives on treatment, and that of the clients they are trying to help. In particular, interlocutors lament the coercive nature of treatment and the ways that the service providers try to control them through limiting their access to treatment if they engage in certain behaviors, such as drinking alcohol.