Drug Abuse and
Stigma
Sheigla Murphy, Ph.D
Goffman conceptualized stigma as an interactional process. His renowned work on the conferring and experiencing of stigmatization is essential to understanding the social positions, relationships and perspectives of various drug-using communities. In this presentation, I will outline three areas in which scientists studying drug abuse have examined the conferring and experiencing of stigma. The first is gendered stigmatization in which women are more heavily stigmatized for their alcohol and other drug abuse than their male counterparts. There is a presumption that women are sicker, more deviant and likely to be sexually promiscuous or involved in commercial sex, which is equally stigmatizing behavior. Generally, women suffer more stigma than men as users as well as when they are ex-users. Investigators have discovered stigmatization among users of different substances, in which drug users confer and experience stigma based their primary drug of choice. The use of some drugs carries more stigma than others. For example, heroin users look down upon methamphetamine users; while some methamphetamine users console themselves by believing they are in a much better social position than the heroin users they know. The third area concerns the stigmatization of both clients and providers in drug treatment programs. For each of these three areas the interactional process of stigmatization will be outlined, and some of the consequences for intervention and policy will be discussed.