Despite increasingly nuanced understandings of the neurobiology of
addiction and a greater appreciation of the social and economic
conditions that allow drug dependency to persist, there remain many
unknowns regarding the individual experience of substance abuse and
its treatment. In recent years, novel pharmaceutical therapies have
given rise to both new hopes for recovery and renewed fears about
drug diversion and abuse. "In The Clinic and Elsewhere," Todd
Meyers looks at the problems of meaning caused by drug dependency
and appraises the changing terms of medical intervention today.
By following a group of adolescents from the time they enter
drug rehabilitation treatment through their reentry into the
outside world-the clinic, their homes and neighborhoods, and other
institutional settings-Meyers traces patterns of life that become
mediated by pharmaceutical intervention. His focus is not on the
drug economy but rather on the therapeutic economy, where new
markets, transactions of care, and highly porous conceptions of
success and failure come together to shape addiction and recovery.
The book is at once a meditative work of anthropology, a
demonstration of the theoretical and methodological limits of
medical research, and a forceful intervention into the philosophy
of therapeutics at the level of the individual.
Todd Meyers is assistant professor of medical anthropology at
Wayne State University in Detroit.
"Unflinching and erudite, "The Clinic and Elsewhere" is an
evocative ethnography on the meaning of clinical encounters in an
age of adolescent addiction. For people living with addictions,
family members, treatment providers, and all who struggle with
recovery, Meyers shows how much place matters for the therapeutic
careers of adolescent patients." -Nancy D. Campbell, author of
"Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse
Research "
"A provocative and innovative portrayal of the real-life tension
between curing and healing-a tension that pervades both the
moral-social world of the clinic and the life-world of the patient
and the various bodies that she either occupies or
provides-experimental, therapeutic, dangerous, medically altered,
reluctant, and recovered." -Allan Young, McGill University
""The Clinic and Elsewhere" is a compelling exploration of the
uses and implications of drug addiction treatment. I know of no
other text that examines the many tricky dimensions of substance
use therapy programs in such rich and informed terms. Part
anthropological inquiry, part ethnographic portrait, it will make a
lasting contribution to the study of medical care and practice in
the world today." -Robert Desjarlais, Sarah Lawrence College
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