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Article Excerpt
"Chroming" is the term used to describe inhalant use (IU) in Australia. It refers most specifically to inhalation of fumes from aerosol spray paints--a practice that appears to be currently the preferred form of IU for most urban Australians who use these drugs. The term has also become generalized, with young people now talking about "chroming" substances such as butane, deodorants, and other aerosol products.
Well over a decade ago, and again more recently, David Moore complained that Australian researchers of youth drug use were disproportionately concerned with investigating "what has gone wrong with these people," paying scant attention to social contexts and meanings of drug use or to the functions of drug use from the perspectives of users (1990; 2002). Whether or not this remains true generally, it is an apt description of the overwhelmingly clinical international literature on IU. This body of research can, in the main, be characterized as a tireless quest to identify etiological and subsequent pathologies, including family dysfunction, psychiatric co-morbidity, delinquency, future drug-using careers, and a range of short- and long-term adverse health outcomes (Brouette and Anton 2001; Bukowski 2001; Dinwiddie et al. 1991; Howard and Jenson 1999; Jacobs and Ghodse 1998; Johnson et al. 1995; Kurtzman et al. 2001; Mackesy-Amiti and Fendrich 1998; McGarvey et al. 1996; Morrow et al. 2000; Poblano et al. 2000; Sharp and Brehm 1997; Swadi 1996; White and Proctor 1997; Young et al. 1999). (1)
Young people who use inhalants problematically are very often living in poverty and disproportionately involved with the juvenile justice and child protection systems (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs 2000; Dinwiddie 1994; Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee 2002). Recently Pat O'Malley and Mariana Valverde have argued persuasively that responses by governments to the practices of marginalized peoples "tend to remain silent about pleasure as a motive for consumption," seeing only pathology as motivating use (2004, 26). Harm reduction (as they and others propose) implicitly constructs drug use as normal and a matter of choice, rather than necessarily a pathological symptom. Consistent with O'Malley and Valverde's argument, harm reduction currently plays a minimal role in the response of the Victorian government to IU by marginalized young people. For example, rather than recommending that they provide education around safer-use practices alongside interventions designed to encourage abstinence, Victorian government policy instructs workers providing out-of-home care and alcohol and drug treatment services to "do everything reasonable and consistent within safe work practices to stop young people using non-prescribed inhalants" (Drugs Policy & Services Branch and Child Protection & Juvenile Justice, undated, 5).
Like other kinds of drug use, people use inhalants at least in part because of their enjoyable effects. Chroming has powerful pharmacological effects; further, it is a deeply socially transgressive activity. As such it offers a particular complex and problematic set of pleasures to users (Douglas 1996; Fitzgerald et al. 2000; Lupton and Tulloch 2002). We need to understand what pleasures we demand that young people forgo when we ask them not to use inhalants.
"Words matter," writes Norman Denzin (2000). Young people who chrome have less opportunity perhaps even than other drug users to manage how they--and their substance use--are represented in public discourse. While this paper is not written by a person with chroming experience, it draws heavily on the words of others who do. The intention of the paper is to provide a framework for understanding some of the pleasures of chroming, through analysis of accounts by users and ex-users. Although it is outside its scope to consider in any detail the policy implications of the scheme proposed, the argument underlying it is that those designing interventions should pay attention to the kinds of pleasures young people report from chroming and other forms of IU.
Approach
The research paradigm for this work is qualitative: interpretive and theory-driven (Rhodes 2000). It draws primarily on thematic in-depth interviews with 26 young people living in Melbourne with experience of IU, some of whom were current users at the time of interview and some ex-users. Between one and three interviews were conducted with each young person involved. As background I also utilize interviews with 14 expert drug and alcohol or youth workers who are regularly in contact with young people who use inhalants. Interviews were conducted between March 2003 and July 2004.
The young people interviewed came from a range of ethnic backgrounds, with the majority being Australians of Anglo or European descent. All but two of them most commonly used aerosol spray paints rather than other inhalants, and all but the youngest two were poly-drug users. Just over two-thirds of the sample were male. I accessed these young people primarily through alcohol and drug treatment and homelessness agencies. Unsurprisingly, then, most of my interviewees were in insecure accommodation, and all either received a government benefit or had no income. Around half had previously been in state care.
At the time of first interview, the young people involved in the study were ages 13-24. Only seven were under 18. With a mean age of just under 19 years, they were quite a lot older than the age of peak prevalence of use, which appears to be in the early secondary school years (Drug Treatment Services Unit 1999). This was largely due to a decision by the Child Protection and Juvenile Justice Branch of the Department of Human Services not to let me speak with young people on protective service orders, the group that appears to make up the majority of younger clients seeking treatment for chroming in Melbourne. Most of the participants provided me with a pseudonym I could use in reporting on the research; I made up names for the others. The research was approved by a university research ethics committee, and part of that approval established that study participants agreed to take part independently and with full informed consent.
Thematic analysis was developed using an iterative coding strategy (Charmaz 2000). Interview transcripts were coded using NVivo, which supported ongoing reshaping of analytic categories and memo writing throughout the process of the research. Feedback interviews with young people and workers enabled further elucidation of the analysis.
Themes were identified in the context of the theoretical presumption that young people actively pursue self-making practices within specific social and economic constraints (McDonald 1999). In the contemporary world we are all engaged in an ongoing struggle to construct a sense of self that meets conflicting and shifting demands (Melucci 1996) and that achieves some coherence with the discourses around identity through which we recognize ourselves. To this end (and not necessarily in a consistent or rational, calculating way) we pursue and experience as pleasurable practices that support aspects of a desired identity. We do this through drawing on available material and symbolic resources (Denscombe...
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