Beating the Dragon

Suitable for 2nd and 3rd year students taking courses on drug/misuse prinicpally in departments such as Sociology, Law, Nursing and Social Work. The use of illegal drugs is widespread in many societies. In much of the media coverage an impression is often conveyed that the use of illegal drugs other than cannabis is a one way street leading inevitably to addiction, destitution, family breakdown and death. The perception of addiction as a fixed end point characterised by personal and social dissolution fails to recognise that many dependent drug users, even after a period of prolonged dependent drug use, nevertheless still manage to overcome their dependence upon illegal drugs. This process of recovery, either with or without the assistance of helping agencies, has been variously descibed by researchers, drug counsellors, clinicians and others. We still lack much of an understanding of the process recovery as seen from the addict's own viewpoint. Beating the Dragon describes in detail the road from addiction as experienced by 70 ex-addicts. All the people interviewed had been using major illegal drugs for many years and yet managed to overcome their addiction through a variety of means. By looking in detail at the experiences of this group of recovering addicts the authors aim to produce a ground breaking ethnography of the recovery process.