Paper short abstract:

I examine several case studies of women’s plans and possible futures before and after they left one of Tijuana’s community-based drug rehabilitation centers. I investigate how our ability to hope and heal is shaped by our social world, both its broader structures and our intimate relationships.

Paper long abstract:

Narcotics Anonymous, a peer-led form of substance use treatment, understands defining an individual’s personal addiction to be an important part of the recovery process. Yet, cultural understandings of addiction, how it should be treated, and what should be expected from persons during and after residential treatment can vary dramatically from person to person and between institutions. These different conceptions may radically alter the life and experience of those who encounter them. For example, community-based, residential addiction treatment centers in Tijuana, MX all have distinct formulations of what recovery should like within their particular therapeutic model. However, this does not always match inpatient conceptions of recovery, either while in treatment at the center or once they leave it. In this paper, I present several case studies of the plans, hopes, and possible futures women discussed with me in the days before they left one of Tijuana’s community-based residential rehabilitation centers. In juxtaposing their dreams with my follow-up interviews with them, I grapple with Zigon’s (2009) notion of hope as a temporal experience and attitude toward being-in-the-world. It is the temporal experience of opening and foreclosing futures that I examine in terms of stigma, relapse, and recovery in relation to women’s substance use. In examining this, I seek to investigate how the human ability to hope and heal is shaped by our social world, both its broader structures and our intimate relationships.