Welcome to our Research Spotlight series, where we invite postgraduate researchers and early career researchers to submit short-form articles that sheds light on their research, highlighting fresh scholarship on underrepresented research areas in an effort to stay abreast with new voices in the humanities. In this article, B L Jayadev provides an overview of his research on addiction memoirs and the impact this literary form can have on scholars and practitioners.
In today’s world, discussions about addiction often fall into clinical jargon or societal judgment. Against this backdrop, a powerful literary form has emerged that offers a more human and nuanced understanding: the addiction memoir. These firsthand accounts, is what I aim to explore in my PhD research. These provide raw, unfiltered glimpses into the lives of individuals grappling with substance/alcohol use disorders. These works enable readers to locate the person behind the label of “addict,” countering the tendency to dehumanize those affected by addiction. My research attempts to highlight how the cultural framing of addiction significantly impacts those living with it. Addiction memoirs, in this context, provides a unique window into the personal, subjective experiences of individuals struggling with addiction shedding light on the complex nature of addiction. These narratives inspire confidence in individuals struggling with addiction, demonstrating that recovery is not impossible and that people can rebuild their lives even from the depths of addiction. Another goal of the study would be to validate how the acknowledgement and comprehension of the setbacks and successes described in these narratives are helpful not only for scholars in the humanities but can also be instructive for clinicians, therapists, as well as individuals in recovery.
One of the philosophical challenges that my research explores is the difficulty of defining addiction itself. Addiction presents a philosophical conundrum akin to the sorites paradox, where pinpointing a precise boundary between addiction and non-addiction proves challenging without resorting to arbitrary distinctions. Addiction is also placed in a dichotomy, a spectrum between autonomous volition and complete compulsion. This inherent ambiguity necessitates a nuanced exploration of addiction’s nature as well as representation. A crucial theme in the study is the exploration of identity. Memoirists navigate the difficult terrain of embracing, resisting, or even defining the “addict” identity – an identity often marked by negative societal expectations. Here, the “I then, I now” dynamic frequently seen in memoirs illustrates the transformation from the addicted self to a new, recovering identity. In the medical field the construct of addiction defies an absolute cure, mandating that recovery hinges on disassociating from the addicted identity and embracing a “recovered” one. The person with an addiction, thus, finds themselves ensnared within the paradox of attempting to transcend an addiction deemed insurmountable by society while the very same society emphasises the need for a “cure”. This juxtaposition serves to shape the dynamics of recovery narratives, frequently compelling authors to chronicle their experiences of addiction within an unattainable framework centred around the prospect of complete restoration. Within the realm of recovery memoirs, these narratives emerge as a dynamic practice through which authors grapple with their addictive pasts and concurrently fashion present-tense recovering identities. This dual pursuit carries the aspiration of ushering in a different future while extending support and solace to others navigating similar struggles.
The interpretation of addiction as a brain disease contradicts the very narrative and drive of addiction memoirs. These autobiographical oeuvres aim to illustrate the author’s voyage out of addiction by recapturing control over their substance use and life. However, the disease model reduces addiction to a medical condition, neglecting the societal and emotional influences that contribute to the development of addiction, which are essential components in the public’s understanding of addiction. Through an examination of memoirs that engage with different discourses of addiction, the research seeks to uncover ways in which the medicalised standpoint and other discourses impact the agency of the author as they recreate their experiences with addiction and recovery.
This leads us to the playing field of Medical Humanities. The novel, interdisciplinary field of Medical Humanities strives to bring the insights of the humanities to the practice of health care. The field includes an extensive range of disciplines, comprising literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, and art, and focuses on how these disciplines can help us better understand the human experience of health and illness. At its core, Medical Humanities is concerned with the individual experience of health during the encounter with illness or pain. It argues that to fully understand how health works, the diagnosis, the biological science, or the idea of therapy is not enough. Instead, we need the insights of the humanities to evaluate what constitutes the human experience to provide more effective health care. Narrative medicine, developed by Dr Rita Charon, prioritises the significance of actively absorbing the entirety of the patient’s story to understand the person behind the patient. The aim is to allow the patient to lead the narrative as the best advocate of their own body. The 21st century has seen significant advancements in scientific and technological knowledge, owing to which the healthcare experience has become increasingly dehumanised. As a result, there has been a rise in life writing about illness in parallel to these advancements, suggesting the need for a dialogue that recognises the inseparability of the story of illness from the story of the person. Memoirs that detail the person behind the patient challenge the established truths that are ingrained in our understanding of the human body. These texts achieve this by exploring how individual bodies alter the discourse surrounding a particular illness. The transformative power of these memoirs lies in their ability to reshape the cultural landscape and challenge dominant perspectives within the scientific community by offering a counter-narrative to the monolithic authority of medical certainty.
The aspiration to depict the entirety of the addict’s encounter has a tendency to obscure the distinctions between addiction and normalcy, as well as between pathology and health, which are the organising features of conventional addiction narratives. Consequently, addiction narratives articulate the prescriptive principles of addiction while also scrutinising them, thereby transcending the confines of mainstream therapeutic addiction discourse. Ultimately, the research will illuminate marginalising discourses concerning addiction and recovery and their influence on individuals’ comprehension and expression of personal agency. The study’s objectives are twofold: to examine the narratives of individuals who have experienced addiction and recovery and to analyse the retrospective construction of their stories. By doing so, this research seeks to elucidate how these auto biographers have internalised the larger cultural frameworks that inform their accounts. Ultimately, the study intends to contribute to a more nuanced grasp of the social and cultural factors that shape individuals’ experiences of addiction and recovery and to identify potential avenues for intervention and support.
B L Jayadev is a Senior Research Fellow at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He is currently researching addiction narratives, aiming to explore the complex relationships between addiction, language, and identity. His interdisciplinary research interests draw from literature, psychology, and health humanities.
If you’d like to contribute to the Research Spotlight series, please write to Aanchal Vij (Aanchal.vij [at] bloomsbury [dot] com) or Paige Domantey (paige.domantey [at] bloomsbury [dot] com) with your idea.