Methadone, a contested substance: Danish methadone policy in the 1970s

Addiction, Drugs, and Experimentation

In Denmark, outpatient substitution treatment has traditionally been associated with a great deal of ambivalence and control. Until the late 1990s, a condition for entering substitution treatment was that the user ceased using illicit drugs. Failure to comply would in many cases mean expulsion from treatment. However, since the late 1990s/early 2000s, a more liberal substitution treatment policy has developed, which recognizes continued attachments to illicit drugs and drug scenes for many drug users. With this shift in treatment rationality, treatment encounters between social workers and drug users can be analyzed as experiments enacting new relations between legal and illegal drugs, bodies, and environments. Drawing analytical inspiration from material semiotics and actor-network theory, this article focuses on how “outside” relations are articulated and become visible “inside” outpatient treatment encounters. Against this backdrop, we analyze the trial and error involved in stabilization as a set of ongoing processes relating to configurations of heterogeneous material networks. The article presents by way of a case study a detailed analysis of these entanglements, drawing on data from two qualitative studies of outpatient substitution treatment in Denmark.