This article develops the concept of pharmacologically modulated habitus to examine how psychoactive substances modify the bodily capacities through which socially acquired dispositions are enacted under the demands of a particular social space. Drawing on retrospective analytic auto(m)ethnography, a Bourdieusian conceptual framework, and long-term engagement with people who use and sell methamphetamine in the Czech Republic, the study analyzes the relationship between methamphetamine use and the embodied practice of drug dealing. The analysis distinguishes the formation of a dealing habitus through repeated participation in the drug scene from the pharmacological modulation of the bodily states and capacities through which these acquired dispositions were enacted. Empirically, the article examines how everyday dealing was organized through recurrent transactions, security practices, mobility, negotiations with clients, and interactions across heterogeneous social settings. An extended dealing episode shows how these practices converged within an accelerated regime of fragmented time, prolonged wakefulness, recurrent movement, and sustained demands on attention and bodily activity. The analysis further demonstrates how dealing involved the reproduction and conversion of different forms of capital and required flexible adaptation to clients and situations across social space. As dealing became a full-time activity, methamphetamine temporarily increased bodily capacities compatible with prolonged availability, vigilance, mobility, rapid response, and the accelerated demands of a criminalized drug market. This compatibility was unstable: tolerance, prolonged wakefulness, and cumulative exhaustion progressively undermined the capacity of methamphetamine to sustain the bodily conditions on which intensive dealing had come to rely. I conceptualize this deterioration as dealer fatigue. Generally, the concept of pharmacologically modulated habitus directs attention to the changing relationship between socially acquired dispositions, psychoactive effects, bodily capacities, and social field demands.
Texas is unique in many respects, including its large geographic area spanning rural counties to dense cities, its racial and ethnic diversity, and its punitive reactions to crime and substance use. The state contains 201 problem-solving courts, many of which go unexamined. Extending existing drug court literature to a statewide sample of problem-solving courts in Texas, this study uses multilevel logistic regression to examine predictors of graduation. Regression results indicate marginalized participants were less likely to graduate (i.e., those who were non-White, at a higher risk of recidivism according to a risk assessment, who did not graduate high school, or were unemployed). Practice should focus on better supporting the most marginalized participants so that they have the same chances as others. Programs are poised to do this as they already provide wraparound services.
Early substance use is commonly framed as a risk factor for later problems, yet less is known about how individuals retrospectively interpret and make sense of these early experiences in relation to their own substance use problems. This article explores how adults who have previously experienced substance use problems narratively reconstruct their early substance use and render it socially and morally intelligible over time. The study draws on unstructured life story interviews with 16 adults in Sweden who, at the time of the interview, were abstinent and largely socially integrated, despite previous substance use and related social difficulties. Using a narrative-informed analysis guided by Garfinkel's concept of accountability and Hänninen's model of layered narratives, the findings show how participants reinterpret early substance use in light of their later problems by embedding it in everyday routines, peer relations, gendered expectations, and emotional coping. Importantly, these accounts show how this connection is retrospectively negotiated in different ways. Early practices are not narrated as clear causes of later problems, but are reworked as meaningful within the social and emotional conditions of the time and subsequently connected to experiences of dependence, loss of control, or social consequences. While the stories share similar patterns, there are subtle generational nuances emerging in how early use is framed that shift from ordinary accounts of early use to coping-oriented interpretations. Rather than distancing themselves from early use, participants often present it as reasonable, and sometimes necessary, given the circumstances they describe. The study highlights how early substance use remains an active site of meaning-making across the life course, where past experiences are continuously reinterpreted in relation to present identities and past problems.
For centuries, law treated space as a fixed stage on which its authority could operate, petrifying bodies, immobilizing cities, and regulating places through hierarchical ordering. With the spatial turn in legal theory, these assumptions were challenged, revealing how legal power actively produces and organizes space, and how, in turn, spatial arrangements influence the law. Certain sites, including clubs and dance gatherings, emerged as key arenas where these dynamics became visible. This article traces the evolution of law and the moving body's socio-legal history through a spatial lens, showing how law disembodiment tends to immobilize bodies and identities, instead of protecting them. In withdrawing from the dancefloor, law escapes a terrain of political struggle that should be fundamental in maintaining law's legal imagination in dealing with spatial justice, human rights and minorities. In this article, ‘petrifying bodies’ represents law's limit in re-imagining the meaning of spatial justice nowadays. The article exposes the limits of legal frameworks that neglect the spatial and embodied dimension of social life. When space becomes political, it reveals tensions and the political economy behind the legal organization of land, property, and collective life. Re-imagining law as a terrain of political and economic struggle allows us to see law not as a mechanical or procedural substitute for political choice, but as a field where social and spatial conflicts are actively negotiated.
Many medical cannabis patients in treatment for chronic health conditions are mothers, and it is critical that we understand their experience in accessing medical cannabis while they simultaneously navigate their caregiving responsibilities to inform more equitable access, responsive program design, and supportive clinical guidance. Using a feminist approach, this qualitative study explored influential factors for differential engagement for mothers and female caregivers enrolled in a state medical cannabis program. We conducted in-depth interviews with 48 participants who identified as mothers or female caregivers and were certified medical cannabis patients in Pennsylvania. Participants were predominantly white (72.9%), with a mean age of 42. Interviews were conducted virtually between July and September 2024, transcribed, and coded using NVivo. Qualitative interview findings illuminated barriers in mothers’ and female caregivers’ experiences related to entry to the medical cannabis program (e.g., difficulties finding a provider for certification, legal ambiguity specific to maternal authorization, and challenges of the certification process and costs); barriers to consistent access and use upon enrollment (e.g., accessing dispensaries, sustainable access and use of products); and suggestions for program improvements. These findings highlight opportunities to reduce structural and logistical barriers experienced by mothers and female caregivers through provider education, streamlined program processes, improved access to dispensaries and products, and policies that are responsive to the realities of caregiving. Accessible, evidence-informed guidance may reduce uncertainty for providers and patients while underscoring the need for further research.
