Men on Methadone: Fatherhood, Families, and Partners

Abstract

Women have been the focus of a great deal of research on opiate addiction and treatment because their gender is assumed to matter for their experiences in the drug world. Much of this has focused on women's experiences as mothers and caregivers. While men are often included as subjects in research on opiate addiction and treatment, their experiences as gendered beings are rarely analyzed. This research foregrounds men's gendered experiences as fathers, family members, and partners while in methadone maintenance treatment. Using data from addiction history interviews with 33 opiate-dependent men recruited from a single methadone clinic in Arizona, I find that men assign considerable significance to their family relationships. The men interviewed report that their experiences as fathers, grandfathers, sons, grandsons, brothers, husbands, and boyfriends both motivate them to seek methadone treatment for opiate addiction, and cause stress that sometimes pushes them to use or relapse on opiates. Given the importance of these men's family relationships, I argue that the marginalized masculinity of impoverished, drug-dependent men includes an ethic of care. Additionally, I argue that counselors in methadone clinics should consider men in the context of their family relationships in order to provide better treatment to men struggling to recover from opiate addiction.