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In addiction stories in which dependence is experienced as an antagonistic force, agency manifests as enigmatic. As narrators in these stories usually describe how they lost their agency to a substance, we may ask who then acts. By drawing on the actor-network theory, I propose that addiction stories should be approached with an ontology that allows agency also to non-human actors and conceptualizes both human and non-human agencies as relational. Moreover, I argue that addiction stories perform complex identity navigation that can be captured by analysing them from the dimensions of ‘story,’ ‘interaction,’ and ‘identity claim’. As addiction stories describe what kinds of unique human and non-human elements and assemblages have contributed to the development of addiction, they provide expressive material to analyze how their narrators reassemble their addictive past (story), justify it to their audience (interaction) and articulate who they are (identity claim). By approaching addiction stories through these dimensions, we can produce knowledge on what kinds of identity alignments with particular human and non-human actors promote or hinder addiction as part of specific assemblages. This knowledge can help health practitioners focus their treatment interventions on the relational identities that act as barriers or facilitators of recovery.

Greater use of communication technologies among young people, including mobile phones, social media and communication apps, has coincided with declines in youth alcohol use in many high-income countries. However, little research has unpacked how drinking as a practice within interconnected routines and interactions may be changing alongside these technologies. Drawing on qualitative interviews about drinking with young people aged 16–23 across three similar studies in Australia, the United Kingdom and Sweden, we identify how communication technologies may afford reduced or increased drinking. They may reduce drinking by producing new online contexts, forms of intimacy and competing activities. They may increase drinking by re-organising drinking occasions, rituals and contexts. And they may increase or reduce drinking by enabling greater fluidity and interaction between diverse practices. These countervailing dynamics have likely contributed to shifting drinking patterns and practices for young people that may be obscured beneath the population-level decline in youth drinking.

IntroductionTo examine gender differences in drinking habits among Swedish ninth graders over the period 1989-2021.MethodsAnnual school surveys with nationally representative samples of ninth-grade students in Sweden covering the period 1989-2021, total sample of 180,538 students. Drinking habits were measured with self-reports of frequency and quantity of use and frequency of heavy episodic drinking. Differences between genders were compared annually and differences were tested using logistic and ordinary least square regression models with cluster robust standard errors.ResultsSmall gender differences in the prevalence of alcohol use during the first part of the study period were followed by an increasing gap over the past decade with girls being more likely to drink alcohol than boys. Boys consumed larger amounts of alcohol than girls during the first three decades of the studied period but no gender differences were found in later years. Binge drinking was more prevalent among boys during 1989 to 2000 but no systematic gender difference was found during the past 15 years.Discussion and ConclusionsThere used to be clear gender differences in drinking habits among ninth graders in Sweden with boys drinking more than girls. This gap has narrowed over the past three decades and among contemporary adolescents, no gender differences are found neither in binge drinking nor volume of drinking and the prevalence of drinking is even higher among girls.

Since the 2000s, there has been a worldwide trend of decreased alcohol consumption among young people. Although recent studies have given multiple explanations for this, we know little about the meaning of alcohol for this generation as they enter adulthood. The aim of this article is therefore to describe and analyze the age-related views toward alcohol among this group as they transition from adolescents to adults. The study was based on 39 qualitative interviews with people aged 17–21. Theoretical concepts such as doing age and symbolic boundaries were used to analyze the material and investigate how age can structure alcohol use, and how alcohol consumption can be narrated to produce maturity and adulthood. The analysis showed that participants presented their relation to alcohol in nuanced and responsible ways, signaling maturity. The participants’ navigation of acceptable alcohol consumption differs in terms of agency and control in different life phases. ‘Doing adulthood’ in relation to alcohol for abstainers and drinkers seems to center on the same understandings of legitimate behavior: being moderate, nuanced, and in control. This focus linked alcohol to the position these emerging adults hold in wider society, given that participants incorporated societal demands for a neoliberal lifestyle., Systembolagets Alkoholforskningsråd FO2018-0048

Youth gambling is commonly described in policy and research as a high-risk behavior. To design relevant measures to prevent gambling problems among youth, it is important to understand how youth themselves relate to gambling. To explore how youth navigate their position on gambling in the context of their everyday lives, we conducted qualitative interviews with 35 participants aged 17–21 years in Sweden; 15 had gambled and 20 had experience of others’ gambling. The thematic analysis showed that both gamblers and non-gamblers overall had negative attitudes toward gambling and emphasized repeatedly discourses of personal responsibility in it. The participants used various neutralization techniques to navigate the economic and addictive risks of gambling. Youth who gambled distanced themselves from the risks of gambling by drawing a line between themselves and excessive gamblers, between safe and unsafe gambling, or highlighted how their skills and strategic thinking made gambling less problematic. Also, gambling in liminal circumstances abroad or in alcohol-serving venues offered a safe time and place for gambling by separating it from everyday life practices. The findings provide important cues to how young people locate gambling in their everyday life, which is useful knowledge for policy and prevention., REGAPS

Aim: Work is an important part of most people's everyday lives and well-being. Substance use by employees is associated with several negative consequences, such as absence from work and poor work performance. The study examines the strategies through which people who have problems with substance use produce a “normal” self and avoid becoming stigmatised in the workplace. Methods: The study uses data from in-depth unstructured life story interviews, which were conducted over phone with 13 people. The participants had developed various problematic heavy substance use habits. The interviews were analysed by applying interactional analysis and by using Goffman's concepts of “normality”, “embarrassment”, “face-work”, “stigma” and “performance”. Results: The analysis identified multiple strategies the participants used to produce normality and to avoid embarrassment and stigmatisation at work. These include skilful use of drugs in order not to show withdrawal symptoms, various ways of hiding their heavy substance use, frequent change of jobs, the maintenance of a clean and professional look, and attributing the absence from work to mental or physical illness. Moreover, the participants strategically avoided social contacts in which embarrassing situations could arise. When this was not possible, they manipulated their corporeal looks by hiding such kinds of bodily marks that would connote abnormality. Conclusion: The analysis points out that maintaining normality at work does not only refer to the efforts of trying to hide the effects of the drugs on behaviours and the body. It also reveals that the participants used substances to be able to perform energetically their work tasks, and in this way present themselves as normal workers. This ambivalence in performing normality makes the work life of people who use substances challenging.

This paper examines how fear and insecurity are deployed in disputes over austerity. Drawing on discussions on the cultures of fear and on the social and political process which weaves fear and insecurity into the fabric of society, we analyse how austerity was justified and opposed in the Finnish parliament in 2015. We bring out different renditions of fear in five registers of justification that were deployed in the dispute. The registers evoked fear with threats to national sovereignty, dangers to societal security, and threats of harm and vulnerability. In addition, the registers evoked fear by drawing rhetorical force from the welfare state identity and by intertwining fear with political trust. Even though the renditions of fear played an important role, our findings also speak against straightforward interpretation of the politics of austerity as an example of moving into a culture of fear and insecurity.

In life stories on addiction, in which dependence is experienced as an antagonistic force, agency manifests as enigmatic. As narrators in these stories usually describe how they lost their agency to a substance, we may ask who then takes over the agency and is the actor. Can material things act with agency? By taking influences from actor–network theory, Bambergs’ narrative positioning theory, Greimas’ narrative semiotics, symbolic interactionism, and critical discourse studies, I propose that addiction stories can be productively approached with an ontology that conceptualizes actors’ agency as relational. According to this ontology, individuals develop addiction in relation to heterogeneous attachments that form an enabling assemblage. Moreover, I propose that life stories on addiction are narratives in which narrators navigate their addiction by negotiating with multiple selves. These selves can be productively identified and analyzed from the perspectives of “story,” “interaction,” and “identity claim.” As a story, in which actors are positioned vis-à-vis one another, life stories on addiction can be approached as narratives that describe the confrontation between the trajectory of the self that is driven by addiction and the trajectory of the self that seeks mastery over one’s life. As an interaction between narrators and interlocutors, life stories on addiction can be examined as performances of interactive selves who do positive face-work to neutralize, rationalize, and justify their “deviant” behavior. And as identity claims, life stories on addiction can be considered embodiments of ideal or normative selves that are articulated in relation to the dominant discourses and master narratives of surrounding culture. By using examples from life stories on addiction, the article aims to clarify with what kinds of concepts and narrative tools we can analyze the interplay between multiple selves in addiction stories.

In recent years, a vast body of research has investigated trends of declining alcohol consumption among youths. However, the extent to which restrictive-youth approaches towards drinking are maintained into adulthood is unclear. The aim of this study is to explore how young people’s relation to alcohol changes over time. Our data are based on longitudinal qualitative in-depth interviews with 28 participants aged 15 to 23 conducted over the course of three years (2017–2019). The study draws on assemblage thinking by analysing to what kinds of heterogeneous elements young people’s drinking and abstinence are related and what kinds of transformations they undergo when they get older. Five trajectories were identified as influential. Alcohol was transformed from unsafe to safe assemblages, from illegal to legal drinking assemblages, from performance-orientated to enjoyment-orientated assemblages, and from immature to mature assemblages. These trajectories moved alcohol consumption towards moderate drinking. Moreover, abstinence was transformed from authoritarian assemblages into self-reflexive assemblages. Self-control, responsibility, and performance orientation were important mediators in all five trajectories. As the sober generation grows older, they will likely start to drink at more moderate levels than previous generations., Ungas hälsa

Japan has one of the highest rates of severe gambling problems in the world. However, the gambling forms that cause the most harm—pachinko and pachislot—are not recognized as gambling in the key legislation. They are understood as entertainment. On the basis of two group interviews with those who have experienced problems with gambling, this study explores how they have dealt with the shame, guilt, and stigma of pachinko-related gambling problems. The narrative analysis shows that the participants carry self-stigma as a result of self-reproach and others’ condemnation of their behavior. Feelings of shame, guilt, and fear of being stigmatized have distinctly hindered the process of seeking help. The participants describe how their gambling, which they had attempted to limit, had led to isolation from normal life. The isolation and the failures to control the gambling increased their feelings of shame and destructive behavior. Considering the characteristics of the zone, the loss of self, and the shame, guilt and stigma of failing to control excessive pachinko gambling, it is unreasonable to place the main responsibility on the individual gambler. To reduce gambling harms in Japan and the stigma associated with pachinko and pachislot problems, these gambling forms need to be acknowledged as public health concerns and categorized as gambling in the legislation., Regaps, Dilemmas of help-seeking

Introduction. In recent years, beverage composition of total alcohol consumption has changed substantially in Sweden. As beverage choice is strongly associated with drinking practices, our paper aims to analyse trends in beverage composition of alcohol consumption by age, period and cohort. Methods. Age-period-cohort (APC) analysis was conducted using monthly data from the Swedish Alcohol Monitoring Survey (2003-2018). The sample consisted of n = 260 633 respondents aged 16-80 years. APC analysis was conducted on drinkers only (n = 193 954; 96 211 males, 97 743 females). Beverage composition was defined as the beverage-specific proportion of total intake in litre ethanol. Fractional multinomial logit regression was applied to estimate the independent effects of age, period and cohort on trends in beverage composition. Results. Regression models revealed statistically significant effects of age on all beverages except for medium-strength beer and spirits in males. Controlling for age and cohort, decreasing trends were found over time for medium-strength beer and spirits. The proportion of regular beer increased statistically significantly in males and the proportion of wine in females, whereas the trends for the opposite sex remained stable in each case. Predictions for cohorts showed statistically significant decreasing trends for medium-strength beer in males, lower proportions for regular beer and higher proportions for spirits in the youngest cohorts. Discussion and Conclusions. The increasing proportion of wine drinking, which is associated with less risky drinking practices, may decrease alcohol-related morbidity and mortality. Increasing proportions of spirits in the youngest cohorts raises concerns of a possible revival in spirits consumption among the youngest.

Aims To (1) examine several factors associated with trends in heavy episodic drinking (HED) in Finland, Norway and Sweden, (2) investigate similarities in these associations across the countries and (3) analyse the contribution of these factors to the trend in HED and the differences across the countries. Design and Setting Observational study using five waves of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) from Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1999 and 2015. Participants A total of 18,128 male and 19,121 female 15‐ to 16‐year‐old students. Measurements Monthly HED, perceived access to alcohol, truancy, parental control, leisure time activities and daily smoking. The Cochran–Armitage test was used to examine linear time trends in HED. Logit regression models using the Karlson–Holm–Breen (KHB) method were fitted for each country separately, including all the independent variables together with time and adjusted for family status, parental education and gender. Findings In Finland, Norway and Sweden, perceived access to alcohol, truancy and daily smoking decreased significantly between 1999 and 2015 while risk perceptions, parental control and participation in sports increased in the same period. The confounding percentage of all the independent variables related to the trend in HED was 48.8%, 68.9% and 36.7% for Finland, Norway and Sweden, respectively. Decline in daily smoking (p<.001) and perceived access to alcohol (p<.001) were positively and increase in parental control (p<.001) negatively associated with the decline in HED in all three countries. Changes in truancy, going out with friends, and engaging in sports and other hobbies had little or no impact on the decline in HED or displayed no consistent results across the countries. Conclusions The decline in adolescent heavy episodic drinking in Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1999 and 2015 appears to be associated with a decline in adolescent daily smoking and perceived ac

Research shows that young people’s online practices have become a continuous, seamless and routine part of their physical and social worlds. Studies report contradictory findings on whether social media promotes intoxication-driven drinking cultures among young people or diminishes their alcohol consumption. By applying actor-network theory, our starting point is that the effects of social media depend on what kinds of concerns mediate its use. Social media alone cannot make young people drink more or less but influences their drinking in relation to specific attachments that we call here ‘assemblages’. The data consist of individual interviews among girls (n = 32) and boys (n = 24) between 15 and 19 years old from Sweden, covering topics such as alcohol use, social media habits and leisure time activities. The paper maps the variety of assemblages that mediate young people’s online practices and analyzes how young people’s drinking-related social media assemblages increase, decrease or exclude their alcohol consumption. The analysis shows that social media-related attachments seem to reduce our interviewees’ use of alcohol by providing competing activities, by transforming their drinking under the public eye, by reorganizing their party rituals to be less oriented towards drinking and by facilitating parents’ monitoring of their drinking situations.

This study analyzes how emerging adults negotiate their relation to alcohol in the context of declining youth drinking and how this relationship changes over time. The sample consists of longitudinal qualitative interview data (N = 28) with 9 boys and 19 girls aged 15 to 21. The participants were recruited through schools, social media and non-governmental organizations from mainly the Stockholm region and smaller towns in central Sweden to reach a heterogeneous sample in terms of sociodemographic factors and drinking practices. We interviewed the participants in-depth three times between 2017 and 2019. Thematic coding of the whole data with NVivo helped us select four cases for more detailed analysis, as they represented the typical trajectories and showed the variation in the material. We used the master narrative framework and Bamberg’s narrative positioning analysis to examine the data. The analysis demonstrates what kinds of narrative alignments in identity development encourage heavy drinking, moderate alcohol consumption, and fuel abstinence. The results suggest that the decline in youth drinking is produced by a co-effect of multiple master narratives that intersect and guide the identity development away from heavy drinking., Ungas hälsa