Substance use assemblages as producers of healthy and unhealthy bodies: What do young people do with substances, and what do substances do to them?

The article examines how alcohol use and well-being are entangled in young people’s lives by analyzing qualitative longitudinal interviews with four participants, following their substance use practices over seven years. It examines what kinds of bodily and incorporeal transformations their substance use facilitated when it became connected in a particular way to human and non-human actors that formed assemblages. The substance-using assemblages were analyzed by focusing on how they increase or decrease the participants’ capacities for well-being. The analysis shows that substance use assemblages enabled several positive bodily and incorporeal transformations among our participants. They facilitated their transition from limited, regulated bodies into more powerful ones, increasing their capacities to express themselves more effectively, be more social, humorous, bold, cooperative, free, happy, extroverted, flirtatious, relaxed, functional, and balanced. At the same time, substance use assemblages also produced various negative transformations that decreased participants’ capacities for well-being, generating heavier, sadder, shame-feeling, weak, chemically unbalanced, worried, passionless, and anxious bodies. Heavy-drinking assemblages in particular produced transformations that drew bodies into conflicting lines of becoming. The tensions between them connected participants’ bodies to stratifying, controlling discourses that produced incorporeal transformations that began to limit their desire to drink. Overall, the analysis shows how heavy or continuous substance use made bodies vulnerable, requiring attentive care not only in terms of how substances were used, but also in terms of ensuring that other assemblages that were important for life were well taken care of. Where this did not occur, substance use produced bad encounters and negative effects.