Games of Truth: Rethinking Conformity and Resistance in Narratives of Heroin Recovery

Conventional paradigms of drug treatment present addicts as liars, fabricators, and manipulators until they are truly involved in their recovery process. My ethnographic study engages with and expands upon Foucault's (1988 ———. 1988 The Ethic of Care for the Self as a Practice of Freedom: An Interview . In The Final Foucault . J. Bernauer and D. Rasmussen , eds. Pp. 1 – 20 . Cambridge : The MIT Press . [Google Scholar]) concept of “games of truth” and De Certeau's (1984 De Certeau , M. 1984 The Practice of Everyday Life . Berkeley : University of California Press . [Google Scholar]) work on “strategies” and “tactics” to illuminate complex and shifting relations between and among staff and clients in a methadone clinic in Toronto, Canada. I suggest the notion of “complicity” in order to address radical instability in these relationships, and I also question commonly held binaries, such as truth and lies, enunciation and action, domination and resistance, that underlie theoretical and addiction treatment realms. In this process, I contribute not only to anthropological theorizing but also to policy making. The staff and clients' multifaceted interpretations of heroin recovery question a single standard of “successful” treatment and point to the need for broader social interventions to address the diverse needs of heroin users.