Women, Drug Use and Recovery in Maine

 Primary Investigator: Winifred Tate, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Anthropology, Colby College. Contact:

Lead Field Researcher: Courtney Allen, CADC, honors student, UMaine-Augusta (expected graduation: May 2020), recovery advocate.

Funders: Global Drug Policy Program of the Open Society Foundation and Colby College

 This project employs qualitative methods to analyze identity formation and practices of care by women who use drugs, and recovery trajectories and access to treatment issues for women who have engaged in problematic drug use in Maine. This research will address the following specific aims: Aim 1) analyze the factors contributing to women accessing treatment for problematic opioid use and maintaining long term recovery; Aim 2) analyze the specificities of the experiences of women who use drug and develop gender sensitive harm reduction recommendations. To date, the experiences of women in Maine have been largely neglected in both scholarship and policy debates about drug use. We are particularly interested in documenting the practices of care and community-building used by women in recovery and women who use drugs, with their families, friends and communities, and how they negotiate and contest the stigma of being women and, in some cases, mothers who use drugs. The high rates of drug-affected babies, and the extremely high rates of child removal in Maine have generated significant social concern about the outcome for children. This project will explore the ways in which pregnancy, delivery, mothering and state intervention shape outcomes for women who use drugs, and the social harms resulting from stigma, child welfare policies and drug enforcement. A focus on women in recovery and women who use drugs is critical for understanding how to best address the needs of Maine women and families through gender-sensitive drug policy reform proposals.

If you are interested in being interviewed for this project, please email [email protected]

Find out more about this project here.

Summer 2019 Research

Imagining Addiction and Recovery in Washington County and Sanford, York County

This research will provide critical insights into the ways in which rural health care providers, recovery facilitators and law enforcement conceptualize and understand drug use and treatment in Washington County and in Sanford, York County. This project will answer two questions: What forms and practices of treatment are available to rural residents of Washington County? How do treatment providers and recovery facilitators conceptualize drug use and appropriate practices of treatment? The first phase of the research will be an institutional survey of available treatment and recovery programs. The second phase will focus on extended ethnographic interviews with treatment providers and recovery facilitators including people working in Emergency Room, hospital and primary care settings; in faith based recovery programs; in the two drug courts; in the county methadone clinic and needle exchange; and recovery coaches and peer-peer recovery support programs. Ethnographic interviews will focus on the social origins of problematic drug use, the relationship between drug use and larger social forces including poverty and inequality, and the role of health care providers, and the role of communities, in responding to problematic drug use. Our analysis will explore how rural Maine community values, which emphasize the importance of kinship networks, place-based connections, and independence and self-sufficiency, impact views and practices of drug use and treatment. Through this research, we will provide the first comprehensive survey of drug treatment and drug-related incarceration in the county, and analyze addiction is conceptualized and what forms of treatment are socially meaningful in rural communities.

The research team: project director Dr. Winifred Tate, Colby student Julia Leighton (’21), a Washington County native, and Colby graduate Cat Ledue (’19), a Sanford native.