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

Lead Field Researcher: Courtney Allen, CADC,  Recovery Advocate, BA: Social Justice

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

Goals: 1) analyze barriers to treatment for women and the factors contributing to women maintaining long term recovery; 2) analyze the experiences of women who use drugs and develop gender sensitive harm reduction recommendations.

Summary: We are conducting extended ethnographic life history interviews with women in short-term and long-term recovery, including oral histories of recovery pathways, and with women in active use. We are documenting the challenges these women experience, as well as the practices of care used by women in recovery and women who use drugs, with their families and communities. We will also conduct extended ethnographic interviews with community stakeholders and health care providers.

Issues we explore in these interviews include:

• origins and trajectories of drug use

• pathways to recovery

• caregiving practices, including self-care; with biological and chosen families; with children

• women’s experiences with the criminal justice system, including arrest, incarceration and drug courts

• women’s experiences with Child Protective Services and the Department of Health and Human Services, including child removal and reunification

• experiences of overdose

• Maine identity and community, and drug use

• women’s work and drug use, including women’s access to formal employment and their informal survival strategies

• experiences of shame and stigma

Consent Protocols: This project has passed the Colby College Institutional Review Board approval process, and the project IRB number is 2019-048. All participation is voluntary and anonymous.

Research results: We will write case study analyses for academic publication and a series of drug policy briefs with recommendations for Maine.

We are also committed to sharing the stories and insights of the women who participate in this study as widely as possible, in an effort to reduce stigma against women who use drugs, and to celebrate the achievements of women in Maine as they confront tremendous structural barriers. This writing will be produced in consultation with research participants, and could take a variety of forms, including news articles and op-ed pieces, pamphlets and testimonials, and on-line long form narratives and photographs.

Full project proposal available upon request.