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4 - Drugs, cultural change and drug markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2022

Daniel Briggs
Affiliation:
Universidad Europea de Valencia, Spain
Rubén Monge Gamero
Affiliation:
Universidad Europea de Valencia, Spain
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Summary

In his chabola, Raul moves around, picking at his scarred face; he takes a cigarette with blood stains on it out of his pocket, lights it up and furiously sucks what he can from it before realising that Daniel is not the man from the media which he accused him of the other day. He holds out his scabby blood-stained hands and clasps his, saying “lo siento amigo” (“I’m sorry friend”). Raul is 38 and estimates half of his life he has taken “this shit”, referring to heroin and cocaine, becoming homeless at the age of 22. He remembers “all the poblados”, having visited them one by one before they were closed when the “police started to come down hard on drugs in the centre”. He says he started taking drugs because “everything accumulated” when he couldn't find work and fell out with his family. When he became homeless it got worse until he said he “ended up here [Valdemingómez]”. The quality of the drugs has deteriorated, he reflects, as he prepares a heroin injection for his wrist or wherever he finds a vein. Though we crouch inside a hut, he currently has no home, no tent, no shelter and sleeps on thrown-away mattresses. He says it's difficult to get by in Valdemingómez as he often begs or does favours for money, but rarely enters into exchanges with people as it generates disagreements. As he makes the injection, he reflects “normally I have a friend who injects me in the neck as my veins are getting worse” before applying it slowly into a ready vein. He sits back and looks up, saying how he is “on the waiting list” for a rehabilitation centre; “let's see if I get there and get clean of this shit and move on”; he has already tried twice before and relapsed.

Introduction

In these field notes we can see why Raul finds himself in this situation: the collapse of family relationships as a consequence of his unemployment rendering him financially powerless and, in the wake of searching for new work, he found nothing. With the increasing prevalence of drug use as a means of escape, he became homeless, and his mental and physical state deteriorated.

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Dead-End Lives
Drugs and Violence in the City Shadows
, pp. 75 - 94
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Print publication year: 2017

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