Oldal 65 [65]
4. USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ® 63
experience of SC use can be treated as a particular type of trauma. The effect
of SC is inverse: the users’ motives for consumption and relaxation have pleas¬
urable effects, but after a short time they experience the opposite. The drug
destroys them and strips them of a sense of self: ,,totally destroys our soul”.
The post traumatic condition is characterized by lost sense of self and de¬
stroyed identity where competence is paralyzed (A. Ehlers & Clark, 2000).
The retreat from social connections and disinterest in everyday life as de¬
scribed by the participants: ,,It turns you inward’, reminds us of the compul¬
sive characteristics of traumatic experience (A. Ehlers & Clark, 2000). The
elimination of the everyday routine of SC users evokes the alienation that
follows trauma (Pintér, 2014), because one effect of trauma is to alienate the
survivor in his or her world (Herman, 2003). Another trait of SC use that is
related to trauma is self-disgust: ,,I felt disgusted... I hated myself”, similarly
to the appearance of shame among trauma survivors (Herman, 2003). The
representation of experiences derived from drug use are incoherent, unstruc¬
tured, and disorganized, similarly to the narratives of trauma (Ehlers et al.,
1998; A. Ehlers & Clark, 2000; Foa & Rothbaum, 1998).
The self-deterioration, the lost sense of identity and the experience of drug
use reported by SCs users are similar to the experiences of heroin users. Ex¬
periences reported by heroin users - such as retreat from the world, and the
emergence of the ,,addict lifestyle” where the drug becomes the most import¬
ant thing that becomes the only thing that can give them relief but that simul¬
taneously deprives them of identity and humanity (Barros, 2012) — were also
reported by participants in this study. Nevertheless, the organization of ex¬
periences due to the absence of a positive user self, lack of turning points, and
sense of control are different. With psychoactive substance users, as experi¬
ences change from positive to negative, identity changes in parallel from pos¬
itive to negative (J. McIntosh & McKeganey, 2000). As a result of the rapidly
appearing negative effects of SCs, no positive identity relates to the consump¬
tion of the drug, so the transformed self will be based on negative experiences
and therefore will not be part of an emptied identity.
The use of psychoactive drugs gives a sense of control at the beginning
(Barros, 2012), but later the recognition of fake control leads to the ,,rock
bottom” (J. McIntosh & McKeganey, 2000). However, neither at the beginning
nor in the later stages does SC consumption give a sense of control, so users
try to control their transformed self by the user self. This experience relates
to the one that was previously described at the study by Van Hout and Hearne
(2016), where the craving and acute physical withdrawal symptoms were re¬
solved by resumed smoking of SCs. Due to the transformative effect of SC,
participants in our study experienced drift and vulnerability; thus, they did
not experience the metaphoric battle with addiction described by psychoac¬
tive substance users (Shinebourne & Smith, 2010b). The significance of the