Drugs, risk and survival: An ethnographic exploration of methamphetamine use and acquisition in northern Colorado

The issue of "risk" among drug users is of significant concern to public health, harm reduction, and drug use treatment and prevention advocates. Because of their injection practices and sexual behaviors, methamphetamine users in particular have been identified as being at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis C, and other blood borne diseases. In this presentation, I will draw on data from ongoing ethnographic research among methamphetamine users in a small city in Northern Colorado. I explore drug use and acquisition practices in the context of participants' daily lived experience and survival strategies. Several key informants in this study are chronically or intermittently homeless and nearly all participants face long-term job and economic insecurity. They often rely upon social relationships, including those with other drug users, to secure housing, obtain drugs, and scrape together sufficient resources to meet their daily material and emotional needs. In establishing these relationships and networks of reciprocity that may be seen as facilitating everyday survival, many individuals maintain relationships and engage in behaviors that actually increase their risk for disease and perpetuate the cycle of methamphetamine addiction and abuse. I present representative examples from this ongoing research to elucidate the relationships between drug use and poverty, risk and survival, in order to inform outreach and intervention efforts from harm reduction to treatment.