Tanzanian heroin users and the realities of addiction

Abstract

Fear and loathing, and attempts to escape it, dominate the emotional life of young drug users in Dar es Salaam.1 Fear of alosto (withdrawal) drives their pursuit of heroin. Almost all young men and women dependent on heroin disdain the ways they live their lives and rue the day they first tried heroin. Over time drug users experience perceived and enacted stigma as they interact with their families, friends, neighbors, and others they encounter, for they are no longer able to hide their use. Their bodies and actions easily reveal the illegal drug practices they engage in. After providing the context in which heroin use emerged in Dar es Salaam, this chapter examines the ways heroin injectors negotiate their material, emotional, and physical worlds.