The ‘Back Story’ on Women, Drugs and the Body

Abstract

This introduction is all about providing the ‘back story’ for how Revisioning women and drug use emerged. It’s almost as if this book has its own life and personal history. Revisioning women and drug use has been a long time coming and represents for me an overwhelming research journey from despair to hope as my body moved from being ill to healthy (see Ettorre, 2005a). Because of this experience, I learned a greater sense of compassion and empathy towards women drug users’ quest for well-being, while at the same time personifying polluted bodies or living symbols of degraded women. Although I am not a drug-using woman, I feel passionately about women who use drugs and I want this book to speak to them and to their needs. My illness experience has taught me humility.

From the time when Florence Nightingale was called a camp follower up to the present day … the battle of the sexes has been waged in the most inappropriate arena I can imagine: the centers of healing …

Miriam Gilbert (1970: 62)