Tensions within Identity: Notes on How Criminalized Women Negotiate Identity through Addiction

Drawing on conceptualizations of a loss of personal power versus empowerment, criminalized womenin Canada engage two seemingly opposed discourses to explain their substance use. When feeling a lossof control/power participants constructed substance use as a disease, and when feeling in control of theirsubstance use they described becoming substance free as based on an empowered choice to use/quit using.This article explores the connection between choice/disease discourses and correctional treatment discoursesthrough an examination of women’s narratives about identity management and negotiation related tosubstance use. Based on 22 life history interviews with formerly incarcerated women and four social workerswho assist criminalized women as they transition from prison to the community, this research suggests thatcriminalized women construct a distinct drug using or ‘addict’ identity that they separate from their ‘true’ orcore conceptualization of self.