Introduction: There is a need for a better understanding of clients who undergo treatment for substance use, especially to avoid relapse. Aims: To identify our clients’ discourses which led to their substance problems and to determine those discursive strategies which have kept them sober.

Method: A total of 14 participants at a Swedish municipally-operated treatment program were interviewed about their childhood, teenage years, early experiences with substance, how they recognized they had substance problems, found out about treatment, adopted strategies to maintain sober and whether they noticed identity changes during treatment.

Results: Participants saw themselves as the main actors in their life stories even although professional support was one of the important factors in the change to a sober life style. The group mentioned different causes of substance problems such as adverse childhood experiences and loss of stable life patterns; a variety of reasons for seeking treatment, here “turning points” as keeping job and support from others; and different strategies to avoid relapses such as avoiding places where there was alcohol, being frank about their alcohol problems, focusing on one day at a time, attending AA meetings, avoiding romanticizing about alcohol, and participating in new activities and in a government-controlled personal savings program.

This chapter examines the possibilities and limitations of using a narrative method as a framework within a multidimensional model for exploring and analyzing the use and misuse of alcohol and drugs. It is posited that a multidimensional model, based on narrative reasoning, can give a more detailed and specific understanding of substance users, who represent a heterogeneous population of people, and of substance use-related dependency problems. Such a model describes and analyses the drug-use related problems in a manner that provides holistic and important information and knowledge about the person by contextual and situation interaction processes which are involved in the use/misuse of alcohol and drugs. Tentative conclusions and unresolved critical issues are considered.

This article discusses different self-theoretical perspectives of the self that are of importance in the analysis of the use and misuse of alcohol and psychoactive drugs. The self-theories considered here include cognitive, psychodynamic, transpersonal, and social constructivist perspectives. A multidimensional perspective focusing on the connection between identity structures and analyzing the use/misuse of alcohol and psychoactive drugs is presented. The article argues for a self-theoretical analysis based on narrative data in order to reach an in-depth understanding of the use and misuse of alcohol and psychoactive drugs.

Preliminary and tentative conclusions concerning theoretical and methodological issues about narrative methods and their use as a research strategy for investigating and understanding the use and misuse of alcohol and drugs are presented. The treatment methods that are influenced by narrative strategies as well as this tool's limitations are noted. The article focuses particularly on approaches based on, and influenced by, psychology, sociology and social work when conducting narrative research.

This chapter provides a short introduction to, and an overview for, using narrative analysis in the understanding of the use and misuse of alcohol and drugs. Important theoretical and methodological dimensions are discussed. Some tentative conclusions, limitations, and unresolved critical issues concerning the use of narrative research methods in the analysis of substance use-related dependency problems are also presented.

The chapter presents a multidimensional model where alcohol and drug use-misuse is considered as a multifactorial bio-psychosocial process. The multidimensional model describes the complexity of factors that contribute to alcohol and drug usemisuse and how this makes its study very challenging. The theoretical model considers many dimensions related to different intrapersonal and extra-personal factors affecting alcohol- and drug use-misuse.

The intrapersonal influences include processes contributing to personal differences in alcohol and drug use. The focus is especially on neurobiological processes, personality, affective states, including, cognitive motivation or expectancies as behavioral motivators. Extra-personal influences consider demographics, environmental, social and sociocultural factors.