Sleep during recovery from drug and alcohol dependence: a sociological study of embodied change

Overview

Research by Neale and Nettleton into the everyday lives of recovering heroin users found sleep to be an important issue for those seeking to overcome addiction. Although there is a biomedical literature on substance misuse and sleep, there is virtually no sociological research on sleep during rehabilitation.Working with Meadows, a sociologist of sleep, the team will explore how sleep is experienced, interpreted and managed by recovering users in residential treatment settings. A novel conceptual model which situates sleep, drug misuse and recovery as embodied social actions that are embedded within social contexts will be developed. Thirty individuals will wear an actiwatch (an established tool for measuring sleep/wake cycles) for one week; they will then be interviewed to gather data on their perceptions of their night/day experiences. These subjective data matched, by objective measures of sleep, will facilitate comparison between perceptions of sleeping patterns and actual patterns of sleeping. Service providers of the selected treatment settings are supportive of the study.

Scheme: British Academy Small Research Grant

Research Starts: 01/06/2014

Research Ends: 31/12/2015

Grant Reference Number: SG132091