Para além da substância: considerações sobre o sujeito na condição da toxicomania.

The increase in the use of drugs and their subjective effects are an epidemic problem for public health. This paper presents the results of a qualitative study on the subjective condition of eight young addicts that have sought help in rehabilitation clinics. The methodology of interpretive analysis of data collected from the interviews used the psychoanalytic theory. The precariousness of primordial relationships resulted in a construction of subjectivity marked by abandonment and helplessness. The understanding of the subject condition and his relation with the object drug reveals a psychic pain that meets, in the anesthesia offered by the drug, a coping strategy. It was found that the intensity of the early experiences in life, and not psychic elaborated, meet, as a form of discharge, the path of the act. The observed psychic fragility reaffirmed the necessity for an expansion of strategies of dealing with drug addiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]