Meeting the Sober Self, Recognizing the Drinking Self: Back to Baseline Experimentation in Temporary Sobriety Initiatives

Robert, J

Meeting the Sober Self, Recognizing the Drinking Self: Back to Baseline Experimentation in Temporary Sobriety Initiatives

Robert, J

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Contemporary Drug Problems, 2018, 45 (3), pp. 283 - 302
Issue Date:: 2018-09-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Robert, J https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6852-2137	en_US
dc.date.available	2018-03-15	en_US
dc.date.issued	2018-09-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Contemporary Drug Problems, 2018, 45 (3), pp. 283 - 302	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	0091-4509	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/128597
dc.description.abstract	© The Author(s) 2018. Temporary sobriety initiatives (TSIs), popular month-long campaigns in which people abstain from alcohol to raise money for charity, aim to change participants’ relationship with alcohol. Identifying the structural and practical mechanisms of TSIs that facilitate the desired changes is an important element in understanding their popularity and purported effectiveness as public health campaigns. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 15 Australian FebFast participants, this article argues that TSI participants, often guided by campaign organizers, loosely adopt the self-tracking and self-experimentation practices of the Quantified Self (QS) movement, which open up aspects of oneself and of alcohol that are normally hidden in order to facilitate self-improvement via discovery. Drew Leder’s corporeal phenomenology of absence and presence underpins the analysis of how TSI participants contrast deliberate periods of sobriety and inattentive normal drinking to convert abstract knowledge about alcohol and its effects into personally salient information based on lived experience. In doing so, participants shift the valence of their ambivalence about drinking even at moderate levels and convert it from the less behaviorally impactful potential ambivalence to its more influential felt form. Through such experiments, TSI participants problematize their drinking; make real the physical, psychological, and social impacts of alcohol; and even redefine what they know it to be.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Contemporary Drug Problems	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1177/0091450918769078	en_US
dc.title	Meeting the Sober Self, Recognizing the Drinking Self: Back to Baseline Experimentation in Temporary Sobriety Initiatives	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	3	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	45	en_US
utslib.for	1117 Public Health and Health Services	en_US
utslib.for	1601 Anthropology	en_US
utslib.for	11 Medical and Health Sciences	en_US
utslib.for	16 Studies in Human Society	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/e-Press
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/FASS Faculty Administration
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.issue	3	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	45	en_US

Abstract:

© The Author(s) 2018. Temporary sobriety initiatives (TSIs), popular month-long campaigns in which people abstain from alcohol to raise money for charity, aim to change participants’ relationship with alcohol. Identifying the structural and practical mechanisms of TSIs that facilitate the desired changes is an important element in understanding their popularity and purported effectiveness as public health campaigns. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 15 Australian FebFast participants, this article argues that TSI participants, often guided by campaign organizers, loosely adopt the self-tracking and self-experimentation practices of the Quantified Self (QS) movement, which open up aspects of oneself and of alcohol that are normally hidden in order to facilitate self-improvement via discovery. Drew Leder’s corporeal phenomenology of absence and presence underpins the analysis of how TSI participants contrast deliberate periods of sobriety and inattentive normal drinking to convert abstract knowledge about alcohol and its effects into personally salient information based on lived experience. In doing so, participants shift the valence of their ambivalence about drinking even at moderate levels and convert it from the less behaviorally impactful potential ambivalence to its more influential felt form. Through such experiments, TSI participants problematize their drinking; make real the physical, psychological, and social impacts of alcohol; and even redefine what they know it to be.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/126008