Friendship, Masculinities and Men’s Recreational Use of Illicit Drugs

Based on empirical sociological research, this article explores how some Irish men’s recreational use of illicit drugs, masculinities and friendship interconnect.  Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty Irish men who identified as recreational users of illicit drugs, the article examines men’s drug-taking within homosocial contexts as a friendship practice.  By conceptualising masculinities as relational, socially constructed and fluid, the article examines social aspects of men’s drug-taking as part of a pattern of gender practices used to establish, maintain and affirm men’s friendships.  The findings of the research demonstrate that men’s recreational use of illicit drugs forms part of the social practices of friendship among drug-taking men, and men’s understandings of masculinity in turn influence these social practices.  You can access this journal article at: https://amityjournal.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/127/2019/02/Darcy-2018.pdf