A trama biopolítica no cuidado em álcool e outras drogas: táticas e estratégias para governo de uma população

Abstract

The study aimed at questioning care practices of alcohol and other drugs provided by a Psychosocial Care Center for Alcohol and other Drugs (CAPS AD III), through analysis of tactics and strategies in the care practices to know the government ways instituted for such population. It is a qualitative documentary study from a poststructuralist angle, from the perspective of Foucault. Data were collected in the CAPS AD III of Pelotas, RS/Brazil, and the empirical material consisted in the Therapeutic Project of such service, as well as the Menu of Activities offered and individual therapeutic plans of 10 users obtained from medical records. Data analysis was performed separately according to the nature of the empirical material, which generated the following topics: “Therapeutic Project: strategies of production of the norm” and the subtopic “Functioning and structure: tactics of normalization”, “Menu of activities: strategies and tactics for the government of users from CAPS AD”, and “Individual Therapeutic Plans: practices of normalization and subjectivation of the user of alcohol and drugs”. Problematic or not, it was concluded that the use of drugs was compelled to be agenda of public health, in which power goes through the network of care of alcohol and other drugs to govern population via public policies to maintain order and a state of social well being; that the current truth comes from moral, social and scientific analysis which states relations of power between State and population and shape these two main strategies used in care of alcohol and other drugs; that the prohibitionist logic reverberates as truth to control the phenomenon of drug use and the users from this social fabric, resulting in a social homogenization and a normalization of subjects; that dissonant discourses under both strategies of abstinence and harm reduction provide conditions of possibility for the strenghtening of tactics based on the optics of abstinence; that the permanence of tactics from prohibitionist nature may have been a condition of possibility to implement the new Brazilian Drugs Policy. Finally, it was confirmed that the psychiatric reform was a condition of possibility to constitute other strategies and tactics for the care of alcohol and other drugs and that the care practices to such population seek government, turning the user into an abstemious and productive subject.