Between Drugs and Society: Moral Experiences and Drug Addiction in Ouagadougou

Abstract

This article engages with the local moral worlds and the reported experiences of people addicted to heroin and/or cocaine in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. Drug users’ experiences were coloured by a continuous conflict between the need to use drugs and a simultaneous inability to live a “good life”: that is, to fulfill the social role associated with their “life stage.” We add to a small body of research that has sought to understand the worlds of drugs in Africa from the perspectives of people who engage in drug use.