“Be Mom, for Mom”: Anti-Authority Recovery Narratives of Females Who Use Drugs in China

The intersection of gender and drug use places women who experience substance dependence in a particularly vulnerable and often overlooked position. While some studies have examined women's drug use mainly through legal or moral lenses, few have explored how women themselves, especially through the evolving maternal life course, construct meaning and agency in recovery. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 18 women in a coastal Chinese city, this study employs a narcofeminist framework to reinterpret recovery narratives through the maternal life course. Findings show that participants articulated counter-narratives grounded in caregiving and intergenerational responsibility, as both mothers and daughters, while critically engaging with the moral expectations of state-led rehabilitation. They reframed recovery by sustaining peer-based support for co-parenting, engaging in informal work aligned with caregiving, and negotiating legality to care for aging parents. These narratives challenge dominant rehabilitation discourses and highlight the importance of community-based, relational forms of recovery and gender-sensitive policy support.