Doing Normality and Vulnerability: Retrospective Narratives of Early Substance Use in Sweden

Early substance use is commonly framed as a risk factor for later problems, yet less is known about how individuals retrospectively interpret and make sense of these early experiences in relation to their own substance use problems. This article explores how adults who have previously experienced substance use problems narratively reconstruct their early substance use and render it socially and morally intelligible over time. The study draws on unstructured life story interviews with 16 adults in Sweden who, at the time of the interview, were abstinent and largely socially integrated, despite previous substance use and related social difficulties. Using a narrative-informed analysis guided by Garfinkel's concept of accountability and Hänninen's model of layered narratives, the findings show how participants reinterpret early substance use in light of their later problems by embedding it in everyday routines, peer relations, gendered expectations, and emotional coping. Importantly, these accounts show how this connection is retrospectively negotiated in different ways. Early practices are not narrated as clear causes of later problems, but are reworked as meaningful within the social and emotional conditions of the time and subsequently connected to experiences of dependence, loss of control, or social consequences. While the stories share similar patterns, there are subtle generational nuances emerging in how early use is framed that shift from ordinary accounts of early use to coping-oriented interpretations. Rather than distancing themselves from early use, participants often present it as reasonable, and sometimes necessary, given the circumstances they describe. The study highlights how early substance use remains an active site of meaning-making across the life course, where past experiences are continuously reinterpreted in relation to present identities and past problems.