Os Doze Passos do “ganso”: a trajetória de policiais militares usuários de drogas em uma instituição reinterpretativa

Abstract

This thesis presents Renascer, an initiative of the Rio de Janeiro State Military Police (PMERJ) to treat police officers who use licit and illicit drugs. Since the early 1990s, PMERJ has a rehab clinic for the treatment of chemical dependency in the structure of its central hospital. The main service offered is a voluntary hospitalization (lasting approximately 35 days). Besides detoxification through abstinence and medication administration is adopted the Twelve Steps methodology, originating from groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. Methodologically, fieldwork was carried out. I have collected data from the direct observation and realized interviews with employees and former patients throughout 2016 and 2017. The main objective of this study is to present how this treatment is based on a process of individual reconstruction through the reinterpretation of their trajectories. Considering the self-reconstruction process, I have started from Erving Goffman's concept of total institutions (1968) and re-reading the concept proposed by Susie Scott (2011) entitled reinventive institutions to create the concept of reinterpretative institutions. Analysing the police officers‟ addicts‟ stories, I have tried to demonstrate how the treatment operates through an attempt to reconstruct these trajectories, from childhood to nowadays. This reconstruction implies on the reinterpretation of important moments, such as: the identification of "addicted" behaviour, the beginning of the career of using the substance, entering the Police, the "good time" of drug use, the "hitting bottom", the awareness of the diagnosis of chemical dependency and incorporation of the "recovering" way of life. Throughout this process it was possible to identify a specific way of reporting these trajectories and to create common meanings from these individual experiences. The research also presents how these officers see themselves and how they see themselves viewed by the corporation, before and after experience the treatment.